Latest news with #Antigone
Washington Post
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Antigone was right. UCSB needs to return its tribal remains.
Robin Satori is an English PhD student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Last month at the University of California at Santa Barbara, a student theater troupe, the Public Domain Players, staged Sophocles's 'Antigone' — the story of a young woman who defies the edicts of a tyrannical ruler to honor her brother with a proper burial. The play reverberated eerily on campus, where a similar burial clash is playing out.
Indian Express
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
‘Theatre was his protest': Pune remembers Ratan Thiyam
Around 50 people gathered at the condolence meeting held at The Box in Pune to remember one of the most towering figures of Indian theatre, Ratan Thiyam. The event had eminent director Atul Pethe reading excerpts from a write up about Thiyam and playwrights Ashutosh Potdar and Satish Alekar and filmmaker and film educator Anupam Barve talking about Thiyam. Thiyam died at 76 at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Imphal. The condolence meeting recalled the influence of Thiyam, who had brought many of his iconic plays to Pune. Alekar shared many important incidents, facts and insights about Thiyam, his theatre and Manipuri tradition and culture. Thiyam's works seamlessly merged ancient Indian performance traditions with contemporary narratives. His death marks the end of an era in Indian performing arts. Thiyam was a recipient of the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1987 and is remembered as a theatre guru who redefined the language of stagecraft in India. 'This is a massive loss to the cultural field of Manipur, and Indian theatre as a whole. A few years ago, we lost the other side of the coin, the director Heisnam Kanhailal. Now, with Ratan ji gone, Manipuri theatre has lost both its giants,' said Alekar, a Marathi playwright and co-founder of the Theatre Academy of Pune. Born on January 20, 1948, Thiyam was a student of Ebrahim Alkazi at the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi. 'He didn't replicate Alkazi's theatre. Thiyam created his own theatre with his own roots- Manipuri roots, which are distinctly different from Indian mainstream traditions,' said Alekar. In plays, such as Antigone, Urubhangam, Ritusamhara and Andha Yug, Thiyam developed a language of theatre that was spiritually intense, visually immersive, and politically resonant. 'Andha Yug was not just a play. It was a complete visual and sonic experience. The chorus was composed entirely of Manipuri performers. It became a tragedy of the people of Manipur told through a new angle. That was the genius of Ratan Thiyam,' said Anirudha Kuthwad, director and theatre educator associated with NSD and FTII. Thiyam often referred to theatre as a medium of protest, not mere performance. 'He believed in theatre as a tool to voice the pain of his people. He once said in a discussion, 'I see theatre as protest. I see the play as a protest.' And that's how he lived it,' added Kuthwad. One of his later landmark productions, When We Dead Awaken, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's work, was placed in the contemporary context of Manipur's turmoil, reinforcing his commitment to using myth to critique the present. Kuthwad echoed the sentiment, 'We may never see someone like him again. His devotion, his creative energy, even in his senior years was unmatched. He didn't just take Manipuri theatre to India, he took it to the world.' 'The government should take note of what Ratan and Kanhailal built. What Manipur needs right now is not more politics, but cultural intervention- classical concerts, traditional performances, contemporary plays grounded in reality. That would be the true homage to Ratan Thiyam's life's work,'said Alekar.
Axios
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Third Horizon Film Festival filmmaker spotlight: Natalia Lassalle-Morillo on reimagining "Antigone"
Among the nearly two-dozen films, shorts and documentaries included in the Third Horizon Film Festival programming is " En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I)," an experimental film by Puerto Rican artist and director Natalia Lassalle-Morillo. Why it matters: The film, a reimagination of the Greek myth of Antigone through the lens and perspective of the Puerto Rican diaspora living in New York City, is the only Puerto Rican film in this year's festival. The big picture: The idea for the film began in the midst and aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the 2017 Category 4 hurricane that caused catastrophic damage to the island. Lassalle-Morillo had left just one month prior to study in California. "It was very strange," she told Axios. "I wasn't living the embodied experience of what it's like to go through this catastrophe in person, but I was still living this different experience." Between the lines: Lassalle-Morillo was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but lived in New York as a young adult before moving to Miami, where she was "offered a very welcoming community of people and artists who were receptive to the ideas I was bringing that I didn't feel elsewhere." "I have a very intimate and profound connection to Miami," where she said she came to understand herself as a Caribbean person, not just a Puerto Rican. Zoom in: In the aftermath of the storm, Lassalle-Morillo began reading Greek mythology and the story of Antigone stuck with her. The play explored who had control of memory and who had the right to be remembered. It led her to think about what the tragedy would look like in the context of a post-Maria moment. What they're saying:"I wanted to reimagine this play as a portal to think about memory, about tragedy and moving beyond these cycles of tragedies," she said. "The impetus was to create a space for Puerto Ricans who have had to migrate, and those who have chosen not to, to come together and think and create together," she added. How it works: The five-woman cast (which includes Lassalle-Morillo) is made up of non-professional actors who reside in New York City. The women underwent acting classes and training to make the film; the final product is a record of that experience. "All of them chose a character in the play and rewrote it based on their experiences and desires," Lassalle-Morillo said. Zoom out: While the film is anchored in the Puerto Rican experience, Lassalle-Morillo says it's a film for "anyone who's had an experience of displacement and migration." She hopes viewers who aren't from Puerto Rico can still have a deep connection to the ideas and feelings expressed in the film. What's next: There's a Part II to this film in the works, Lassalle-Morillo said. She's working on developing it through a similar process — this time with four women in Puerto Rico. Eventually, the two groups will come together to present the play with a live audience. How to watch: The film is screening Saturday at the Koubek Center at 3:15pm, followed by a Q&A with Lassalle-Morillo.
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Oedipus at Colonus/Electra review – a double shot of Sophocles in Sicily
Concurrent London productions recently presented Oedipus as a modern politician pledging a new start (Mark Strong in the West End) and as a distant detective investigating a climate catastrophe that jeopardises Thebans' future (Rami Malek at the Old Vic). Sophocles' late play Oedipus at Colonus, less commonly known, looks not ahead but backwards. This elegiac tragedy finds the exile reaching the end of his life. The 5,000-strong audience at Syracuse's ancient outdoor theatre hear Giuseppe Sartori's barefoot Oedipus before they see him. His wooden staff strikes the steps as he descends among us, down to the front row and on to a stage populated by trees that thicken the woodland around the theatre. 'It seems this place is sacred,' announces Antigone (Fotinì Peluso) at the wanderer's side. That goes for this Sicilian playing space as well as the drama's setting of Colonus, near Athens. Physically frail, Oedipus is approaching his resting place, yet Sartori strikingly shows us a man who steadily grows stronger not weaker in the face of death. Aside from the dependable Theseus (Massimo Nicolini), the inhabitants of Colonus recoil at his arrival, not just because he traipses across the forbidden ground of the Eumenides. Without even introducing himself, his stain is apparent. One local desperately cleans the dirty footprints this ragged stranger leaves behind him. In the play, Oedipus makes sense of, or rather comes to terms with, a past that is unspeakable – literally so, when he begs not to retread the horrific revelations about his parents. Sartori clutches his cloak around himself, as if covering his modesty, only to reveal a bare chest as the events of the earlier tragedy are unpicked. He discovers that he wields a power in choosing the place of his death and can control the outcome of the battle between his sons. But the play's most affecting conflict is internal, as Oedipus finds peace with himself and the staff is tossed to one side: 'I did what I did unknowingly.' Healing and a sense of purification are at the heart of Canadian Robert Carsen's taut production using Francesco Morosi's emotionally direct translation for this season, where plays are performed in Italian with other languages available to audiences via earpieces. Jugs of water are ritually emptied in the orchestra, the space between stage and audience, by the chorus. Or rather, by one of the choruses. As well as the turbulent pack of white-suited men, a sisterhood in verdant gowns arrive to deliver a speech signalling the radiant beauty of Colonus, their words spoken as if intoxicated by its beauty and their bodies posed to evoke green shoots of renewal. The women, too, are given Sophocles' painful yet moving assessment of the inescapability of suffering and death. Only the decision to lend Oedipus some of their choreography strikes an odd note that weakens the mysterious, secretive quality of his transformative death. Carsen balances the contrasting paces of a play which, with the scheme hatched by Creon (a suavely malevolent Paolo Mazzarelli), momentarily grips like a thriller amid the heavily reflective pronouncements. 'Time sees everything,' runs one. As if to remind us, designer Radu Boruzescu's tall trees, planted on a stage of tiered rows akin to the hillside audience's, observe it all throughout. The resilient forest of Colonus is a stark contrast to Gianni Carluccio's set design for Electra, the second tragedy in the season at Syracuse. Carluccio's stage is sloped rather than stepped; much of the drama plays out on a tilted floor that resembles a building's collapsed exterior. The fall of the house of Atreus. The dust-covered piano and busted bedstead give a sense that Electra still resides in a world before the brutal replacement of Agamemnon with Aegisthus at Clytemnestra's side. The windows, at this angle, become open graves; a plaintive string composition reverberates from within alongside the looped sound of broken glass. The scorched slabs at the back of the set begin to resemble fragments, too, of papyri. Under Roberto Andò's direction, this piercing new translation by Giorgio Ieranò sharpens Electra's affinity with the natural world. Her opening speech ('O pure sunlight') is given at the piano. In the title role, Sonia Bergamasco is as indelible as Sartori's Oedipus – her pain similarly twisting through her gestures (one knee is bandaged and she moves like a wounded animal) while her mind logically processes her father's actions. Dressed in ragged grey, she seems to merge with the floor when she lies still but is otherwise a frenzy of rebellion. A similar heat rises from a hair-flicking, often hissing female chorus in shift dresses. The sight of the urn supposedly containing Orestes' ashes is felt in the gut: she crumples from within, tenderly caressing the object as if it was his body. It's frequently asked why Orestes extends Electra's pain, fussily stage-managing his return, but Roberto Latini gives us a brother who after coolly planning the events is stunned by their reunion, almost unable to fathom it himself, fearful of her reaction. The moment is richly complex. Unlike Brie Larson in the recent London production, Bergamasco succeeds throughout in entwining the anger with grief. She is a sardonic match, too, for Clytemnestra (Anna Bonaiuto) who detonates the lines: 'Being a mother is a frightful thing. For as much as they hate you, there is no way to hate your own children.' This Electra is as physically disgusted as Hamlet is by the mother's 'enseamèd bed'. A sense of contest is inseparable from Sophocles' work, which was regularly entered in Athenian competitions, and one of the play's toughest scenes to conquer is Paedagogus's action-packed fabrication detailing Orestes's death in a chariot race. Danilo Nigrelli steers the speech superbly, only the wind to be heard during each pause, its transfixing effect heightened by a chorus who inch closer towards the teller. You almost believe the lie yourself and reach the edge of your seat as Electra's stasis is succeeded by a swift and ruthless revenge. The Greek theatre's summer programme runs until 6 July in Syracuse, Italy. Chris Wiegand's trip was provided by the National Institute of Ancient Drama.
Spectator
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
A cremation caper: Stealing Dad, by Sofka Zinovieff, reviewed
Sophocles's Antigone is a battle over the burial of a body and the war between law and divinity. What rules – the decree of a king or conscience? This is the crux of Sofka Zinovieff's Stealing Dad. When Alekos, a Greek sculptor, is struck down in 2018 by a heart attack and drowns in a London canal, he leaves behind not just a spiky widow, Heather, but seven children and five colourful ex-wives.
