Antigone
In Greek mythology, Antigone [1] is the daughter of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. The myth tells of a strong-willed and determined young woman who defies the edict of her king and buries her brother, Polyneices, who had died on the battlefield.
Over the years the myth of Antigone has been the subject of many books, plays, operas and other works, with the most famous play text possibly being the Greek version by Sophocles, though there have been many others.
Contents
International versions: Texts, translations and adaptations
Among the many stage plays based on the Antigone myth are the following. (Plays on which there are entries in ESAT are written in blue. To see details of South African productions such plays, click on the name to go to the entry.):
Antigona Furiosa (by Griselda Gambaro)
Antígona Vélez (by Leopoldo Marechal)
''Antigone'' (by Bertolt Brecht)
Antigone (by Antonio D'Alfonso)
Tegonni, an African Antigone (by Femi Osofisan)
South African versions of the tale
Besides simple direct translations of the various texts into South African languages (see the entries under the various texts), there are also a few original plays (or significant adaptations) created and/or written by a South African playwright and/or director. Unless they are totally original texts, they are usually discussed under the title of the original text that had been adapted (e.g. Antigone (by Sophocles) or Antigone (by Jean Anouilh):
The Island, a workshopped play by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona contains at its core a dramatised "performance" of excerpts from the Sophocles's play.
#Antigone (by Watson and Sutherland) is a 21st-century adaptation of Sophocles's play.
Igazi Lam ("My Blood") by Peter Se-Puma is a Zulu adaptation of Sophocles's play.
Antigone (not quite/quiet), subtitled Ninganiki Okungcwele Ezinjeni ("Give not unto dogs sacred things" in isiXhosa), is an adaptation by Mark Fleishman as part of the Re-imagining Tragedy from Africa and the Global South (RETAGS) project. Fleishman describes the woerk as "a series of responses to the original play...[that]... engage[s] with the concept of the aftermath: the tragedy of our particular aftermath in post-1994 South Africa and the aftermath of tragedy as a form”.[] .
Sources
"Antigone" theatre programme, 1952.
E. F. Taiwo. 2014. "Deconstructing the 'Fourth Wall': Metatheatricality in Plautus' Miles Gloriosus and Osofisan's Tegonni" in Canadian Social Science, 10(5), 146-152.[4]
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