These are images from the production of Anne Carson’s AntigoNICK that I directed at the University of Chicago in 2018.
ISMENE: Who said that
ANTIGONE: Hegel
ISMENE: Sounds more like Beckett
HAIMON: No single human being has perfect knowledge
KREON: I do not honor anarchy
if your joy goes
I wouldn’t buy you for a shadow of smoke
watch out I see the future plunging toward you
and it contains the corpse of your own son
you’ve made a structural mistake with life and death my dear
you’ve put the living underground
and kept the dead up here
I’m the last one left in a line of kings
I was caught
in an act of perfect piety
they’re both in the business of searching for a precedent
CHORUS TWO: finding an analogy
CHORUS ONE: locating an example / so as to be able to say
CHORUS THREE: this terrible thing we’re witnessing now is / not unique you know it happened before
and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing
on the black earth. But I say it is
what you love
we’re standing in
the nick of time