📅 Thursday, February 8th – Sunday, March 3rd
📍 Tacoma Armory: 1001 S Yakima Ave, Tacoma
🎟 $20 – $69
UPDATE: Gospel at Colonus is canceled and no longer running as part of Tacoma Arts Live’s 2023/2024 season.
I hear what you’re saying. “Greek drama this. Greek drama that. Yeah yeah, Ancient Greece invented theatre, and that’s fine, but aren’t those shows so stiff? What does something written 2,500 hundred years ago (before JESUS!) have to tell us about today?”
First of all, you sound like an a-hole. Greek drama rules. But more importantly, I have a solution: It’s The Gospel at Colonus, a gospel and blues retelling of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles’ final play asked, “What happened after Oedipus did…well…you know…and before the events of Antigone.” Now wandering the land as an exiled beggar, he happens upon the titular village and engages in a way that maybe, just maybe, could lead to his redemption.
With music by Bob Telson and book/lyrics by Lee Breuer, it was shortlisted for a 1985 Pulitzer (it lost to Sunday in the Park with George) and made it to Broadway in 1988, where it starred the Blind Boys of Alabama (Telson was their organist) and Morgan Freeman. As a piece of drama with a glorious score (which also cleanly features in the 2003 film Camp), it rethinks the tragedy as an evangelical revival meeting, giving incredible opportunities to regional churches who really want to show off their choirs and soloists.
As a piece of African American theatre, it’s stood the test of time for 40 years now. See Tacoma Arts Live do it absolute justice.
⏰ Showtimes for Gospel at Colonus
Preview Night: Thursday, February 8th, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Friday, February 9th, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Saturday, February 10th, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Friday, February 16th, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Saturday, February 17th, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Sunday, February 18th, 2024 @ 3 pm
Friday, February 23rd, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Saturday, February 24th, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Sunday, February 25th, 2024 @ 3 pm
Friday, March 1st, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Saturday, March 2nd, 2024 @ 7:30 pm
Sunday, March 3rd, 2024 @ 3 pm
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