A Post 9-11 Antigone. . .

Okay, so this is weird. I log on to blog about a modern version of Antigone that I saw last night which, among other contemporary cultural icons also referenced Twyla Tharp, to find my fellow dude blogging about said Twyla's latest book. Obviously there's something dancing in the air...

However, if you live in the Toronto area, I do recommend checking out One Little Goat's production of Antigone Insurgency: Sophocles Revisited, written by Adam Seelig. It's not so much a full, modern rendition of Sophocles' play itself (there are only a few scenes from the play actually acted out, though quite powerfully so), but is more of a meditation on how universal and particularly topical the play is today, although Seelig points out in the program that, "everything in this play emerges from or responds to the Antigone of Sophocles. " The first thirty minutes is given to a long monologue recounting how the playwright had seen an outdoor dance choreographed by Tharp in New York before the towers were hit, how he walked down the streets in the weeks following, bought a copy of Antigone at a used bookstore and while reading it, had the eerie feeling that the same arguments made by George W. Bush to justify war abroad and a tightening on civil liberties at home, were echoes of Creon's speeches. The play uses a soundbite from Bush and also the famous one from Trudeau defending his actions during the FLQ crisis, and asks some pertinent questions about the nature of democracies but also about the role of gender and war (particularly in its final, very effective scene). The set design is simple but intriguing, dominated by a huge backdrop of large, red paint slashes raining down on a fairly bare stage. An untidy pile of ghostly ash-white chairs in one corner get pulled apart to build the tomb in which Antigone is eventually walled up. Microphones are cleverly used both as posts and to magnify and distort some of the speeches.

The play runs until November 25th. Sophocles' version seems to run for all time.