ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone. It begins with a brief overview of the extensive traditional body of scholarship which has developed surrounding the play, and also briefly mentions its performance history before proceeding with a close analysis of Miro Gavran’s Creon’s Antigone, Griselda Gambaro’s Antigona Furiosa and Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes. Initially the author offers her own reading of the original text which does not intend to question the more traditional, well-established approaches to Antigone, or attempt to project contemporary theatrical interpretations onto the classical texts. It provocatively evidences an inherent radicality, and demonstrates the tradition of the play’s conservative interpretation which is subsequently challenged by the radical re-makings which are then analysed. These re-makings are used as case studies to demonstrate the palimpsestic nature of contemporary theatrical adaptation and its definition as “hypertheatre”, while re-inventing Antigone and Antigone in different political, historical and cultural contexts. Over the centuries Antigone has been seen as the defiant female who rightly spoke against stubborn male authority but did so in the wrong manner, allowing herself to be guided by emotions and irrational passion rather than reason, strategy and political expediency. The adaptations which this chapter explores appropriate this same woman as an individual who displays sound political thinking and plays an active role in the politics of present-day Yugoslavia, Argentina and Liberia.
