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Breuer, an innovative director who was a founding member of the avant-garde theater troupe Mabou Mines, and Telson, a versatile composer and songwriter drawn to mercurial film and theater projects, chose “Oedipus at Colonus” for an experiment in adaptation.

“Oedipus at Colonus,” which picks up the story long after Oedipus has gouged out his eyes and has been exiled from Thebes, a wanderer bearing the shame of incest and parricide, doesn’t abide by the structural conventions that Sophocles established in his earlier play “Oedipus the King.”

In “Oedipus at Colonus,” Sophocles is consumed with the prospect of salvation after prolonged suffering.

“The Gospel at Colonus,” which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983 and was presented on television in 1985 featuring crucial original cast members Morgan Freeman and Clarence Fountain, reveals the vibrancy of the theatrical parallels.

Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s “The Gospel at Colonus,” this year’s livelier-than-usual outdoor theater production at the Getty Villa, combines disparate ritual traditions.