Getty Center

• During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the character Oedipus and the ancient Greek drama based on his tragedy was suddenly everywhere.
• My new edited volume follows global trends in how theatre artists receive and interpret Greek tragedy in contextualizing a Montréal-based theatre company’s new translations of Greek tragedy.

Oedipus abounded

• In the first year of the pandemic, public commentary compared former U.S. president Donald Trump to Oedipus.
• In Los Angeles, a Chicanx version of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus El Rey, written by Luis Alfaro and directed by Chay Yew, was streaming live from the Center Theatre Group in partnership with the Getty Museum.
• The excellent Theater of War company, under the direction of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Bryan Doerries, produced a star-studded zoom version in May 2020, The Oedipus Project, dedicated to first responders.

Theban plague parallels

• The play, directed by Bùi Nhu Lai, was performed and streamed at the 6th Asian Theatre Schools Festival held in Beijing, by the Hà Nội Academy of Theatre and Cinema.
• While some revelled in the fresh take on Oedipus these performances brought, at least one critic wondered if maybe we shouldn’t search for a direct parallel between the Theban plague killing Oedipus’s subjects and COVID-19.

Multiple crises

• As if in response, Doerries’ The Oedipus Project named its themes as the pandemic and the climate crisis.
• That is not only true of the pandemic; we are also the origin of an even bigger drama, the drama of our time: global warming.”

Montréal productions

• My edited volume Scapegoat Carnivale’s Tragic Trilogy documents how between 2010 and 2017, the Montréal theatre company Scapegoat Carnivale produced Euripides’ Medea and Bacchae, and Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus.
• The Greek tragedies might have been written to work through fifth-century Athens’ own cultural anxieties, but even in Sophocles’ day, they did so through a mythical past, one as removed from Sophocles as he is from anyone today.

Plague concerns folded into myth

• If Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannus in part as a response to the Athenian plague, he folded that concern into a myth that accommodates today’s diverse and changing global anxieties just as well as his own.
• As Aristotle says, poetry, unlike history, is not concerned with particular facts, but instead with general truths.

‘The city … unable to lift her head’

• In Scapegoat’s contemporary-set staged reading, Shragge’s clean style perfectly captured Sophocles’ irony, humour and pathos.
• Scapegoat’s minimalist staging favoured people over props, with a massive chorus composed of three local choirs.

Long-suffering Thebans

• To see Oedipus and all his long-suffering Thebans embodied onstage (for me, for the first time), mattered, despite Aristotle’s claim that the play is just as good without actually seeing this.
• And Scapegoat’s new translation, like countless others, waits for readers to find new delights in its words, audiences to find new terrors in its enactment and creators to make new meanings of its myth.

• NEW YORK, March 22, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Getty and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) are pleased to announce the 2023 recipients of the Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art .
• Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships support innovative scholarship by recent PhDs that will make substantial and original contributions to the understanding of art and its history.
• "Getty has always supported art historians who strive for a discipline that is more international and inclusive," said Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation.
• The 2023 fellows employ diverse, interdisciplinary approaches to art historical research, with projects that intersect with religious studies, cultural heritage studies, material sciences history, and environmental justice.

• Wellesley, MA, Sept. 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Babson College, the global leader in entrepreneurship education, in partnership with CAMUS Cognac, operated by fifth-generation head and Babson alumnus Cyril Camus, announces Gustavo Cisneros and family as the recipient of the second annual Babson-Camus Global Family Entrepreneurship Award.
• This prestigious award recognizes one highly distinguished and uniquely impactful entrepreneurial family that has created significant economic and social value across generations while exemplifying Babson College values.
• Gustavo and his family have embodied the spirit of family entrepreneurship, passing down the legacy of business philanthropy from generation to generation, said Cyril Camus 92, P26, fifth-generation head of CAMUS Cognac and Babson alumnus.
• Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report, released by Babson College, continuing a family tradition motivated 41.5% of entrepreneurs, exhibiting a 45% increase over the prior year.

• Puerto Rico Sunshine, created by Pantone,celebrates the spirited, open-hearted and passionate character of the Island.
• "Puerto Rico has so much sunshine to spare," said Leah Chandler, CMO of Discover Puerto Rico.
• "We were very excited to create a color that brings to life the distinctive sunshine of Puerto Rico," said Laurie Pressman, Vice-President Pantone Color Institute.
• The Pantone Color Institute provides customized color standards, brand identity and product color consulting as well as trend forecasting inclusive of Pantone Color of the Year, Fashion Runway Color Trend Reports, color psychology and more.