"But you're just a girl."
Spectrum Theatre's production of "Antigone," Sophocles' tragedy, showing Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Student Activities Building, is designed to break apart the confines of such a statement and shatter it to oblivion. The title character of this play is not just a girl - she's not just anything.
"Antigone" attracted third-year College student and director Rob Walker for this very reason. The play is not just a tragedy, and the main character is not just a typical victim or a heroine.
Walker sees this play as a challenge to conventional gender definitions.
Spectrum's production is based on Jean Anouilh's adaptation of the classic Greek staging written in 1940s France during German occupation.
As the story goes, and as it has gone since first performed at theater festivals in Athens, the city of Thebes is recovering from a crisis. The two sons of Oedipus have just died in battle. Oedipus' brother Creon ascends the throne and prohibits the burial of Polynices, one of Oedipus' sons, to quiet those who comprised his rebellious army.
That leaves sisters Antigone and Ismene to mourn the loss of their brothers and fear for the eternal fate of Polynices. According to their religious beliefs, he is condemned to an eternity of wandering outside of paradise because he has not had a proper burial. Antigone refuses to remain resigned to this finality.
Antigone, played by second-year College student Kristen Calgaro, faces an enemy greater than a king and his laws. Her life has been marked by looming expectations, and her birth all but dictates that she must fill the roles of the obedient daughter, the royal sister and the dutiful wife.
"What drew me to this particular adaptation is the emphatic statement it makes about women in society," Walker said. "Antigone is a strong woman rebelling against an established order in society, surrounded by a world of defined female roles."
Other female characters in the play seem content to fill these molds. But Antigone's opposition to authority and male dominance contrasts such gender roles laid out for her. "I mustn't be a little girl today," she says to her nanny.
In rejecting these established roles, Antigone, a twenty-something engaged to be married, must grapple the same questions that the vast majority of college students confront as they find themselves on the threshold of young adulthood. "Classic themes voiced in contemporary language - that's what makes this play relevant today," Walker said. "Antigone deals with questions of identity, struggles to find herself and ponders whether a state of happiness can only be achieved through predetermined roles, or if she can construct her own."
Antigone's situation is expressed through the conventional Greek chorus. Employed as the voice of public opinion, this adaptation casts the chorus as three women of different ages. Their all-seeing presence on the stage, overlooking events and dialogue exchanges, reinforces the concept of fate as a powerful force in life.
The chorus opens the play by summarizing the story of Antigone's brothers. Its members make crucial comments on the nature of tragedy and its unstoppable machinery. The certainty of the ending gives the play a definite focus. "This is a play of ideas -- not actions," Walker said. Words are spoken for their own sake and for the sake of meaning and expression, not to further a plot line.
Antigone's words reveal the complexity of her personality. "This adaptation focuses more closely on Antigone's story and the psychological dimensions of the characters, which the original Greek production does not. This changes the question from politics to personal decisions," Walker said.
Antigone frees herself from the form of the tragic hero, for her fate is her own choice. "She chose her fate and made the definitive moral decision - that's why it's an empowering world," Walker said. "She's in a male-dominated world, and she's making her own decisions."
Viewing "Antigone" should prove to be an intense experience that does not end once the final bows are taken. It's a play that refuses to leave an audience with a simple moral or pithy maxim. "It can leave you with an elevated mental sense as you struggle to make that moral decision," Walker said. "By nature a tragedy is an event that will make people pause, challenge them to think, and shake them out of their conventional thinking."
Spectrum Theatre's "Antigone" opens tonight at 8 p.m. in the Student Activities Building, with shows following on Saturday and Sunday night. Tickets are $5 on the Lawn. The show runs for about two hours with one intermission.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
