OEDIPUS: KING/COLONUS to Premiere at PlayMakers Repertory Company
Michael Hayden stars in the reverse-chronology retelling, staged at UNC Chapel Hill's Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art.
PlayMakers Repertory Company will open its 50th Anniversary Season with the world premiere of OEDIPUS: KING/COLONUS, a bold new adaptation written and directed by acclaimed theatre artist Carey Perloff, featuring original music by composer and multi-instrumentalist David Coulter, and starring Michael Hayden.
Five years in the making, Perloff's adaptation brings together Oedipus at Colonus and Oedipus Rex-with echoes of Antigone-to reconsider one of Western theatre's foundational stories. Rather than following Oedipus' journey chronologically, the production begins near the end of his life. It moves backward, from Colonus to Thebes, retracing the choices, revelations, and questions that shaped his fate.
The world premiere arrives amid a renewed cultural fascination with Greek mythology and classical stories. As ancient epics and tragedies find new audiences across theatre, literature, film, and popular culture, OEDIPUS: KING/COLONUS asks why these stories continue to resonate-and what they reveal about the present.
'The Greeks always shine a light on our own most pressing issues, from the nature of citizenship to the shifting sands of justice,' said Perloff.
Perloff began developing the project through a Director Commission from Seattle Rep during the COVID-19 pandemic. The PlayMakers production marks the first full staging of the adaptation and its distinctive reverse-chronology structure.
The production also reunites Perloff with David Coulter, whose career has crossed theatre, music, film, dance, and visual art. Coulter has created an original musical landscape for the production's choruses, bringing a contemporary sonic dimension to the ritual and communal power at the heart of Greek tragedy.
The creative team includes scenic and Costume Designer Lex Liang, lighting designer Robert Wierzel, sound designer Jane Shaw, vocal coach Gwendolyn Schwinke, and dramaturg Adam Versenyí.
At the center of OEDIPUS: KING/COLONUS is a man confronting the consequences of a life he can finally see in full. By beginning at the end and moving backward, Perloff invites audiences to encounter a familiar tragedy from a new perspective: not simply as a story about fate, but as an investigation of leadership, justice, belonging, and what it means to understand the choices that brought us to where we are.
OEDIPUS: KING/COLONUS is part of PlayMakers Repertory Company's 2026/27 season and will be performed at the Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
About PlayMakers Repertory Company
PlayMakers Repertory Company is the professional theatre in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For 50 years, PlayMakers has brought artists and audiences together through adventurous productions of contemporary works, classics, and new plays while training the next generation of theatre artists.
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