William Maldonado’s The Remaking Project

William Maldonado

The Re-Making Project: Oedipus Rex

The play that I chose to remake is Oedipus Rex also called Oedipus The King by Sophocles. This story is about a man who couldn’t escape a fate that an oracle has foreseen of him killing his father, becoming a hero marrying his mother then becoming king and his downfall from being king as he finds out that he is not a hero, killed his father and married his mother unknowingly. The way I would remake this play is by setting it in the time of 2013 in New York City. The fate of Oedipus will be foretold not by an oracle but by a mentally unstable man. His father wouldn’t have been king but the owner of a highly known technology company. Oedipus would have been given away to an orphanage and his father would have paid doctors to tell his wife that the Oedipus died shortly after birth because of what the mentally unstable man has told him of the fate of Oedipus. At the age of 15 Oedipus was part of a gang and joined them in the armed robbery of a convenient store with other gang members which is where he killed his real father unknowingly as he pulled out a wallet. After that event Oedipus decided to get his life together and go down a path of righteousness and went to college. Oedipus then got a job at the technology company of his father and after saving the company during a bad time since his fathers death due to his splendid work got the position of president and unknowingly began a romance with his mother. As time progresses the company is facing another bad time and everyone turns to him to save the company once again but he feels the pressure and his wife tells him of the time she faced a tough time in her life which was when she lost her baby. She tells him when this happened and they both know that was the day he was born but they think nothing of it. Then Oedipus opens up and tells her about the time he killed a man at a convenient store and she recognizes this as the day and place of her ex-husbands death. The mother is in a shock and puts all the pieces together and tells him but to be sure they take a DNA test and they both learn the horrible truth. Oedipus leaves quickly his mother as well. Shortly after their daughter finds their mother dead because she has committed suicide by cutting her veins. His daughter tries to reach him but hes nowhere to be found he disappeared. Oedipus got into a deep depression and wanted to kill himself as well but felt he should punish himself for what he has done by using drugs and slowly lost his eyesight and his sanity. The company was appointed a new president that saved the company from being lost. Then after a couple years passed and his daughter now a married woman as she walk the street see’s him but the drugs have affected him so much he is no longer recognizable, she stares at the old man talking to himself sitting on the sidewalk and thinks to herself what kind of life leads a man to such a sad life. Oedipus was now just a mentally unstable man roaming  the streets of New York City.