Event Host: Department of English, Department of Classics
Friday, March 23 at 4 p.m. – Rita Dove reflects on her experiences as a playwright and shares the story of how her adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos, titled "The Darker Face of the Earth," reached the stage. The dynamic life of her play includes early versions that underwent deep revision, a premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1996 and a variety of subsequent productions, including major performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the Royal National Theatre in London. Ahead of the staged reading of "The Darker Face of the Earth" on March 24, Dove explains the history of her theatrical masterpiece
Saturday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. – Rita Dove’s "The Darker Face of the Earth" re-imagines the Sophoclean tale of Oedipus on a plantation in antebellum South Carolina. The play premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1996, and since then it has been performed across the United States and England. Tom Dugdale (Theatre, OSU) directs a reading of Dove’s play, featuring a cast of student and professional actors. Following the performance, Dove will participate in a discussion moderated by Tom Hawkins (Classics, OSU).
Rita Dove was U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993-1995 and Special Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress bicentennial in 1999/2000; she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004-2006. She received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her book "Thomas and Beulah."
Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where she has been teaching since 1989.
Click here for more information on Dove and the event.