In this rendition of Antigone by Sophocles, director Milo Rau uses the play’s original framework to shape an allegory of present day resistance. In 1996, 19 members of the Brazil’s landless workers movement (MST) were murdered and dozens of others were injured by police during a protest in Eldorado do Carajás municipality. The producers of this play designed the scenography on the site of the protest, and survivors of the attack form the play’s Greek chorus, in order to viscerally overlay art and activism.
Learn more about the production and its various cultural and historical contexts.
RELATED EVENTS
RELATED EVENTS
OFFICE HOURS
OFFICE HOURS
GET INTO IT
GET INTO IT
GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY
GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show… or to get your research into a higher gear post-show, when you can’t stop thinking about it.
- Rosa Andújar and Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (editors). Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage (2020).
- Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay (editors). Vulnerability in Resistance 2016).
- Andrés Fabián Henao Castro. Antigone in the Americas: Democracy, Sexuality, and Death in the Settler Colonial Present (2021).
- Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. The Athenian Sun in an African Sky: Modern African Adaptations of Classical Greek Tragedy (2002).
- Stephen Zepke and Nicolás Alvarado Castillo (editors). Violence and Resistance, Art and Politics in Colombia (2023).
READ ALL ABOUT IT
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Antigone in the Amazon at NYU Skirball is a US premiere. The world premiere was in 2023 at NTGent in Belgium.
‘Antigone in the Amazon’ Review: The Drama Is Brazil’s Land War
“Rau has turned his focus to Brazil and the Marxist-inspired Landless Workers Movement in which farmers have been occupying unworked fields and growing crops there.”
Interview with Milo Rau
Why adapt Sophocles’s Antigone in a contemporary context and transpose it to the state of Pará in Brazil?
History Lessons and Current Events
History Lessons and Current Events
Learn more about the particular time, place and politics that ground this reworking of Antigone – the Landless Worker’s Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST), which was formed in the 80s in Brazil as a social movement working toward land reform, and is still active.
Apocalypse Now
What Brazilian conservatives gain by letting the Amazon burn.
BRAZIL’S LANDLESS WORKERS’ MOVEMENT AS RADICAL COÖPOWER
“In the countryside, less than 1% of the landowners control 46% of Brazil’s farmland.”
Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement in New York: From the UN to Zuccotti Park
“The ultimate goal is agrarian reform: Brazil has alarmingly high levels of land concentration, and a simultaneous abundance of latifúndios–large land holdings–sitting unused, almost forgotten.”
If You Don’t Use Your Land, These Marxists May Take It
“They arrived just before midnight, carrying machetes and hoes, hammers and sickles, with plans to seize the land.”
Antigone’s Renditions
Antigone’s Renditions
There have been multiple adaptations of Antigone which have also explored modern political contexts. Explore a few of them below!
‘Antigone’ as a Protest Tactic
“The story of ”The Island,” a South African prison drama, suggests that symbolic resistance to oppression can play a role in giving birth to freedom itself.”
The many meanings of Anouilh’s Antigone
“Jean Anouilh’s Antigone premiered on February 4 1944, while Paris was under Nazi occupation.”
Welcome to Thebes
“Moira Buffini is not the first dramatist to seek to marry modern politics and ancient myths.”
From the Archives
From the Archives
Milo Rau’s controversial Five Easy Pieces was onstage at NYU Skirball in 2019 – which was based on a true story of a serial killer who targeted children, starring seven children and one adult – can also be seen to grapple with the ethics of storytelling, the power of theatre and the relationship between audience, actor, and director.
CAMPO/Milo Rau: Five Easy PIECES
How can children understand the significance of narrative, empathy, loss, subjection, old age, disappointment, or rebellion? How do we react if we see them acting out scenes of violence or love and romance? What does that say about our own fears and desires?
Office Hours: Five Easy Pieces
Debra Levine interviews Hendrik Van Doorn and Kristof Blom about CAMPO & Milo Rau’s “Five Easy Pieces.”
Carol Martin on Five Easy Pieces
For Rau, while changing the story may be impossible, changing the world is not.
