Following the early feminist work of Henrik Ibsen’s play Doll’s House. We continued our journey of female lead characters deep into history with the Sophocles play Antigone.
I was absolutely floored by this play, written in 441BC and still bearing fruit for the modern reader. When Antigone’s two brothers kill one another on the battlefield fighting for opposite sides in a war for control of Thebes, her uncle now King decrees that her brother who fought against him will be left to rot on the battlefield. She defies the wishes of the king and performs the burial rights for her brother, rights demanded by years of tradition. The results are a wrestling with the authority of the state over our personal lives, the fragile and destructive nature of insecure leadership and the power of conviction in the face of resistance.
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