theatre minima

What She Knew

1–11 December 2010
Wednesday–Saturday 8.00pm
manhattan theatre source
177 Macdougal Street
New York, NY 10011

Written and directed by George Hunka
Performed by Gabriele Schafer
Set and costume design: Oana Botez-Ban
Music: Travis Just
Light design: Ashley Lewis
Dramaturg: Nick Fracaro

Drawing on the Sophoclean and Senecan versions of the Oedipus story, George Hunka's What She Knew is a contemporary meditation on the role Jocasta plays in the tragedy: a woman whose willful participation in Oedipus' guilt reveals an extraordinary capacity for erotic and sexual transgression as a means to freedom, as an avenue to outwit time, place and her own desiring and desirous body. She strides through centuries, balancing between the ecstasy of loss in another's body and the agony of moral criminality.

This marks the first formal theatrical production of the theatre minima company. What She Knew was first produced in a staged reading in February 2010 as part of the International Culture Lab's Avant-Yarde series.

Image: Oedipus and Jocasta, Joel-Peter Witkin
Courtesy Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago / Bruce Silverstein Gallery, NY