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Antigone

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Antigone, daughter of the cursed house of Oedipus, must defy her king to bury her brother, the fallen leader of a failed rebellion. Can one young girl, willing to sacrifice everything, face down the power of a state determined to destroy her if she does not obey? Sophocles’ timeless myth pits the baser instincts of enmity and revenge against the power of love and reconciliation.

SYNOPSIS

After King Oedipus left Thebes, blinded and disgraced, his two sons Eteocles and Polynices were elected co-rulers of the city. They agreed to reign for alternate years, but at the end of his first term, Eteocles refused to relinquish the throne to his brother and banished him from Thebes.

Polynices raised an army in Argos and returned to Thebes, threatening to destroy the city if Eteocles didn’t yield. A terrible civil war ensued, both brothers were killed, and their uncle Creon proclaimed himself King of Thebes.

As his first act of government, Creon declared Polynices a traitor to the city, and forbade anyone to give his corpse a proper burial. The play begins as Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and sister to Eteocles and Polynices, hears of this edict, and resolves to bury her brother in secret.

This production was made possible in part through the generosity of the Carr Foundation.

Antigone is part of Cross Currents, a major multi-year initiative of the A.R.T. and the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia sponsored by Philip Morris Companies Inc.

Special thanks to The Costas and Mary Maliotis Charitable Foundation, Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Euterpe Dukakis, and the Gerondelis Foundation for their support of the presentation of classical Greek drama at the A.R.T.

Additional support for this production was provided by the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Credits

Creative team

By

Sophocles

Translated by

Robert Fagles

Translated by

Robert Fagles

Translator Robert Fagles is Princeton's Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his translation of The Odyssey and several awards for his translation of The Iliad, including the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award by the Academy of American Poets. His acclaimed translations also include Sophocles' Three Theban Plays and Aeschylus's The Oresteia, nominated for a National Book Award in 1977.

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Directed by

François Rochaix

Directed by

François Rochaix

Swiss theater and opera director François Rochaix is a former Associate Director of the A.R.T. and a former Director of the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training. His directing work at the A.R.T. includes Antigone, The Bacchae, The Wild Duck, Tartuffe, and The Oresteia, as well as Michel Vinaver's Overboard, Agamemnon/The Libation Bearers, and other productions at the Institute. Mr. Rochaix has worked extensively in theaters and opera houses throughout Europe and the U.S. In 1963 he founded the Theatre de l'Atelier in Geneva, where he worked until 1975. He then became the General Director of the Theatre de Carouge through 1981, when he became a freelance director and began his work in opera. His opera credits include Turn of the Screw, Pellas et Mlisande, The Rake's Progress, and Dialogues des Carmelites at the Grand Theatre de Geneve; as well as productions at Scottish Opera, Opera North, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington Opera, and Seattle Opera, where his work includes Wagner's complete Ring cycle. Mr. Rochaix's theater credits include Ibsen's A Doll's House in Bergen, Norway; Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 in Geneva, Vitrac's Victor in Moscow, and a Swiss, Norwegian, American, and Russian co-production of The Oresteia in French and Norwegian, presented in Geneva in 1991. Mr. Rochaix served as Artistic Director of La Fête des Vignerons de 1999, the massive Festival of the Winegrowers in Switzerland.

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Set design by

Jean-Claude Maret

Set design by

Jean-Claude Maret

Jean-Claude Maret has been the set designer for François Rochaix's productions of The Bacchae and The Wild Duck at the American Repertory Theater. Mr. Maret lives and works in Geneva as a set designer and costume designer for theater and opera. Since 1967 he has collaborated regularly with Mr. Rochaix for numerous productions at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, including the operas Katya Kabanova, Nabucco, The Rake's Progress, Idomeneo, Death in Venice, and Pelleas and Melisande. Abroad they worked together on productions of The Wild Duck in Oslo, Norway; Carmen and The Meistersinger of Nurenberg for Seattle Opera; La Traviata for Opera North in England; When We Dead Awaken at the National Theatre, Strasbourg; and Tristan and Isolde in Lyon, France. Other works include Joyce's The Exiles for the Comédie Française; Hamlet, The Seagull, and Ghosts at Bergen's National Theatre; and Heiner Müller's Philoctète in Geneva. He has also designed for ballet and film, and is the designer of La Fête des Vignerons de 1999, the massive Festival of the Winegrowers in Switzerland.

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Costume design by

Catherine Zuber

Costume design by

Catherine Zuber

Catherine Zuber has created the costumes for Richard II, The Doctor's Dilemma, and over forty other A.R.T. productions including Three Farces and a Funeral, Antigone, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, Phaedra, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Imaginary Invalid, The Taming of the Shrew, Peter Pan and Wendy, The Bacchae, Man and Superman, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Woyzeck, The Wild Duck, The Naked Eye, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Tartuffe, Ubu Rock, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Shlemiel the First, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, A Touch of the Poet, What the Butler Saw, The Cherry Orchard, and Orphée. Ms. Zuber's credits include work at Lincoln Center, The Joseph Papp Public Theater, Goodman Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage Company, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Houston Grand Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera, among others. Her Broadway credits include The Triumph of Love (Connecticut Critics Circle Award and Drama Desk nomination), Ivanov (Drama Desk nomination), The Sound of Music, Twelfth Night, The Red Shoes, London Assurance, The Rose Tattoo, and Philadelphia Here I Come. Ms. Zuber was the recipient of the 1997 Obie Award for sustained achievement in design. She is the costume designer for La Fête des Vignerons de 1999, the massive Festival of the Winegrowers in Vevey, Switzerland.

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Lighting design by

Michael Chybowski

Lighting design by

Michael Chybowski

Lighting designer, Lady with a Lapdog. The American Repertory Theater's resident lighting designer (1997–2001). AntigoneFull Circle, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, The Master Builder, Phaedra, The Bacchae, In the Jungle of Cities, The Taming of the Shrew, The Imaginary Invalid, and The Wild Duck at the A.R.T. Other: Moby Dick and Other Stories with Laurie Anderson, The Grey Zone (Long Wharf Theatre), Andrei Belgrader's production of Waiting for Godot (Classic Stage Company), Cymbeline (New York Shakespeare Festival, Delacorte Theatre), Playboy of the Western World (Steppenwolf Theatre), and the original production of Wit. For the Mark Morris Dance Group, he has designed over thirty dances, including Four Saints in Three Acts for English National Opera and Falling Down Stairs, which toured the U.S. with cellist Yo Yo Ma. Nominated for an American Theatre Wing design award for his lighting of David Rabe's A Question of Mercy and also for The Grey Zone by Tim Blake Nelson. Received a 1999 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence, the American Theatre Wing Design Award, and the Lucille Lortel Award for 1999.

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Sound design by

David Remedios

Sound design by

David Remedios

Sound designs by David Remedios have been heard in Sexual Perversity in Chicago/The Duck Variations, Romance, Trojan Barbie, Endgame, The Seagull, The Communist Dracula Pageant, Let Me Down Easy, When It’s Hot It’s Cole, Cardenio, Julius Caesar, Copenhagen, Donnie Darko, A Marvelous Party, No Man's Land, Oliver Twist, Britannicus, The Onion Cellar, The Island of SlavesOrpheus X, Romeo and Juliet, No Exit, Three Sisters (2005), The Keening, Amerika, Olly's Prison, Desire Under the Elms, Dido Queen of Carthage, The Provok'd Wife (original music and sound), The Miser, A Midsummer Night's Dream (2003), Snow in June, Lady with a Lapdog, The Sound of a Voice, Pericles, Highway Ulysses, Uncle Vanya, Lysistrata, Absolution, Marat/Sade, Stone Cold Dead Serious, Enrico IV, Othello, Animals and Plants, The Doctor's Dilemma, Mother Courage and Her Children, Three Farces and a Funeral, Antigone, Nocturne, How I Learned to Drive, and Man and Superman. He has also toured regionally and internationally with the A.R.T.  Other credits include Farragut North and Yankee Tavern (Contemporary American Theater Festival), The Merchant of Venice (Actor’s Shakespeare Project), Ah, Wilderness! (CenterStage Baltimore), The Diary of Anne Frank (New Rep), The Scottish Play (La Jolla Playhouse), Leap (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park), Daughter of Venus, Action Jesus and Dressed Up! Wigged Out! (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre), Sideways Stories from Wayside School, All of a Kind Family and The Fabulous Invalid (Emerson Stage), Samson Agonistes (92nd St. Y), Our Town (Boston Theatre Works), Far East (Vineyard Playhouse), Only You (Efron Entertainment). Dance soundscapes include works for Concord Academy Dance, Snappy Dance Theater Company, and Lorraine Chapman.  Awards: 2007 Connecticut Critics Circle Award (No Exit, Hartford Stage), 2001 Elliot Norton Award (Mother Courage and Her Children, A.R.T.), seven Independent Reviewers of New England Award nominations.

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Antigone, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta Aysan Celik
Ismene, sister of Antigone Rachel Warren
Creon, king of Thebes, Uncle of Antigone and Ismene John Douglas Thompson
Sentry Thomas Derrah
Haemon, son of Creon and Eurydice Sean Dugan
Tiresias, a blind prophet Alvin Epstein
Messenger Benjamin Evett
Eurydice, wife of Creon Jodi Lin
 

*Archaic Chorus

Jack Atamian

Darrin Browne

Tenelle Cadogan

Scott Draper

Sean Dugan

Benjamin Evett*

Sean Kelly*

Nicholas Newell

Trevor Oswalt*

Jonathon Roberts*

James Spencer

Marguerite Stimpson

Margaret Trecker

Child Robbie Eginton

Gabe Goodman

Ezra Lichtman

Percussionist Vessela Stoyanova