Antigone Modern Contextulasation

Contextualisation of Antigone.

Original Setting
Antigone is set originally in Ancient Greece in Thebes, The play is about the Princess Antigone rebelling against her Uncle, King Creon of Thebes, after he states that her brother Polyneices, who rebelled against his country, will not be buried after his death in war. Her other brother, Eteoclese is going to be buried with full military honours. Antigone, finding this unfair, asks her sister Ismene to assist her in burying their brother, who refuses but promises not to tell anyone what she’s planning. Antigone is obviously caught, and sentenced to be locked in a cave to essentially die alone there. Tiresias meanwhile warns Creon that the gods will punish him for killing Antigone for such a loving act of allowing her brother to pass onto the afterlife. Creon realises what he must do and goes to free Antigone, but it’s too late as she has killed herself to save her last shred of pride and dignity. Upon finding his fiancé dead, Haimon, Creon’s son kills himself, this in turn leads Creon’s wife to kill herself due to her anger towards her husband for killing her loved ones. Creon, left with nothing, exits the stage and goes to end his own life.

Contextualisation
We modernised our play by setting it in a hospital in a chemical war. We performed in traverse staging as opposed to head on, as the Greek’s would have. We kept our staging very minimal to ensure our staging looked clinical and sterile.

We contextualised our characters also, Creon who in the original play was the king, was made to be the director of the hospital, with Antigone as a nurse and Ismene as a surgeon, Eurydice (Creon’s wife) was a Doctor, Tiresias was still a blind prophet but was a patient of the hospital, and we made his blindness a new injury due to the war, The sentry had also been changed to a security guard. The chorus members were various workers of a hospital such as a receptionist, a janitor, a nurse etc.
The Priest in the original is the chorus leader, and was originally the only member of the chorus to interact with the characters on stage, but as we had chorus members speaking directly to other characters we modernised the priest to be Creon’s P.A. This allowed for the character to still interact closely with Creon and know everything that the audience knew due to being onstage for most of the play and working closely with the highest authority in the hospital. We showed the modernisation of this character through the way we adorned her. Although her dress was very old fashioned it was smart and in modern day would be seen as cool/vintage. And instead of carrying a clipboard or folder like the other characters, the P.A carried a tablet to show more authority, also the addition of the high heels shows more power as it heightened me on stage. The pencil skirt massively improved my posture and made me look more “held together” allowing for my authority towards other chorus members.

Changes to script
Due to the contextualisation of our play we had to adjust the script accordingly. In Creon’s speeches he will often refer to the “hospital” rather than the “city”. We also had to change how Polyneices was “trapped” and not allowed to pass into the afterlife, due to the fact that people are not as religious now as they once were. So instead we had Polyneices kept alive on life support, although he was really dead, Creon ordered that he should not be allowed to die and kept his heart beating with machines. In the first scene, Antigone says “I am going to release him” whereas the original script said “I am going to bury him”. This carries on into the scene between the security guard and Creon. The security guard says “Someone has released his soul and gone...” where the original script says “someone has buried him and gone...”
Creon’s first speech had to be altered quite drastically to remove any mention of Kings or Royalty so we changed “your devotion to King Laious” to “your devotion to Director Laious”

Changes to scenes
As we had to explain why our play was set in a hospital we added around 10 minutes of un-dialogued scenes which included Polyneices and Eteoclese throwing chemical solutions at one another leading to an explosion. The next scene was set in the hospital where we were treating characters in the hospital, and Polyneices is brought in and treated by Antigone, when Creon signs forms to put him on life support. These scenes were vital as they set the play and explained more of our contextualisation.
Deaths
In ancient Greece, deaths were never shown on stage, it would be the job of a messenger to come on stage and inform the characters of their death. To make our play feel more modern and make more sense, and also to ensure we could show the emotion of the situation, we performed all deaths on stage with the exception of Creon.
Due to these scenes not being in the script we had to completely make up all deaths. One death that was added to the script was Polyneices’ as in the original he is already dead before the play starts. We showed Antigone switching off his life support. This worked well as it allowed us to create a connection with Antigone and the audience, and again further explained the plot.

We then showed Antigone’s death, as in the original script she hangs herself. Due to health and safety restrictions and to make the play fit in more with a hospital theme we had Antigone killing herself with an overdose of medication. We had to change the script later on so the chorus says “she made a concoction and killed herself” rather than the original script which stated she hung herself.
We added the death of Haimon during the dialogue where Eurydice is being informed of his suicide. We made the scene a flashback so the audience could see what the chorus had. We kept his death the same as it was in the original script where he stabs himself. But we had him use a scalpel rather than a knife.
The death of Eurydice was only altered slightly. Instead of her stabbing herself in the heart we had her slit her wrists on stage, whereas in the original the death is off stage. I feel that adding the deaths to the stage really helped the audience connect with each death and feel the reactions of the characters more.

Contextualisation of my character
As I mentioned previously, we made my character Creon’s P.A to fit in with a more modern script. This helped my character interact with everyone and made more sense as to how I know the ins and outs of all of Creon’s business. I did some research on how P.A’s should act and conduct themselves and what kind of business they would have to deal with , one of the steps on here said that a P.A must be efficient on a computer, therefore we adorned the character with an iPad instead of a traditional clipboard. This also showed a modernisation of the play.
To look into character research I decided to pick a story where the P.A was the main character. I chose The Devil wears Prada. The main character in this film/novel is the P.A of a very powerful and malicious woman, which is what drew me to the character as she is in a similar situation to my character. She does not necessarily believe in all the same things as her boss, but grows attached to them. I chose to also base my character on the other assistant in this film, Emily. Emily is quite viscous at times and certainly has the air of superiority about her, which is essential for my character as we ended up altering the script so I had some lines which were originally meant for Creon. This allowed me to be a stricter authoritive figure in the play.
Hair and makeup
When considering the hair and makeup of my character I looked to Greek roots for my hair but allowing it to still look authoritive. I decided to wear my hair in a French plait, but have it entirely off my face and shoulders. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a photo that showed how my hair was. It was braided all off my face and then was tucked up under and pinned in place so you couldn’t see the ends of my hair. I felt this made my character look better put together and organised. I kept my makeup very minimal, so that I looked professional but highlighted my eyes and brows so I looked natural but you could clearly see all the features in my face. I feel this was important as it allowed for an almost blank canvas so I could paint expressions onto it and my makeup/hair could not give away any form of emotion. I feel this worked well as it allowed me to change my emotions easily without any form of hair and makeup alterations, the only preconception I wanted people to get from my character was the authority and sensible personality.

My personal contextualisation
If I were to contextualise this piece by myself I would have set it as Creon being a very well-to-do high class individual, who adopts his poorer brother’s children when he kills himself. Creon tries to give them the best upbringing he can but is very strict in comparison to Oedipus and soon Polyneices, the youngest begins to rebel against his uncle and joins a street gang. Unknown to Creon and his sisters Antigone and Ismene, Polyneices decides his gang are going to rob Creon’s house and steal his possessions and sell them for drug money. On the night of the robbery, Eteoclese hears a noise and comes down armed and ready assuming they’re being burgled. He sees a culprit and fires his gun, hitting Polyneices. Who then shoots back at him, blinded by his own hatred for the way Creon has destroyed their relationship as siblings. Creon comes downstairs and sees what has happened. He feels utterly betrayed that Polyneices would be so ungrateful for what he has given him, and in a bid to save Eteocles’s reputation, Creon throws Polyneices body in a river, and tells the police that he ran away and he hasn’t seen him in months. Eteoclese on the other hand, gets a beautiful and lavish funeral. Creon then develops paranoid schizophrenia, and hears voices in his head threatening him and saying that god will discover his secret. The voice in his head is actually my contextualisation of Tiresias. The sisters realise something is wrong, and move out of his house. As no one actually knows of Creon’s illness within the space of a few months he runs for parliament and is soon elected as the local MP.
Antigone learns of what has happened and asks Ismene to help her find her brothers body and to bury him. Ismene warns against it, knowing that Creon is not well and may physically harm her. But she soon discovers his body and buries it alongside Eteocles’s grave. Creon finds out about it and takes Antigone away and locks her in the basement. She begins to worry about her own state when Creon brings down his son, and says he is going to marry them, hoping that Haimon’s good morals may straighten out Antigone. She refuses and kills herself in the basement. Haimon feels that he has caused this and feels inclined to kill himself also, as he does care for Antigone and feels guilty for what has happened to her. Creon’s estranged wife comes to the home after a few weeks, having not heard from anyone in the house in weeks, she comes in and discovers what Creon has done, and she tries to push Creon down the stairs but slips and falls herself. Creon realises he must still hide his secret and tells the world she killed herself. Saying her last words were a scream for him, which technically they were as she was cursing his name as she went to push him. Creon is praised as a tragic hero and wins the love of the public.
Although my ending in the contextualisation is different, it can be argued that Creon himself does die as the well-mannered and kind man that he once was died and was buried away when his mental illness kicked in. I feel that this contextualisation would also be a fantastic statement on the society we live in and how it can fail people and I think it really shows the emotional struggle of Creon in the original play. I don’t feel that he ever truly meant to commit any evil acts, and he thought that what he was doing would be right for everyone.