ANTIGONE PROJECT: A PLAY IN 5 PARTs
written by TANYA BARFIELD, KAREN HARTMAN, CHIORI MIYAGAWA, LYNN NOTTAGE, and CARIDAD SVICH
Director: Susannah Berryman • Scenic: Raven Bartlett • Costumes: Nico Gonzalez • Lighting: Steve TenEyck • Sound: Jacob Sanner •. Photos: Maddie Lowe & Dave Burbank
Antigone Project is a collection of re-imaginings of the classic story of Antigone. This play is broken into five parts - as a design team we aimed to connect the pieces and excavate the cycles we find ourselves in as humans with explorations in themes of surveillance/freedom/resisting against oppression/rising up and examining the patterns & echoes of memory and history - ritual, cyclical reverberations.
Hang Ten deals with family dynamics, surveillance, personal proclivities and integrity, and examines human beings in the crosshairs of history.
Antigone Arkhe asks us how we look at events, and what ways of looking are productive and unproductive. Explorations of wanderlust, dispossession, biculturalism, bilingualism, construction of identity, and visions of migration.
Medallion is a history lesson, we see the results of systematic oppression. We observe the tip of the hat. This piece explores the disproportionate punishment of women in various religions, countries, and political climates, for breaking unreasonable laws.
A Stone’s Throw shows us the lengths that some people have to go through in certain cultures to be fully human, and examines the rituals inherent in the journey of the body: it’s quest for love, it’s longing for immortality, and the ultimate lament for its own lost life (sic). The piece is a eulogy and dirge to Antigone’s own fate.
Red Again is a cyclical portrayal of events in history that keep repeating because we don’t recognize those patterns. History, science, art, religion are all constructs of human memory, and we depend on other people’s memory to achieve our immortality. “There is eternal sadness in the wish to be remembered and this tragedy of living and dying is what attracts me to the exploration of memory” This piece asks us to recognize the pattern of injustices caused by political conflict worldwide.
