Antigone
The performance
Antigone, the collaborative work by choreographer Nicole Beutler and theatre-maker Ulrike Quade, is a visual adaptation of the Greek tragedy written by Sophocles in 442BC. The co-directors couple the themes explored by the original with current issues, focusing on the question of how free our actions truly are. Polynices has been slain in combat. The law dictates that he may not be buried, on pain of death. His sisters Antigone and Ismene take very different standpoints on the matter. Ismene chooses to obey the law and stay alive, while Antigone ignores her family’s advice and follows her own ideals, paying for her courage with death. Almost 2500 years on, how should we interpret the choices they made? Antigone weighs up the two sisters’ ideas. It’s not easy to take sides with one or the other. What is good; what is evil? Their internal motives are revealed in a manipulative game played between performers and puppets. The puppets were made in Japan especially for this production by Watanabe Kazunori in the Bunraku theatre tradition.
credits
Idea, direction
Nicole Beutler, Ulrike Quade
Created and performed by
Hillary Blake Firestone, Cat Smits, Michele Rizzo
Second cast
Silke Hundertmark, Judith Hazeleger, Pere Faura
Puppets
Watanabe Kazunori
Costumes
Jessica Helbach
Dramaturgy
Georg Weinand
Research and assistance
Justa Ter Haar
Lighting design
Minna Tiikkainen
Sound design
Gary Shepherd
Technique
Martin Kaffarnik
Coproduction
NBprojects, Ulrike Quade Company
Made with support from
Grand Theater Groningen, Frascati Amsterdam
With thanks to
Felix Ritter
reviews
The puppeteers/dancers control the three puppets with the utmost precision, giving them life with the tiniest of gestures. ****
(Liv Laveyne, De Standaard, 16/11/2012)
The perfection that both directors strive to achieve in their work is very much evident in Antigone in the ingenious puppetry and in the performances – the cast are faultless as they merge the Bunraku artform with their own roles. ****
(Marcelle Schots, Theaterkrant, 20/9/2012)
Using dance and a translation of Japanese bunraku puppetry, Ulrike Quade and Nicole Beutler examine Sophocles’ ‘rebel’ Antigone as a metaphor for modern existential questions.
(Sander Hiskemuller, Trouw, 18/9/2012)