Antigone 2024: 3

Antigone: Reimagined

A Director’s Outline: Dialogue, Part 3

Scene III, lines 641-656

Hello, hello, and welcome back, my glorious #SometimesUnderstanders. It is your intelligent, well-spoken, and abnormally good-looking director ISometimesUnderstandInstructions (ISUI) once again. With this entry, we’re taking a step back from our beloved father-son verbal violence to something I suppose a modern audience might find more difficult to digest – at least, the way it was presented in Sophocles’ original play. We have the chorus, a group of performers who, sometimes through song and dance, narrate or comment on a section of the play. Yes, that obnoxious friend who’s already seen the movie you’re watching who can’t help but vomit out his take on whatever had happened on the screen four seconds ago. More or less the chorus. Not all bad, though. They’re a significant aspect of Greek theater, and they serve a multitude of functions. This chorus here sings a choral ode, a lyrical poem, a common function of choruses. It enhances the drama. They’re even present in contemporary works. Like Aladdin. A Whole New World. What? That’s too old to be contemporary? [Music begins fading in]

CHORUS:

Love is an unconquerable beast [Strophe; While the goal is simplifying the syntax to something more natural, we’ve added a single metaphor here to make it more obvious – a simple one that the, lovingly, 3-second attention span audience can follow along with.] [Strophe just means the first part of a choral ode like this.]

Devouring the rich and keeping those warm lights of the all-night vigil [People lately have really loved devouring the rich. Ever since 1789, actually. Maybe even before. Either way, while it reads more like prose, it directly follows the preceding bestial metaphor and maintains consistency that is easy enough to follow on. There’s an art to balancing poetic merit with accessibility. For this line, we’ve prioritized the latter.]

In the soft face of a girl:

Wanderer of seas, visitor of forests! [Perhaps a sideways change. The original line, Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor, felt it could be somewhat unnatural for a modern audience member to parse – I’ve separated the compound nouns to lessen confusion. These aren’t three beings – just one. Who also happens to be a wanderer of seas and visitor of forests.]

Even the pure Immortals cannot escape your fury, [Changed escape you to escape your fury to add another marker for the beast metaphor we’ve established at the beginning – the audience must follow. Reading this: fury? Like a person? Animal? Oh, beast – like love! The Greek immortals have been referenced, so instead of ending this line on that reference, extending to them a misplaced significance, we’ll usher the audience back to the metaphor by hinting at it with this new end of the line.]

And the mortal man, in his one day’s dusk,

Trembles before your glory.

Surely you bring about ruin [Antistrope; We’ll remove a bit of ambiguity with this change, that crazy beast love is explicitly causing this ruining] [Antistrophe means the second part of a choral ode.]

On the just man’s consenting heart, [Added On – Gen Z loves prepositions, e.g. On god]

As here you have fueled the feud

Between father and son – [Might seem like a sideways change from have made bright anger strike between, but this is poetry and not prose, and plus, it is less archaic and uses a touch of alliteration. Gen Z loves alliteration.]

And none has conquered but Love!

A girl’s glance working the will of heaven:

Pleasure to her alone who mock us,

Merciless Aphrodite. [These last four lines have remained unchanged because the way they are now I imagine has the best balance of merit and accessibility. I envision a transition scene with the chorus singing in the background – Antigone is walking in front of a partially shrouded statue, towering over her, details such as offerings suggesting the being named Aphrodite’s association with love. Even if an audience member sat down to the play knowing nothing of Greek mythology, the connection should be intuitive.]

And that is it for Part 3, everyone. Thanks to all my #SometimesUnderstanders for suggesting I work on a choral ode next, I had an intractable itching for adapting mythological references to the modern vernacular. What can I say? I just get these.. literary urges sometimes. It’s hard to control. Thankfully, I have this outlet in Antigone 2024 to help me find relief. I’m doing an amazing job as director so far; there’s no way I’m getting fired. I’m especially looking forward to our studio’s next projects, The Greek Life of Zack & Cody and Lilo & Stitch & The Fall Of Troy.