The Gospel at Colonus is a gospel version of Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus. The show was created in New York City in 1985 by the experimental-theatre director Lee Breuer, one of the founders of the seminal American avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines, and composer Bob Telson. The original script was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The show had a brief run on Broadway from March to May in 1988. Breuer was Tony-nominated for his book.
Breuer and Telson handed the storytelling duties to a black Pentecostal preacher and the choir of his church, who in turn enacted the story of Oedipus's torment and redemption as a modern parable. They employed the unusual device of casting The Blind Boys of Alabama to collectively portray Oedipus as well the Chancel Choir of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
Some people have expressed the view that the result was the translation of the Greek myth into a Christian parable. Others observed that the name Jesus is not mentioned and is irrelevant to the story.
While the traditions of Greek theater as religious ritual are unfamiliar to modern audiences, Gospel at Colonus reaffirms those possibilities by its use of call-and-response and ecstatic, sung re-enactment of a culturally important story.
PBS televised the original BAM production from Philadelphia in 1985 as part of the Great Performances series, with Morgan Freeman as The Messenger, Carl Lumbly as Theseus, and Robert Earl Jones as Creon.
The song "How Shall I See You Through My Tears?" was used as the opening number of the 2003 film, Camp.