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Antigone, Jean Anouilh

Athens and Epidaurus Festival 2016, REX Theatre/Kotopouli Stage, Summer tour in open theaters

SYNOPSIS

 

A key work in the contemporary theatre repertoire,

written in 1942 during the idiosyncratic Nazi occupation of France, Anouilh’s Antigone is a metaphor for the individual and their struggle against an all-powerful, aged, autocratic state. Youth and old age, beauty and ugliness, power and weakness, justice and injustice are juxtaposed to reveal a fearful society awash with corruption and self-interest, a society back at square one. 


In this shipwreck of a state in which the stench of Polynices’ corpse is used to bring the citizens into line, in which the dead are interchangeable, in which the “truth is what we do not tell”, Creon arrives as a saviour, says ‘yes’ to power and sets about “ruling people” as its humble servant. Antigone, herself the child of a sick society, rebels with the instinct of youth and buries her dead brother, saying ‘no’ to the “costly, dirty hope” on which power relies.

In the end, alongside a Guard who has denied his very humanity, she falls apart—she no longer knows why she is dying. Unrepentant, Creon will continue to rule the state, the Guards will continue to drink and play cards. A modern old people’s home, a society which is waiting to die, a song that sings of heroic Eteocles and the voice of Antigone echoing through eternity, illuminating a different aspect of the tragic each time. 

ARTISTS

Translation: Stratis Paschalis 

Direction-Music: Helen Efthimiou

Set Designer: Zoe Molyvda-Fameli 

Costume Designer: Ilenia Douladiri

Lighting Designer: Sakis Birbilis 

Orchestrations-Sound Designer: Kostas Vomvolos 

Movement: Vitoria Kotsalou, Kiki Baka

Dramaturgy: Sofia Eftychiadou 

Assistant Director: Marianthi Grammatikou

Assistants to the Set Designer: Dido Gogou, Panagiotis Lambis

Make-up: Sissi Petropoulou

Production Co-ordinator: Denia Safari

CAST

 

Antigone: Vasiliki Troufakou 

Creon: Stelios Mainas 

Chorus: Phaedon Kastris 

Nurse: Aneza Papadopoulou 

Ismene: Ioanna Mavrea 

Haemon: Giorgos Fridzilas 

1st Guard: Nikos Dallas 

2nd Guard, Messenger: Errikos Litsis 

Creon’s Servant: Errikos Miliaris

Eurydice: Mary Liami

VIDEO TRAILER FROM THE REHEARSALS

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