Antigone: A Play Against Birth

Sophokles’ Antigonē recounts the conflict between Thebes’ new king, Kreon, and his teenage niece, Antigonē, over the burial of Antigonē’s brother, Polyneikes, who incited a civil war within the Theban state. With Polyneikes’s burial banned, Antigonē violates the law to justly honor her dead brother, leading to her execution and the subsequent suicide of Kreon’s son, Haimon. This translation and production strives to inject a queer/transgender perspective into this ancient story, evoking themes of bodily autonomy stripped by an autocratic state and personal rebellion by the individual through its reinterpretation. Each character’s speech is translated in a different linguistic style, spiraling from Antigonē’s poetic free-verse, to Kreon’s American Realism, the Chorus’ iambic pentameter, and Teiresias’ ancient Greek itself. Polyneikes’s body— the source of strife within the story— remains on stage for the entire 90 minutes, forcing the audience to constantly confront the conflict of the show with no escape. The production itself is sparsely designed, highlighting instead the language of the new translation and the emotions behind each character’s motivations. Directed by Kaila Tacazon and produced by Theatre of the Bacchant, this production will bring QTBIPOC to the forefront of classics through its cast and production team, thus recasting the famous ancient Greek narrative of Antigonē into a direct commentary on our current American political conflicts.