OEDIPUS: A POETIC REQUIEM

A garage in Brunswick, 2008; J Studios, 2009

“Sitarenos draws on Liminal's Asian influences....to create a kind of theatre that is unique in Melbourne: a theatre that attends to its roots in ritual, and which here enacts the catastrophic edges of imaginative possibility….Out on the edges of our culture, with the most minimal of resources, Liminal Theatre is making theatre of a rare ambition and seriousness. Attention must be paid”.

Alison Croggan, Theatre Notes, September 9 2009 - read full review

“Liminal Theatre has been reworking classical Greek tragedy into a new theatrical poetic, inspired by Asian theatre, using a visually austere sensibility that draws on the duality of dark and light….The anguished poetry benefits from the choric framework, with the actors twisting and arching into blighted, agonised tableaux as the torment swells….Sound design, lighting and visual projection create a spectral sense of apocalypse….It is brilliantly designed and involving theatre.”

Cameron Woodhead, The Age, August 31, 2009 - read full review

Adapted from Ted Hughes’ evocative translation, Liminal Theatre performed two versions of Oedipus - A Poetic Requiem, in 2008 and 2009. As part of the 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival, an unassuming suburban garage was recreated as a beautiful, intimate theatre space for our first season, while in 2009 the work was performed at our new studio within the J-Studios precinct.

This recipient of the 2008 Green Room Awards for Best Production and Best Direction, imagines Oedipus performed by four women actors, captured in the depths of a plague, unleashing a prophetic world that gives life to death.

Oedipus - A poetic requiem was directed by Mary Sitarenos and performed by Jo Smith, Georgie Durham, Claire Nicholls and Ivanka Sokol, with lighting by Damian ‘Mimmo’ Lentini and sound by Chris Wenn.

Ivanka Sokol, recipient of the 2006 Audio Visual Green Room Award for Liminal Theatre and Performance’s production of The Damask Drum, creates the moving landscape for this evocative work.