A Murder Mystery Comes to the Getty Villa
Behind the scenes of Deaf West’s Oedipus
(foreground from left to right) Amelia Hensley as Palace Servant, Ashlea Hayes as Teiresias, and Russell Harvard as King Oedipus, during a run-through of the play at tech rehearsal
Body Content
Each fall, the Getty Villa hosts an outdoor theater production with one condition: no repeats.
This is not only the first time Oedipus will be performed at the Villa, but it’s also the Villa’s first bilingual production, featuring acclaimed Tony-Award® winning Deaf West Theatre and performed in American Sign Language (ASL), Protactile and spoken English.
Jenny Koons tells the chorus which way to move during a scene.
“I think,” says Jenny Koons, director and adaptor of Deaf West’s production of Oedipus, “if you’ve never seen a Greek play before and you’ve never been to the Getty Villa, this is a perfect show for your first visit.”
Alexandria Wailes plays Jocasta.
For starters, Deaf West’s Oedipus will be different from how one might imagine a classic Greek play. A modern retelling, it’s a psychological thriller and political drama all in one.
(foreground from left to right) Jon Wolfe Nelson, playing Creon, and Russell Harvard
“We meet the city in the midst of a plague where everyone is dying. And a very unlikely leader is asked to step up to save the city. And the way to save the city is to solve a murder, which felt very different from the productions of Oedipus that I’ve seen. It felt full of drama,” says Koons.
(left to right) Matthew Jaeger, Jenny Koons, and Jon Wolfe Nelson
And, the Getty Villa itself will play a role.
“The whole play takes place outside of the palace. And the Getty Villa looks like a palace proper,” says Koons.
On the first day of rehearsals, the entire cast and crew walked around the outdoor amphitheater, so everyone could get a sense of the space.
The set, designed by Tanya Orellana, includes custom LED-lit frames that fit between the Villa’s columns, as well as projections that transform the classic architecture of the Villa into a modern performance space.
One of Koons’s biggest questions in preparing for the play was, “How do we build an environment that feels like everyone might be watching us?”
Koons wanted the tension of true crime to infuse each element of the production—from the costumes to the set design.
Russell Harvard, who plays the title role of King Oedipus, said what struck him the most about the character was that “he’s a man of his word.” “A lot of people don’t own up to their words, to their actions. People avoid…always kind of pointing to others. But Oedipus, he bows down and just leaps.”
Russell Harvard, who plays the title role of King Oedipus, says he’s excited to be part of something he’s never witnessed before.
“This is something that maybe a lot of people haven’t seen before,” he says. “Having a DeafBlind actor [Ashlea Hayes] involved in this production and seeing how we’ll be able to communicate. That’s something in my career I’ve never done.”
“[Koons] is just so inclusive with all the diversity of the actors that we have, and I just love inclusion.”
(foreground left to right) Ashlea Hayes and Amelia Hensley in Deaf West Theater's Oedipus
That inclusion facilitated a unique approach to storytelling. The chorus, which Deaf West artistic director DJ Kurs is most excited about, “brings new aspects of the theatrical experience to the audience, whether they’re deaf or hearing, by expressing sound through the movement of the chorus.”
The choreography incorporates not just sign language and spoken language, but also body language and other non-verbal methods of communication. Co-ASL choreographers Alexandria Wailes and Andrew Morrill built the choreography for Oedipus, and thought about the bilingual nature of the production. “It’s made it really clear how important communication is and the power of information sharing, and miscommunication, whether that’s on purpose or by accident” says Wailes.
“Oftentimes, we [the deaf community] might be seen as people who don’t have music in our lives, but we do,” says Kurs. “We find patterns in things…like in your heartbeat or when you drive down a highway and you see the telephone poles pass by, that timing, that rhythm.”
What drew Kurs to Oedipus is that “this is a story about connection, it’s about language, and it’s also about how our worlds don't always align with each other. And so, for that, it felt like the right material for our bilingual adaptation.”
Oedipus opens September 7, 2022. Get your tickets here.
