A Tale of Love, Tyranny, and Silver Monsters
Adapted from 'Antigone' by Sophocles
Produced by Emerson Shakespeare Society November 18-19, 2016
Cabaret Theatre
Adapted from the Greek Tragedy Antigone, A Tale of Love, Tyranny, and Silver Monsters transports the heroine’s journey into an unspecified and timeless era in which a tyrannical Creon seizes power and drops unprecedented weapons of destruction on his own people. The resulting civil war leads Creon to institute a police-state in pursuit of absolute law and order, and upon imposing violence onto his people, he fractures time itself and takes ownership over their memories. Creon’s ability to manipulate time and space is reflected in the structure of the narrative, which, like a flowing stream of consciousness, takes Antigone on a journey through her dreams, nightmares, public forums, debate halls, and the rubble of a once dignified nation.
Throughout the adaptation, the world seems to slide in and out of focus. The narrative is dominated by brief, poetic vignettes which document Antigone’s journey through her own consciousness as she desperately seeks to find her brother, to mourn him, and to mourn him publicly for the world to see. Throughout the narrative, silver monsters roar through the sky. As a symbol for drone warfare they shatter time, and send Antigone on the journey of her life. But as she runs from the silver monsters, what she runs towards is much more frightening- the responsibility of carrying an entire generation on her shoulders. As she faces off with Creon, she struggles, not to change his mind or to lead him down a path of morality, but to make his supporters witness his abuses, and to point her father’s kingdom towards not one truth as told by Creon, but towards the struggle of every individual who is deserving of dignity. Antigone takes on the struggle of an epoch- and with the cultural images of drones flying over Syria, of little girls weeping over the bodies of her dead parents, of thousands of Americans, marching through the streets chanting ‘Hands up, don’t shoot,’ of police firing their weapons into the bodies of unarmed black men, of Donald J. Trump uttering the words ‘nasty woman’ while on a public debate stage while promising to make America great again, it has become clear that the story of Antigone is once again needed, perhaps now more than ever.
A Tale of Love, Tyranny, and Silver Monsters was first developed by the Emerson Shakespeare Society at Emerson College. It was presented in the Cabaret Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts on November 18th, 2016. It was directed by Sam Weisberg, with scenic design by Andrew Sianez-De La O, costume design by Louise Hardison, lighting design by Max Rose, sound design by Asher Weisberg, movement by Liana Genoud, props by Grace Leuper, and stage management by Michaela Rubinfeld with the following cast:
ANTIGONE…………………Felicity Poussaint
CREON……………………….Mitchell Buckley
POLYNICES………………………Jose Cabrera
HAEMON…………………...Nicholas Shannon
ISMENE………………………Maggie Dunleavy
JOCASTE………....……………….Sarah Franco
OEDIPUS…………………………Adrian Young
ANNOUNCER/PILOT BOY…Connor Johnson
TIRESIAS……......……………….Sam Solomon