Antigo Nick, a genre-breaking play about a grief stricken sister who fights for the right to bury her brother, sheds light on how a women’s actions within the patriarchy yield power. Intensely contextualized by recent events in America, I sat down with the director, Jessica Cerullo, and choreographer, Renée Archibald and discussed the gravity of the show and the imaginative work that played into the piece:
AR: How is Antigo Nick/Antigone relevant today?
JC: On my way to our final rehearsal yesterday, I cast my ballot into the voting box downtown. As the director these past months, I have been holding the Antigo Nick script in one hand while reading the “newspaper” with the other. In our rehearsal process we have considered where our loyalties lie with regard to this presidential election and with regard to our families. We have discussed the body of Michael Brown and the actions of Erdogan following the attempted coup in Turkey. We have wondered about the legislation of women’s bodies and voices and we have read the news stories reporting on the mental health of the first responders from the attack on the LGBT community in Orlando. Antigone, Ismene, Haemon, Kreon, the Guard, the Messenger, Teiresias, the Boy and the Chorus have all led us to consider our own world and the individuals who comprise it.
While we aren’t setting the play in any particular place or time we have been purposefully rehearsing the play while also engaging questions that resonate within our pre and post election world. A big part of making theater is living in the questions… Here are the questions that have guided us and influenced our work with Anne Carson and Sophokles’ play:
Who deserves burial and who are we permitted to mourn?
How and when do we draw and redraw the lines of loyalty with family and with country?
How does the patriarchy respond to the cries of women?
How are the first responders in a tragedy cared for?
What is the responsibility of the bystander-citizen?
What does silence have to offer?
Turning towards Reneée, we spoke about the physical choices she considered in her efforts to choreograph this show.
AR: What is it like to work with the nebulous text that is Antigo nick? Are there significant challenges that come from its nuanced style?
RA: As a choreographer I am accustomed to nebulous. I am accustomed to starting with nothing at all, so having a text is more concrete than my usual processes!
The challenge the text has posed for me is the shifting of styles. For example, the text is alternately dreamy and pondering about the nature of man, expository in delivering information about the recent events in Thebes, as well as dialogue that moves the plot forward. And of course there is the meta-text where Carson writes about Hegel and Brecht. Figuring out the relationship between the movement and the text has been an exciting experiment–who is
moving, is the movement illustrating the text, is it working with the rhythm of the text, is it a spatial counterpoint to the text?
Balancing the visual information (choreography, design, and stage action) with the audio (text and sound), has also been challenging. Sometimes I will ask myself while watching…ok, can I understand what is happening in this scene or am I mesmerized by the imagery? If I miss the dialogue, we may pull back on the movement, change a spatial arrangement or change the manner in which the movement is done. Anne Carson’s text is rich with imagery and it is often the case that working with one or two images (the peeling of wallpaper or a drawing from the illustrated Bianca Stone version of the text, for example) is a lot of visual information for one section.
Another challenge is that both Nick and the Chorus never exit once they are onstage! But- the collaborative process with Jessica Cerullo and dance student Heather Hamilton as an assistant choreographer in making subtle shifts and big decisions has been seamless.