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Sophocles
Oedipus at Colonus:
Play introduction by Don Wooten - audio podcast - text (PDF)
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_at_colonus
Read the play online - http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/colonus.html

Last performed by the Genesius guild in 2005 ~ Photos

At the end of his life, Sophocles turned once again to the subject of one of his most powerful tragedies, Oedipus the King. Although Oedipus had striven all his life to avoid the fate predicted for him - that he would kill his father and marry his mother - he discovers at the end of “Oedipus Rex,” that he is guilty of patricide and incest. He blinds himself after the suicide of his wifemother, Jocaste, and asks to be sent into exile. “Oedipus At Colonus takes up the story twenty years later.

The second tragedy served two purposes for Sophocles: it addressed the question aroused by the first play, “Is Oedipus a criminal or a victim?” It also is a tribute to Colonus, the deme (suburb) of Athens in which Sophocles was born and raised.

The play not only addresses the end of Oedipus' life, but sets the stage for the fate that will befall his children in “Antigone.” The tragedy was performed in 402 B.C.E., after Sophocles' death, and was awarded first prize.

One commentator calls the story “a profoundly spiritual tale . . . of prophesized redemption. Sophocles deals with no particular creed or belief. He is more concerned with the general spirituality of every human . . . who faces the conflicts of life and the inevitability of death.”