Antigone

The myth of Antigone, this upstanding and brave rebel, has since antiquity addressed, in many shapes, the fundamental question of the antagonism between the unwritten human laws and the code of the state, between the ethics and the law. At the same time, it has meticulously questioned the functioning of the society and the individual’s place in it. This was the position from which Dominik Smole, one of the most important voices of the Slovenian drama writing, looked into the classical myth in his 1960 poetic drama Antigone.  Through a story about the time immediately after the end of a destructive war he wrote a contemporary tragedy about the disintegration of all ethics and law, and above all the moral disintegration of the contemporary society and the human. Unlike in Sophocles, Smole’s Antigone no longer rebels against the authoritative leader, the essence  of her activities is instead following her consciousness, a system of values  which she firmly and uncompromisingly believes – regardless of the appeals of her nearest, the people’s rumours or the opinion of the ruler. Antigone is guided not by a clash, a confrontation, but by her firm backbone in realising her ideals. In Smole’s play, Antigone is physically absent, the Theban community merely observes her actions, which helps the author highlight the problem of social and political pragmatism, opportunism and apathy. And with this – no less radically – he also addresses our time. 

With her boundless will and high moral stance, Antigone today increasingly becomes something non-existing, unfathomable, insufferable. She is no longer someone we could overrule, convert or even eliminate. Antigone is not simply a myth we can forget about, Antigone is our bad consciousness that stalks us, always somewhere behind our back, no matter how many times we try to deny it. Antigone reminds us of every occasion when we should have taken action but didn’t, she reminds us of our everyday pragmatisms, big and small opportunisms, social conformism in which we got lost, fears that prevent us from persisting, every moment when we forget our own selves.

The production has been directed by the young director Luka Marcen, known for his stagings that reflect contemporary issues and take clear socio-political and ethical stance; this is Marcen’s SNT Nova Gorica debut.

Antigone exists so we become aware of who we are.

Luka Marcen