Antigone Sophocles (Richard Emil Braun translation)

Choose ONE of these questions to answer. If there is something very interesting that you want to say and that is not covered by any of these questions, feel free to write about that.

150 words minimum. 350 maximum.

1) The National Theatre performance makes Antigone a figure of common decency and dignity, love, humanity and morals. She is decent rather than beautiful and otherwordly. But the play allows for a reading where Antigone is breathtakingly, even alarmingly, beautiful and represents a love that if fierce and frightening to those in power (the love of the death drive). Who would you cast in a performance of Antigone? How would you make beauty work as an effect in the play?

2) Tireseas is a prophet, a role that makes sense in the world of ancient Thebes. The modern military-industrial world of the National Theatre performance is a world that doesn’t really have a role for prophets. What, in the modern world, could Tiresias embody?

3) There are large parts of the meditations of the chorus that are left out of the National Theatre performance. Add part of a chorus speech (from the Braun translation) to the performance and explain how it would change our understanding of the play.