Oedipus Schmoedipus

A comic bloodbath about a fate that none of us can escape. Oedipus Schmoedipus is a joyful, dark, irreverent, hilarious and confronting performance about death: real death, fake death, and death as portrayed in the world’s great theatre classics. Resurrecting again and again after multiple murders and suicides, Mish Grigor and Shelly Lauman pile up classic dramatic death scenes into an accessible, fun-filled, engaging spectacle of glee-ridden blood and gore in an irreverent work from provocative Australian collective post (Zoë Coombs Marr, Mish Grigor & Natalie Rose). For Asia TOPA 2020, productions of the work in English and Cantonese (featuring ManMan Kwok and Man Sui Hing) are performed over two weeks. For each show’s mammoth bloodbath, a cast of 25 local volunteers is invited to join in the comic lament and slaughter. Straddling live art, theatre and contemporary performance, Oedipus Schmoedipus has had audiences around the world in stitches and in tears. It’s a democratic theatrical extravaganza 2,500 years in the making. Local volunteer call-outs begin in December 2019. Refer to the Asia TOPA website for details.

Oedipus Schmoedipus was originally produced by Belvoir, post & Intimate Spectacle. This production was cocommissioned by Asia TOPA with Hong Kong Repertory Theatre & Freespace West Kowloon and produced by Bureau of Works. It has been supported by Sidney Myer Fund, Playking Foundation, Arts Centre Melbourne and University of Melbourne.

• AsiaTOPA | Oedipus Schmoedipus