Description

Theatre Play

 at NAPA

Synopsis (English)

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“Again and again, I have seen myself holding this conversation with a pale young man whom I have never seen in the flesh. He would have come to assassinate me and would have failed. I would be trying to find out from him why he wanted to kill me.  But with all my logic and all my powers of debate, the only thing I would be able to get out of him would be that he despised me. Who would have thought that the white-faced boy would turn out to be you? And the debate would arise out of something so meaningless as the burial of your brother?”

These are words spoken by Creon to Antigone. Creon who is her uncle and is also the King, and Antigone, who is a simple, pale-faced girl, the King’s niece, who would stand up against him to claim her basic human right, singlehandedly, as a ‘lone rebel’.

Tensions and conflict between the basic rights of individual citizens and the exigencies of political power have existed throughout history in every state and every society, even though the form and intensity may have varied with changing times.  How interesting, therefore, that this discord was felt even in the Greece of ancient times when, Sophocles, the master classical tragedian, first presented the play Antigone, in Athens in the year 441 B.C.  

After the death of King Oedipus, his two sons fought a battle over succession to the throne. A war ensued in which the two brothers killed each other and hence, their uncle Creon was made the King. In the war, Creon had sided with one of the brothers and had declared the other, an enemy of the state. On accession to the throne, Creon gave royal burial to the brother he had sided with and ordered the body of the other to be left in the open sun to rot and to be eaten by crows and dogs. He also proclaimed that anyone who would try to give this corpse a decent religious burial would be put to death. Antigone rises against the king claiming that it was her right as an individual to give her brother a decent burial and resolved to do this even at the cost of her life.

In 1943 when France was under Nazi occupation, Jean Anouilh, an acclaimed dramatist, re-wrote this play against the backdrop of his own time and his country. He divested the play of the mythological and religious references of ancient Greece and turned it into a chronicle of present times and a cry of resistance against Nazi fascism. 

This play is about basic human rights, a political play, but also a tribute in the blood of a simple girl to her loved one. It begins with a faint cry of resistance and builds into a political thriller with relevance to all times and all countries.

Venue Name: NAPA


Event Date: 16th - 21st Septemeber 

Gates Open: 730PM


Start Time: 8 PM


Ticket Price: PKR 1000  
Student Passes: PKR 500

Location