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Theatre 101-02

Joe Jacoby

10/25/07

Antigone

On the brisk fall evening of October 20^th 2007 I attended the play entitled Antigone by Bertolt Brecht at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. The play ran on Oct. 12-14 and the 19-20. Curtain time was at 8:00pm on Friday’s and Saturday’s and 2:00pm on Sunday. The tickets cost $5.00 for students and seniors $7.00 for adults.

The goal of the play Antigone was to get people to think about our own principles and how far would we go to defend them. In this production I don’t think this goal was achieved; I was too distracted by other elements in the play that I couldn’t focus on anything else. I would have had a more enjoyable experience if as I said before there weren’t so many battling elements competing for my attention. I was so excited to see this performance but felt considerably let down by it.

This production is a “modernized” version of Sophocles’ play Antigone, which takes place in Thebes. Antigone, the protagonist, is the main character fighting for the right to bury her own brother who died in the war. Kreon, the ruler of Thebes is the antagonist in the middle of a raging war with Argos. Kreon has ordered the Theban army which includes Antigone’s two brothers (Polynices and Eteocles) to mount an attack on Argos. During the attack Polynices witnesses Eteocles’s death and he deserts the battle, but Polynices is discovered and is killed as an example for deserting. The conflict in the play begins when Kreon is then notified that someone is trying to bury Polyneices, defying his order that deserters should be left to the animals to dispose of.  After Kreon orders Polyneices’s body to be uncovered Antigone is caught trying to rebury her brother's body and is brought before Kreon to be sentenced to death for her disobedience. Antigone proudly accepts her fate as she sees her action as righting a wrong in honoring her brother.

The climax of the play happens when Kreon finds out that his eldest son died in battle defending Thebes along with the knowledge that he no longer has the elders on his side in ordering the death of Polynices and the future execution of Antigone. But the changing tide of opinion is too late to save Antigone, for she had already been executed.

One of the production elements that contributed to the overall effectiveness of the play was the lighting. The lighting really gave the play that awe factor and set the mood for each scene. When the play first begins, before any of the actors makes an appearance, the lights come on in shades of blue and purple. They speckle the floor leaving dark patterns upon the stage. The lights constantly change positions and move erratically mimicking the beat of the music, but as soon as the dancers begin to make their presence known by creeping out from their hiding places the lights slow down their pace to match the actors own slow and steady movements.

When Antigone was set to be executed the mood in the play was meant to be severe and full of anguish, the lighting then showed this feeling wonderfully by flooding the stage with clear light and using a spotlight that followed Antigone up the steps toward her awaited fate. As soon as Antigone stepped up onto the last and final step up behind a screen, the audience could only see her shadow as the lights all at once moved onto her moving with a loud crescendo of music and suddenly all turned red. Without the lighting in this play, expressing the mood of each scene would be very difficult and of course less effective.

A second production element in Antigone that was effective was the acting. While not every actor was effective, one captured my attention and held it. Lisa Gilham who played Antigone was truly talented. When she expressed sorrow it looked as if her whole body was sad along with her; the way she carried herself spoke volumes of what the character was feeling at the time. Many times I’ll see an actor performing and it just looks unnatural and awkward, but with Lisa this was the complete opposite. The graceful movements and poise she had, demonstrated her character’s courage. An example of it would be, when she realized one of Kreon’s soldiers was spying on her while burying her brother, she stood up while clutching a bunch of dirt and looked the soldier straight in the eye as she extended her arm, turned over the palm of her hand and let go of the dirt, sprinkling it all over her brother’s grave. The simple gesture was as if she was standing up to the soldier while saying nothing will stop her from doing what she knows is honorable and decent. Another example would be when she had to face Kreon and ultimately her death; she used subtle facial expressions along the way, which to me shows a lot more emotion verses a constantly exaggerated expression. I honestly think that Lisa’s acting made the play and that without her they would be completely lost. She knew when and how much emotion and expression to show, when to let go and when to hold back.

Looking back now on this version of Antigone, I’m not so sure that it was worth doing. I know that it’s probably good that I went to see it just for the experience, but I think that in order for me to want to recommend it, a lot of things would have to change.

In my mind this play did not meet its goals. There were too many factors that got in the way of simply enjoying the play. For one, the “elders” who were supposed to be explaining the events as they took place were downright distracting. While they were reciting they were also dancing, which just looked ridiculous, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be serious! After awhile their reciting became exasperating, and I just wanted them to get to the point; it felt like they were dancing around it for too long. No pun intended.

The other factor that sidetracked me from the play was the costumes. An article that described this play explained that it would be a modernized version of the original play. The only modernization I saw was that the language sometimes changed from old world language to today’s present language and the costumes had the occasional modern embellishment. Kreon wore a suit at the end, and the guard wore camouflage pants with his armor.  Ismene however entered the stage wearing a dress that looked like it could have been from the fifties and her hair is fixed in a very current bob. I found it very distracting. It made me worried thinking that maybe she lost her real costume and had to settle with wearing the fifties dress last minute.

I would like to say that I would recommend this performance, but I honestly can’t. This play had a lot of potential, yet all the elements just weren’t coming together. All the little details that were missing just added up and detracted from the storyline. In theory the experimenting with these elements sounds good, but when it comes to actuality, it’s a lot harder to pull off.