As playwright Luis Alfaro will tell you, writing a love scene for a guy and his mother is hard work.
“You have to make it sexy, but you can’t make it too sexy because it would be too freaky for the audience,” said Alfaro, author of “Oedipus El Rey,” a latinized interpretation of Sophocles’ tragic Greek play “Oedipus Rex.”
The play premieres tonight at the Getty Villa in Malibu as part of a series of adaptations of classical works put on by the Villa Theater Lab. The lab is a workshop that encourages writers and directors to create new work based on ancient texts that is relatable to the modern audience.
“One of the difficulties in adapting a Greek tragedy is that you have to activate the journey that the modern audience might not know,” Alfaro said.
The integration of live performance with the classical art and architecture of the Getty Villa makes for a more complete experience of Grecian culture.
“It’s one thing to have a gallery and another to actually present these works in a theater,” said Laurel Kishi, manager of performing arts for the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Our goal is to elicit the same level of response that people had in the ancient world.”
As in the original, “Oedipus El Rey” is about Oedipus’ inability to escape his fate of killing his biological father, Laius, and committing incest with his mother, Jocasta.
However, Alfaro’s leaner, meaner version of “Oedipus Rex” characterizes Oedipus as a delinquent just released from the California state prison in Kern County. Having been abandoned by his father and mother as a baby, he was raised by the prophet Tiresias.
When Oedipus jets to Los Angeles to start a new life, he meets Laius and kills him in a fit of road rage, not knowing it is his real father. After solving the sphinx’s riddle, he inherits Laius’ kingdom ““ the barrio of Pico Union in downtown Los Angeles ““ and marries Jocasta. The rest is Greek tragedy history, with a few twists crafted by Alfaro.
The love scene with Jocasta, which is not part of the original “Oedipus Rex,” is an attempt by Alfaro to create the backstory of the Oedipus myth. The original play starts after half of the action has already occurred.
“We see the whole process. We have the scene where Oedipus and Jocasta meet for the first time and also their seduction scene. The audience sees how their relationship began,” said Jon Rivera, director of “Oedipus El Rey.”
And the fact that the play is a modern adaptation opens the material to a younger crowd.
“A younger audience will hear the word “˜Elektra’ or “˜Oedipus’ and try to stay away from it,” Rivera said. “But if the adaptation relates to today, they will come in and see the play, hopefully gaining a greater appreciation for the classics.”
Alfaro went through great lengths to connect the almost 2,000-year-old play to a contemporary audience, including visiting and researching California prisons.
“After working with a few kids in prison, I saw a connection with Oedipus,” Alfaro said. “People who are in prison face the same questions Oedipus faces: Are we ever really free, and can we change our destiny?”
Alfaro explained that in trying to escape his fate, Oedipus’ struggle for freedom will resembles that of many prisoners.
“More than half of all the guys who get out of prison go back. They don’t know how to live in a free world. You can be a child in a juvenile camp and commit a felony and then get sent to an adult prison,” Alfaro said. “Prison becomes the only life you know.”
The result of his research is that, both literally and metaphorically, Oedipus is in jail for the first part of the play.
Alfaro, who grew up in Pico Union, felt that his environment was inescapable as a kid, which overtly reflects Oedipus’ dilemma.
“It was a very poor, gang-heavy place, and it still is. There was always a sense that I was destined to choose a gang life in order to survive that kind of neighborhood,” he explained.
However, as artists do, Alfaro integrated the nuances of his past into his work, and Pico Union becomes modern-day Thebes.
Through the combination of firsthand experience and field research, “Oedipus El Rey” is a sensitive piece that Alfaro intends to be reflective of issues that concerned the Greeks and still concern our society today.
“It’s about what it means to be living today ““ our stories are the stories of Grecians. What the Greeks did so beautifully was that their plays represented humanity, and that’s something I wanted in my play,” Alfaro said. “Issues like fate and destiny affect everybody.”