Everyone has that one work of art they encountered as a teenager that changed them forever.
For some, it’s the Star Wars films. For others, it’s Jeff Buckley’s Grace. But there aren’t many folks out there who can claim the work that permanently altered their adolescent worldview is a centuries-old Greek play.
Terry Karabelas is the exception to the rule, then. The celebrated theatrical director encountered Antigone, Sophocles’ renowned tragedy, when he was but a boy, and it has stayed with him ever since. “I was brought up with Greek myths and have always had a passion for them and their dramatic manifestation,” he says. “I’ve loved this play and its story since I read it as a teenager.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Karabelas’ admiration for the work has manifested itself in him helming a number of adaptations of the work, the most recent due to hit the Riverside Theatre in just a few weeks. “It is one of my favourite plays and I’ve directed it twice before,” he explains. “So in many ways I keep exploring and mining what this play has to tell a contemporary audience and the effect it can have on us.”
As far as Karabelas is concerned, the work’s timeless appeal comes from what is at stake at its heart, and he assures prospective audience members that the play does absolutely nothing by halves. “I’ve always been drawn to the dramatic [weight] of the play and the tensions that exist between the characters. I love that it has a strong female lead who drives the action of the play and is completely prepared to die for her beliefs and her profound sense of justice.”
For the uninitiated, Antigone is the third entry in a series of plays by Sophocles that are collectively known as the Theban Cycle. The first entry in the canon deals with Oedipus (he of incestuous infamy) and the second with Oedipus’ two sons: a pair of reprobates who murder each other over a land dispute. Antigone in turn deals with the fallout of this double fraternal murder, and continues the great lineage of tragedy that runs throughout the plays.
“After … Antigone’s brothers … are killed, Creon, their uncle, is declared the new king,” Karabelas explains. “His first decree as king is to have one of the brothers, Eteocles, buried with full rites and state honours, while the other brother, Polynices, will be left to rot on the battlefield, unburied and unlamented. Anyone who disobeys this order will be put to death. But Antigone, unable to live with Creon’s edict, buries her brother Polynices and is caught. She is put to death by Creon by being buried alive in a cave.”
Cheerful stuff then, though Karabelas argues that it is that selfsame sense of pain and hurt that makes the play so timely today. “Antigone has lasted 2,500 years for good reason,” the director says. “It still resonates today because its themes are timeless and universal. The great power of tragedy is to provoke and to ask questions about who we are and what we believe in. What is it to be a flawed human who must follow their moral judgement? Who has the right to decide how we live? What happens when the state tries to take control of our conscience, personal lives and our sense of justice and duty?
“At some point in our lives, if not every day, we ask ourselves what we owe to ourselves, our family, our governments. Where does our moral responsibility lie? The Ancients Greeks valued proportion, balance and wisdom in all our actions and relationships. But they knew well that, as humans, we are flawed and rarely able to achieve it in government or in our personal lives.”
The problem any director faces when deciding to take on an ancient work is the question of whether or not to update. Although there’s a lot to be said for altering a work’s setting and time period, sometimes modernising a work needlessly can feel gratuitous and without real purpose. Simply put, when a new spin goes right, it’s fantastic. But when it goes wrong, the anachronistic elements simply begin to feel like distractions.
But Karabelas has neatly sidestepped these issues by choosing an indiscriminate location, and though he draws in elements of contemporary crises, he never makes his points of reference explicit. “We’ve decided to set the play in a war-torn city, one that feels and looks very much like any modern city that has been ravaged by war,” he explains.
“The set and costumes are contemporary and we’ve kept it in Greece, but we are both referencing and highly influenced by the current wars in the world, Syria in particular. It is a world that is broken, destroyed, but you can still see remnants of its former beauty. The city [in the play] is one that is trying to rebuild itself and gain some self-respect and dignity and find the strength to move forward even among all the rubble and suffering.”
If that sounds heavy, that’s because, well, it is. Though in spite of the dark subject matter, according to Karabelas the rehearsals themselves have been truly inspiring. “Rehearsals have been great,” he says. “We started with a table read and a lot of discussion about the background to the play – discussion and analysis that is so vital to creating the world of the play and refining what ideas we are exploring as a company and what we want to confront a contemporary audience with.”
“Confront” being the optimal word. Karabelas isn’t interested in having the audience leave the theatre being only mildly moved; he wants to shock them, to deeply affect them in the way he too was affected so many years ago when he first encountered Antigone. “I’d like the audience to reflect on so many things,” he says. “What is our moral responsibility? Are we in control of our destiny or is it fate? How do we stand up to injustice? What is justice? How far are we willing to fight for what we believe? To whom do our bodies belong?”
Antigone runsWednesday November 9 – Saturday November 12 at Riverside Theatre Parramatta.
