PREMIERE 4 MARCH 2022 MAIN STAGE
TIME: 90 MIN

With ANTIGONE the theater returns to a classical drama, to wonder what this tragic figure can give us in our day. Young Czech director Jakub Čermák, along with a group of Czech theater artists, have created a classical ANTIGONE, with respect for the text and plot, but have shifted it into the present with evocative images. A founder of the Depressed Children Want Money group in Prague, Čermák’s work takes classic texts and themes to explore topics of physicality and queerness. In his reading, Antigone stands up against authority not only in the symbolic sphere, but above all on a real plane, with respect for the human body. His play is about the body, about that single, unburied, defiled body of Polynices, but also the body that Creon has decreed must be buried with all due honor. It is also about bodies that remain alive and are thus vulnerable to constant pressure from authorities. ANTIGONE is full of unexpressed pain and longing, of mourning that has been left to fester. After all, even after a war, the soldiers’ bodies, which are government property, are given to the families. But whose tragedy are we really watching? Antigone’s or Creon’s? Or all of Thebes’? Creon, a man blinded by power, succumbs to a tragedy of political thinking. One might see this as a catchphrase of twenty-first-century politics, when political decisions have turned against governments in many ways. We witness these situations on a daily basis, not only in failed reforms, but also in politicians denying and overturning the world’s structures. Yet here the artists avoid slogans or a journalistic approach, allowing audiences to be immersed in the world of this tragedy. The viewer has a chance to see themselves in this world, to independently pick out the allusions to the present and our political situation. There are no one-to-one connections or hints here—this universality is the greatest power of the drama of antiquity.

Cast:
Antigone – Irena Sierakowska
Ismene – Angelika Cegielska
Eurydice – Irena Wójcik
Creon – Piotr Czarniecki [g]
Eteocles – Mateusz Flis
Polyneikes – Wojciech Marek Kozak
Guard – Czesław Skwarek
Teiresias – Dariusz Skowroński
Haimon – Wojciech Świeściak

ATTENTION! The play uses strobe lights.