Welcome to the Rock River Players presentation of Sophocles’ Antigone.
For those in our audience who were not around twenty-four hundred years ago, a little background information might he helpful.
Antigone chronologically is the third of three works by Sophocles known as the Theban Plays.
The first is Oedipus Rex, which sets the stage for all that follows. In that opening drama, Oedipus, who is living in Corinth, learns of the prophesy that he is fated to kill his father and marry his own mother. Believing that the king and queen of Corinth are his true parents, he flees his home city to thwart the will of the gods.
While in flight, on the road heading toward Thebes, Oedipus encounters an arrogant leader with a band of men, who attempt to push him aside. In a pitched fight that follows, Oedipus single handedly kills them all.
Upon his arrival in Thebes, Oedipus finds the occupants in crisis; the city, whose king Laius has recently been killed, is under a curse by a sphinx who is demanding a solution to a riddle. Oedipus solves the riddle and is hailed as the savior of the city. He is proclaimed king and marries the widowed queen Jocasta.
Peace and prosperity ensue and Oedipus and Jocasta have four children: two sons, Eteoclês and Polyneices and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene.
But then another curse falls upon the city. Belatedly, the gods are calling for the killer of the previous king Laius to be brought to justice. Oedipus relentlessly seeks the identity of the culprit in spite of increasing warnings, especially from the blind soothsayer Tiresias, that he back away from his search. Eventually, Oedipus discovers that he, as an infant, had been sent from Thebes and raised by the king and queen of Corinth, and that he has fulfilled the dreaded prophecy; the man he killed on the road was his true father and the woman he married, his mother. Mother and son are appalled by the truth: Jocasta kills herself and Oedipus exiles himself after gouging out his own eyes.
Creon, brother of the dead queen Jocasta and brother-in-law of Oedipus, takes over as king, until Oedipus’ two sons are old enough to rule. When the sons become of age, they turn against each other in a power struggle. Eteoclês becomes king of Thebes and Polyneices flees to Argos to raise an army against the city. The invasion of Thebes fails and in the final battle the two brothers kill each other in hand to hand combat.
Creon becomes king again and with his first proclamation, concerning the the burial of the two brothers, he creates the conflict for tonight’s presentation.
– John Moran
Tickets are $15, general admission; $12, students and seniors–available at the door or use the order form below.