“Antigone” Continues to Hold Modern Lessons Gleaned from the Ancient World

The first lines in Jean Anouilh’s 1944 adaptation of Sophocles’ tragedy “Antigone” place the audience squarely in the present moment.

“Well, here we are,” the chorus offers as an introduction, immediately pulling the audience into the action, drama and consequences of a play penned more than 2,500 years ago. That immediacy is part of what drew Betty Hart to Anouilh’s interpretation of Sophocles’ signature tragedy, and it’s part of what made her want to direct a production of the work on the Roe Green Theater stage in November.

“Those are the first words that you hear in the play. If that isn’t accessible, I don’t know what is. Language is the entry point for most people,” notes Hart, who said she knew that she wanted to helm a Greek drama for CU Boulder’s Department of Theatre & Dance as soon as she was offered the opportunity to direct. “This version is a very accessible ‘Antigone.’ People can come in and know absolutely nothing about the Greeks, but they’ll understand the journey.”

Anouilh debuted his adaptation in Nazi-occupied France during the most intense stretches of World War II, and the ancient play’s themes about war, its unforgiving consequences and unsparing fallout, held their own resonance.

Eighty years after the debut of Anouilh’s piece in Paris and millennia after the first staging of Sophocles’ tragedy at the Festival of Dionysus in ancient Athens, Hart says the story still has plenty to offer in terms of contemporary parallels.

Anouilh’s version of the story, translated into English by Jeremy Sams, revolves around Antigone’s defiance of the orders of a king. When the ruler Creon forbids the burial of Antigone’s brother Polyneices, she feels forced to act, regardless of the fallout. Amid the madness and fervor of war, Antigone must face up to her convictions and connect with her values, regardless of the consequences.

The story is tied inextricably to the politics, geography and allegiances of the ancient world, but it also tackles some thoroughly modern and relatable quandaries. Power, politics, war, gender, sexism are all at play in the drama, and the themes collide in ways that are easily relatable to the modern world.

For Hart, those links between ancient Greece and our own world don’t come as a surprise. A veteran performer in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and a dedicated classicist, Hart appreciates how enduring artistic works continue to offer audiences wisdom and guideposts.

“I love classics, I love language. What I appreciate about Greek literature, in particular, is the power of the spoken word,” Hart says. “It would be easy to think that all of these issues we’re dealing with are new, but they’re not. That’s part of the excitement of studying and performing these pieces … We learn lessons that we can apply to our world today.”

CU Theatre presents “Antigone” in the Roe Green Theatre Nov. 8 through 17, 2024.