Experience a timeless narrative of love, rebellion, and the indomitable will to challenge authority in Jean Anouilh’s gripping adaptation of “Antigone.” Penned in the shadows of Nazi-occupied France, this version of the age-old saga echoes with defiance against oppressive regimes. Anouilh’s masterful reimagining of Sophocles’ drama offers a potent commentary on the human spirit’s unwavering quest for justice.
CU Presents Antigone
The first lines in Jean Anouilh’s 1944 adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy “Antigone” place the audience squarely in the present moment. “Well, here we are,” the chorus offers as an introduction, immediately pulling the audience into the action, drama and consequences of a play penned more than 2,500 years ago.
Anouilh debuted his adaptation in Nazi-occupied France during the most intense stretches of World War II, and the ancient play’s themes about war, its unforgiving consequences and unsparing fallout, held their own resonance.
Eighty years after the debut of Anouilh’s piece in Paris and millennia after the first staging of Sophocles’ tragedy at the Festival of Dionysus in ancient Athens, Hart says the story still has plenty to offer in terms of contemporary parallels.
Anouilh’s version of the story, translated into English by Jeremy Sams, revolves around Antigone’s defiance of the orders of a king. When the ruler Creon forbids the burial of Antigone’s brother Polyneices, she feels forced to act, regardless of the fallout. Amid the madness and fervor of war, Antigone must face up to her convictions and connect with her values, regardless of the consequences.
The story is tied inextricably to the politics, geography, and allegiances of the ancient world, but it also tackles some thoroughly modern and relatable quandaries. Power, politics, war, gender, sexism are all at play in the drama, and the themes collide in ways that are easily relatable to the modern world.
CU Theatre presents “Antigone” in the Roe Green Theatre November 8 through 17. The play will be held at the University Theatre Building, 261 at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Ticket prices are $23 per person. Tickets are available at the box office or online at cupresents.org.