Antigone 1989 – A Townhall Musical will be at the Gilded Balloon: Patter House – The Other Yin at 3.05pm for tickets go to http://www.edfringe.com
Antigone 1989 places an ancient Greek tragedy within the AIDS crisis of the late 1980s — what made that historical moment feel like the right lens through which to revisit Sophocles’ story?
There are a few things that drew us to this re-imagining. Particularly as Americans, but all over the world, we’re living at a time when civil rights victories that we thought we had won are being repealed and rechallenged. There is something very powerful about relieving our histories of social justice, it reminds us of what is at stake this time, even if we’ve become comfortable. In this way our Antigone 1989 works double the metaphors – the original story as a parable for now, and the late 1980s as a reflection of what is needed today.
On a lighter note, it’s always necessary when adapting Greek Tragedy, to find a medium that can tell the story differently without losing the heightened nature of the drama. Musical Theatre is already, I feel, an amazing way to do this, but leaning into styles of political satire and teenage vocabulary that were coined during the 80s strangely feels like a very natural transition for this original text.
The musical asks when silence becomes complicity; how important was it for the production to feel politically urgent for contemporary audiences rather than simply historical?
In a way nothing about this musical feels historical, aside from the shell of being set within the 1980s. In the Western world, Queerness has become more socially accepted than it was at this time, but there are still lawmakers challenging marriage laws, and more urgently trans individuals are still very unsafe and unaccommodated in most spaces. Beyond the focus of Queer activism, censorship is seeing a rise as technology invents ever more subtle forms of surveillance and art continues to be undervalued as AI takes shape. The setting within the 1980s, more than anything, gives us a safe space to practice your activism so that when you leave the theatre at the end of the show, it feels that much easier to recognize and take action at the right time.
Music seems central to how the show navigates grief, resistance and hope — what can musical theatre express emotionally that spoken drama alone sometimes cannot?
Musical theatre, through the adoption of music, allows us to make the personal grief feel collective. Music touches every person in the room in a way that words often can’t and this is necessary for a show that is dealing with a personal story as a metaphor for society. When someone starts to sing, we recognize that their soul can’t hold all that they feel and so it comes out in song. It’s easier to connect even when the stakes might feel over the top as in a Greek tragedy.
The production treats theatre as a civic space where audiences are “citizens” rather than passive spectators — how did that idea shape the staging and audience relationship within the piece?
Much of the staging is still an experiment in the room at this stage, but I think it is important that it feels very intimate. You might turn around to find the Oracle at your shoulder, watching the action with you, or be invited into the performance space to say your piece. We want the relationship between audience and performer to feel fluid and constantly changing.
Characters like Tig, Henry and The Guard all respond differently to fear and authority; were you interested in exploring how ordinary people justify action, inaction or compromise during moments of crisis?
Yes. This is part of the practice for the audience. We show them examples so that when we ask them to pick out what went wrong? What can we change? They consider the individuals as much as the collective.
Developed with Ken Cerniglia, whose work includes Hadestown, how did the collaboration help balance the scale of Greek tragedy with the intimacy of a one-act Fringe musical?
Ken’s brilliant introduction of political satire as a tone and framework for the piece immediately allowed us to follow the tradition of the scale of Greek tragedy in a form that felt both period to the 1980s and right at home at the Fringe! We have a great mix of people on the team who specialize in different types of theatre, who are at different points in their career, and who have been to the Fringe before or not! This collaboration has been necessary for balancing all of the demands of Sophocles, Musical Theatre and the intimate nature of the Fringe Festival.
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