The Gospel According to Court Theatre
Mark J.P. Hood, Charles Newell, and guests at the first rehearsal of The Gospel at Colonus | photo by Joe Mazza.
Court Theatre’s production, the next installment in its Oedipus trilogy, takes the stage this month.
The Regional Tony Award-winner on the UChicago campus is in rehearsal for The Gospel at Colonus and, in preparation, have shared a ton of great resources. Check out some samples below, then learn more - and get your tickets! - on their website.
GOSPEL IN MILLENnIA
by Wenke (Coco) Huang, Production Dramaturg
When Charlie Newell and I first met to discuss the dramaturgy for The Gospel at Colonus, he recounted the soul-stirring experience of seeing its premiere production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983; this same story is shared in his Artistic Director’s note. I could hear a swell in his voice as his memory lifted his words and then folded softly back, settling into the present. His tale was not unlike Sophocles’s verse—“smooth, pure, and felicitous,” as observed by Classics scholar Robert Fitzgerald, whose translations of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone are the textual foundation of Lee Breuer’s adaptation.
The original program for the 1983 production of THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
TaRon Patton, Charles Newell, Mark J.P. Hood and Mahmoud Khan | photo by Joe Mazza.
IN CONVERSATION: DIRECTORS MARK J.P. HOOD AND CHARLES NEWELL
Court Theatre’s Associate Director of Marketing Camille Oswald interviewed Directors Mark J.P. Hood and Charles Newell to discuss the myth and the music of The Gospel at Colonus. Drawing parallels between spirituality and performance, their conversation was a deep-dive into the history of gospel, the evolution of the sound, and the personal journey to redemption.
Can you share your history with this production?
Mark: I’ll never forget when I got that first email in 2018 about doing this project. We spoke on the phone for an hour and, from that first conversation, we were basically sure we were going to work with each other; we just somehow knew. As a Chicago native who now resides in Los Angeles, I’m glad to be doing this show here, because Chicago is so rich in gospel culture. The father of gospel music, Thomas Dorsey—although he isn’t from Chicago, he migrated to Chicago—brought Southern blues and jazz, and created something here that people hadn’t been messing with! He started creating stuff with Mahalia Jackson, all of these people here in Chicago.
OEDIPUS AND AGENCY
by Sarah Nooter, Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago
UChicago Classics Professor Sarah Nooter explores questions of agency, truth, and fate in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. In dissecting these issues, Nooter gets to the heart of what makes Oedipus Rex a pillar of Western civilization.
Oedipus represents the best and worst of all that is in us. The worst of Oedipus is clear: he killed his father and married his mother. No good. Looking to these biographical (if fictional) facts, Sigmund Freud proposed a psychoanalytic complex that comprised our deepest sources of shame and named it after Oedipus. Vladimir Propp and Claude Lévi-Strauss saw in the blueprint of Oedipus’ life a universal story told everywhere in every tale: birth, murder, marriage, difficulty, death.
But wait, there’s more!
Check out all of the production-specific goodies on Court’s website.