Antigone — Lonely Planet

If we were to close our eyes and imagine someone turning ancient tragedy on its head like that, that person would be Lena Kitsopoulou, the larger-than-life anti-persona of the Greek stage.

Inviting a group of people on stage who call to mind the ancient Chorus, the author and director sets out to graft moments of a satirical and desperate “here and now” onto the Sophoclean myth.

Convinced of the relevance of ancient drama, given that “Whatever aspect of our contemporary reality someone chooses to analyze, they will inevitably come face to face with ancient tragedies”, Lena Kitsopoulou identifies in her heroes Antigones, Creons and Aimons who share fears and anxieties with us, ensconced here in our unbearably lonely world.

In a production which is of a piece with her work to date, Lena Kitsopoulou remains drawn to the motifs of human madness and loneliness; as she sees it, “We have nothing else: everything else is just lies”.

In Kitsopoulou’s world, though, comedy nestles beneath the existential angst, and vice versa. Driven by a need to poke fun at herself and to view reality through a distorting prism, she seeks “a trace of truth” in comedy. “I don’t force the comedy”, she says. “It’s a form of despair and a way of not feeling guilty about my baser side.”

Lena Kitsopoulou, who trained at the Karolos Koun Greek Art Theater (“Theatro Technis”), cut her teeth on the Amore Theater stage at the invitation of director Yorgos Houvardas. He would go on (as artistic director of the National Theater of Greece) to give Kitsopoulou her first major break as a writer and director, with 2009’s “M.A.I.R.O.U.L.A.” starring Maria Protopappa. There followed a bold adaptation of Grigorios Xenonopoulos’ “Hail Bride” (Greek Art Theater, 2012), a biting satire titled “Athanasios Diakos – The Return” (Athens Festival, 2012), and a deconstructive take on Lorca’s “Blood Wedding” (Athens Festival, 2014).

Four works by Kitsopoulou – “Hail Bride”, “Blood Wedding”, “Little Red Riding Hood – First Blood”, and “A Day Just Like Any Other Day… Or the Futility of Living” – have all been presented at the Théâtre Saint-Gervais Genève; “Little Red Riding Hood” has also presented as part of Théâtre de la Ville’s Chantiers d’Europe international festival program. In the winter of 2016, she created an unorthodox adaptation of “Hedda Gabbler” for Theater Oberhausen in Germany.

In October 2016, Kitsopoulou presented a first version of the work “Antigone – Lonely Planet” at Olympic Tower in New York as part of the four day “Antigone Now” festival organized by the Onassis Cultural Center New York. In the work, four skiers give a lecture on Sophocles’ heroine in which they identify the difficulties and risks they face in their work, their fear in the face of natural phenomena, and their existential angst with the characters and plots that appear in the play “Antigone”.

Sophocles likely presented his “Antigone” in 442 BCE, at the Great Dionysia festival. Considered one of the greatest works of ancient literature, it draws on the Theban Cycle of Greek mythology to explore the relentless battle that breaks out between moral codes and the laws of State when Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, takes it upon herself to give her brother, Polyneices, a proper burial, in explicit defiance of a decree by the new king of Thebes, Creon.

“Antigone – Lonely Planet” is Lena Kitsopoulou’s second major collaboration with Onassis Stegi. In the spring of 2014, she presented a subversive take on the Brothers Grimm fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood - The First Blood”, which dripped with American splatter and Greek rebetiko. She was also a leading cast member in “The Cherry Orchard” directed by Nikos Karathanos, a work presented on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage in 2015.

A group of people, reminiscent of an ancient tragedy chorus, talk to the audience about their own personal tragedies as individuals but also about coherence and aggregates and how they relate to the story of Antigone. The dramatis personae identify their occupation and personal hardship with Sophocles’ play in an absurd way. This, on a first level, makes the play appear comic. But the madness of the contemporary individual, even the notion that one’s personal tragedy is greater than anyone else’s eventually unfolds in front of the audience really tragic personages, either because these particular people experience themselves as tragic or because ultimately every one of us is, one way or the other, a tragic being in this life, if only because of our daily contact with the idea of death. The loneliness of the contemporary individual, when called upon, like Antigone, to make a vital decision, one’s pain when forced, like Creon, to part with one’s child, our own dilemmas, our lost adolescence, our fears concerning God, everything we believe or disbelieve in transforms us on stage into Creons, Antigones, Haemons and occasionally into a homogeneous aggregate, into a ‘chorus’ of the planet, with common phobias and woes. The play attempts to speak about ancient tragedy and the myth of Antigone in particular, in the way they do on TV, where people pontificate about everything, express opinions on every subject and are all conceited, clueless, tragic and alone. But I think that you can eventually spot ancient tragedy heroes even in the sleaziest TV reality show. It is from this sleazy angle that the play attempts, through a lecture of identically attired people, to present itself as a contemporary ancient tragedy, i.e. as the loneliness of the individuals that attempt in vain to connect to another person, through love, or family or democracy and ultimately these notions are crushed because what always prevails is this huge personal, Ego which relates to nothing. This small dot that every one of is in the universe, this is our lonely planet. Our selves that we all carry like a cross. Which is what Antigone and Creon are.
—Lena Kitsopoulou