I would want to encourage students to see the play as education (particularly secondary) in general has a habit of making classics boring and it would be good to bring the play to an audience in a new exciting, challenging light. Space wise I would like it to be performed in a black box studio; I would like to stage it in traverse possibly on a diagonal with a minimal, symbolic set (with elements reflective of tribal Africa) with perhaps a raised platform in the centre to allow for key moments and images and scaffolding on one end for some interesting physical choreography. I would like to play with the idea of having action that happens off stage in the text being portrayed whilst it is being talked about. I would incorporate solo moments within the play which will allow a characters psyche to be built upon; for example, a key solo moment could be showing how Creon is simply being completely faithful to his belief system, and perhaps even a moment of regret for having to send Antigone to her death.
The Rehearsal process will be in four stages. The initial stage is a collaborative exploration of the play and characters using experimental role play and discussion about our ideas on the world of ‘Antigone’, also researching African tribal culture and some work on possible rhythm and physical choreography. The second stage will be creating a basic blocking structure for the play, providing a framework to build upon. The third stage will be going through the play scene by scene and experimenting and working on each scene until we have something which we are happy with and works well, after the scenes have been blocked I would work on creating the solo moments explained above and perhaps interesting transitional moments between scenes. The fourth stage will be run-throughs to iron out any problems with the play prior to performance. Throughout the process I would be working on the principle of collaboration, inviting actors to experiment with characters and put forward any ideas they may have for any aspect of the play.
I will also be putting together a research pack to be provided to schools as an incentive to encourage school bookings, additionally I would like to arrange some post-show talks and/or workshops which would be free and allow the audience to actively question what they had just seen, by literally asking the cast/crew and by being encouraged to explore what they got from the performance via a series of workshops. I would furthermore like to set up some school visitations with the cast and create workshops centred around the piece to conduct with the pupils, as well as additional publicity, I believe this aspect of the rehearsal/continuation process will be useful to the actors as a constant reminder of who we want this play to reach, on what level, and the vast majority of interpretations the performance could inspire.
I emphasise that my goal for this production is to move away from traditional interpretations of Greek plays and experiment with new ways of delivering the human content of the piece as opposed to getting stuck in the rut of preserving antiquity. I will be striving to present it in a very accessible, exciting way in order to bring it to life for a contemporary audience as more than a classic which should be seen, and instead as a dynamic, relevant piece of theatre for modern society.
