Meet Eddie Foote
The genesis of the play was my 2003 participation as an actor in an updated version of a Greek
tragedy. I thought, I can do this. Maybe I can even do it better. So, while I was appearing, in the
chorus, in a production of Oedipus Rex, I wrote a one-act play called The Tyranny of Joy. What I tried
to distill from Oedipus was simply the blind hubris of the central character. Oedipus (Eddie Foote)
became one of our modern-day icons, a heart surgeon who gets busted for drug possession. Just
about everything else is free-form doodling on my part. When I landed in Oedipus at Colonus, again in
the chorus, I wrote the second act, Eddie in Columbus. This is a bit closer to the original, with
appearances by Antigone (Tigger), Ismene (Izzy), Creon (Cray), Polyneices (Paulie), and so forth.
Though I did not participate as an actor in Antigone, I made a substantial start on the third act, Eddie's
Girl. That's as far as I got. I mean to finish it. Really.
Tyranny is a two-actor piece, with the woman playing multiple parts. The same design seemed to fit
Eddie in Columbus. In Eddie's Girl, the male actor plays multiple parts. That is, the same two actors
play all the parts in all three acts. Enough said.
To the Play...