Adaptation

So, there's this theatre, Greasy Joan & Co., and they have this program where they commission a new work that's an adaptation of classic play or story. Thanks to a random evening call a few years ago from Sherry Kramer, I know that adaptations are what I should do with my life.

I asked the literary manager of Greasy Joan if they were looking for plays that were already finished, or at the beginning stages, hoping I could work with Brothers Caramillo or my adaptation of Moliere's Learned Ladies. But, alas, it has to be a new project.

Luckily, a few months ago, I began thinking about doing an adaptation of Antigone about a Mexican woman who becomes a drug lord. I was inspired by real events and the idea of a woman gaining so much power in a world so dominated by men. What also excited me about the project was the argument within Antigone of moral law VS law of the land VS codes of honor VS bond of family. Using the backdrop of a drug cartel would create an intensely gray area to allow the questions to deepen and not have a clear "black and white" answer, which appeals to me since I'm not interested in answering questions, just making the questions more beautiful.

I also want to see if there is material to be mined in the father/daughter dynamic that was present in Oedipus at Colonus, though I'm not at all interested in delving into the Oedipus myth very deeply. Haven't enough people been there, exploring sex with mothers? That's not interesting to me. I'm more interested in the story of a strong woman who is forced to hold up the survival of her family that has been destroyed from the inside out. She's the last beacon of hope. The ghosts of her father, her warring brothers plead for her to redeem them; she is their chance at salvation. And she's thrust into this position of real world and, in a way, divine power that no one, including herself, ever imagined she could be in. The thorn in her side, the "Creon" character even says, "It's not that she's not strong or smart enough to handle this shit. She doesn't have the cojones."

In order to write this play, I have to go back to the source material (Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, and the "Queen of the Pacific") to mine those scenes that speak intensely to the question of power and redemption. I see the opportunity of creating a modern tragedy to be extremely exciting. It's also my hope to grant some humanity to these characters, create them to be not stereotypes, but archetypes.