A person with long dark hair, traditional face paint, and a feather headpiece stands against a bright yellow background, wearing beaded jewelry and traditional clothing.

Skirball Salon: Antigone and the Art of Resistance

In Celebration of “Antigone in the Amazon”

The ongoing, urgent need for resistant practices, in local and global contexts, continues to be at the forefront for scholars, students, artists, and activists: how do we make a difference in the world? What can we do to make the world different?

Antigone has been invoked as an archetype of resistance in times of social and political unrest, bridging the work of activists and artists – appearing in Nazi-occupied France in 1944; apartheid-era South Africa in 1973; Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank in 2011 (this work unfinished after the murder of Jenin Freedom Theatre’s founder Juliano Mer-Khamis); alongside Black Lives Matter activists in Ferguson, Missouri in 2016; among healthcare workers in 2020 at the height of Covid lockdowns. Milo Rau & members of Brazil’s Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) have brought a new Antigone to the stage, with “Antigone in the Amazon” – centered around land reform, agrobusiness, climate change, and the genocide of Indigenous people in Brazil.

Join us, before opening night of “Antigone in the Amazon,” to discuss Antigone’s legacy, mythology and pedagogy, and how and why this archetypal character continues to resonate in so many different contexts. How do we learn to value our own convictions, despite the disciplinary power of the law? What is worth risking the wrath of Creon? & how do we find other Antigones, in all their varied contexts? What can these many Antigones teach us about the potential for global solidarity against interlocking structural oppressions?

Artists

Amelia Bande

Debra Levine

Laura M. Slatkin

Vasuki Nesiah