Theatre Converse asks: How far would you go to do the right thing?

“How far would you be willing to go to do what you thought was right?”

Theatre Converse invites you to explore this question with their presentation of Antigone on Wednesday, Feb. 18 – Sunday, Feb. 22 in Wilson Hall’s Hazel B. Abbott Theatre. Productions are at 8 PM on Thursday through Saturday and the Sunday matinee is at 2 PM. General admission is $10, and student admission is $5. For more information and to buy tickets, visit culture.converse.edu.

“Antigone is a powerful story that still speaks to us more than 2,000 years after Sophocles first wrote it because at its core is a fundamental human question,” said Dr. Chandra Owenby Hopkins, assistant professor of theatre, who directs the production.

In the story, Antigone is locked in epic battle with the state as she weighs family loyalties against the demands of citizenship. The daughter of an incestuous marriage between King Oedipus and his mother, she struggles to honor her brother with an appropriate burial after he has been deemed a traitor and the order is given for his corpse to be left in public to rot and be ravaged by animals. Deemed one of the greatest, most stirring of all tragedies, the drama continues to find new meaning in its depiction of the struggle between individual conscience and state policy, and in its probing of the nature of human suffering.

Theatre Converse adapts the plight of Thebes for a contemporary interpretation. Original choreography and bold music reinvent the Greek chorus, as they become interlocutors between the high emotion and bold action in the play. “We’re using Nicholas Rudall’s translation of the original text, which retains the elevated tone and poetry of the original while making the dialogue clear and incredibly accessible for contemporary audience members and actors,” said Hopkins. “Also, the Antigone set was designed by a senior theatre major, which offers a visual reminder that there’s no limit to the talents of Converse students.”

Twelve Converse actors and one community guest actor comprise the cast. “We’ve been in rehearsals five nights a week since early January and it’s been an amazing process to watch the team take an ancient story and bring it forward through fearless and fierce acting,” Hopkins said.