Antigone‘s timeless beauty and wisdom has been once again brought to the stage. But this time the 2,500-year-old tragedy speaks directly to one of Australia’s most polarising contemporary political debates.

In Western Edge’s version of the play, Thebes is a modern state, Polynices a young African activist who is shot dead by police, while President Creon with media adviser Tiresius turn to racial vilification to … win votes.

It is a time of unrest, with the government looking for “someone to blame: people who are less than fully Theban, people who look different, people who can be made the other” the ensemble chants in the opening chorus.

The parallels to the “African gangs” saga, which dominated national news coverage earlier this year, are striking.

“I was aware of the increasing vilification of particularly young African men in the media by politicians and I don’t know why a kind of resonance with Antigone came into my head but it did and the more I thought about it the better it fit,” the play’s artistic director Dave Kelman tells Neos Kosmos, explaining how the project was born.

The idea was explored with a group of emerging artists from Geelong, members of Western Edge, a Melbourne-based youth performance company open to all aspiring cultural leaders in the community, with a focus on nurturing culturally and linguistically diverse young artists.

The impetus for staging Antigone was given by a state-funded community resilience program, promoting respect for diversity and a more inclusive society by countering racist narratives.

Rather than fixed from the start, the production evolved organically with direct input from cast and artistic team members, and new elements incorporated into the show throughout the course of performances.

“I provide a dramaturgical framework based on Sophocles and wove in a lot of Sophocles’ structure and ideas and characters, but there’s some really nice, beautiful and poetic intelligent writing that’s been done by young artists,” says Kelman.

“They were really keen to do it because it was new for them … reimagining a classic text … it was fresh and different and I think that appealed to them quite a lot.”

THE UNBURIED BODY METAPHOR
Kelman was a particularly suitable person to oversee the undertaking of the project, given his “acquaintance” with Antigone traces back decades ago and having worked extensively in ‘process drama’, a teaching method where pupils are treated as active agents in making theatre happen and learning is rooted into the human real-life context.

“I’ve had a long relationship with Antigone as an artist.
“I was introduced to the idea of exploring Antigone as a process drama a number of times in sort of schools’ contexts and then I developed that as youth theatre performance in different ways and just found it completely compelling each time,” he says.

“Every time I’ve worked that material I’ve found a very high level of buy-in from young people.”

Praising the timeless nature of the play, Kelman elaborates on how at the heart of Western Edge’s version lies the allegory of Polynices’ unburied body, a metaphor which they found, through discussions with participants, extended beyond the stereotyping of African communities.

“As we were working [on it] we referenced quite a lot of current events such as politicians talking about people being scared to go to restaurants. But interestingly, the central metaphor of an unburied body resonates I think really powerfully with the way that asylum seekers have been abandoned in Nauru in ways that have similar resonance to the metaphor of the dead body being left to rot and the way that certain communities are vilified and marginalised.
“The body struck me as a really powerful and appropriate metaphor for what is being done to – in this instance – young black men and has been done since the start of colonisation in Australia for Aboriginal people.”

Irene Bakulikira as Antigone and Kiril Stamenkov as Haemon.

Kiril Stamenkov, Sila Toprak and Eto Masoka.

Craig Gunguta as Polynices.

Finn Lloyd (Creon) with Craig Gunguta (Polynices).

A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE
The group presented their play to schools in the Geelong region giving around eight shows for Year 9 and 10 students.

“Almost from the word ‘go’ we had them gripped,” says Kelman, crediting among other reasons “the genius of the play” itself and the interactive features of the performances, with members of the audience having direct engagement with the characters.

The potential of a transformative educational experience for students manifested in the aftermath of the shows.

“For example one question we asked them in surveys was ‘do you think this play will change your behaviour in the future in relation to racism?’. Very high proportions of them – 70 to 80 per cent – said it had altered their understanding of racism and will change their behaviour in relation to it. Obviously what that actually means is another matter, but what it shows is a really high level of engagement with the material and positivity about it and its messaging.”

The series of shows culminated into a performance at Geelong’s Courthouse Youth Arts Centre in October.

“It was quite sophisticated the performance at this stage; we had strong film elements, animation, live music played by a really talented composer who created an original soundtrack for it, a lot of very nice singing and monochrome design so it had a really powerful look.”

Contributing to the gig’s success was also the audience composition.

“There were a lot of young people of colour there as well as older white people, so you had a brilliant cultural mix in the room including a lot of young African men, the people who are being vilified … The interactions were terrific with the audience … and written feedback we got that really supports that view.”

Asked about what cast members said about their experience, Kelman describes a multi-dimensional effect, finding it both artistically satisfying, as well as becoming aware “they had achieved something in terms of reaching audiences and changing peoples’ perception.”

While for some of the artists the play was an opportunity to interrogate their relationship with culture and race as white Australians, for others it had a direct resonance with their lived experience of racism.

Kelman recalls one of the play’s acts exemplifying this, with Craig Gunguta performing as Polynices.

“At a moment where they shoot him for burning a flag he delivers a spoken word poetic monologue which he wrote himself about how he feels as a young African man and why he feels that he’s been vilified and marginalised.
“It was a moment of real beauty and warmness and tension and I think it was really brave of him and really significant for him to be able to have that space to make his voice heard.”

The play has garnered positive reviews from the broader community, but what Kelman considers of particular significance was the feedback received from parents of young African performers and community leaders.

“Political theatre is quite a risky venture, it was really important to me that we don’t have kind of me imposing my politics on an African community and the feedback we got … was extremely positive, it meant we’ve got the messaging right.
“I think for white theatre makers, directors, writers to put words into the mouths of communities of colour is quite wrong, it’s not our place to do that and is quite harmful I think. So ensuring that a political piece of work authentically represents the people performing it is the essence and it’s not particularly easy either.”