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In Performance: The Gospel at Colonus at the Edinburgh International Festival August 21-23

The Gospel at Colonus is a gospel version of Sophocles’s tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. The show was created in New York City in 1985 by Lee Breuer, the experimental-theatre director, and composer Bob Telson, the founders of a troupe called Mabou Mines. The original script was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show had a brief run on Broadway from March to May in 1988. Breuer was Tony-nominated for his book.

Breuer and Telson handed the storytelling duties to a black Pentecostal preacher and the choir of his church, who in turn enacted the story of Oedipus’s torment and redemption as a modern parable. They employed the unusual device of casting The Blind Boys of Alabama to collectively portray Oedipus as well the Chancel Choir of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

Video:

The Gospel at Colonus
Edinburgh International Festival
August 21-23, 2010

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Caden Manson is a director, media artist, and teacher. He is co-founder of the media ensemble bigartgroup.com and network, blog, and publisher, contemporaryperformance.com. He has co-created, directed, video- and set designed 18 Big Art Group productions. Manson has shown video installations in Austria, Germany, NYC, and Portland; performed PAIN KILLER in Berlin, Singapore and Vietnam; Taught in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Montreal, NYC, and Bern; the ensemble has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a 2001 Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, is a 2002 Pew Fellow and a 2011 MacDowell Fellow. Writing has been published in PAJ, Theater Magazine, and Theater der Zeit. Caden is currently an associate professor and graduate directing option coordinator of The John Wells Directing Program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.

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