In Euripides’ Phoenician Women, produced around 410 BCE, actor’s lyric takes on a role of unprecedented importance in the shaping of plot and in the development of character, counterposed to and to some extent replacing choral lyric. Antigone, Jocasta, and Oedipus – all singing characters – are inextricably bound up in the ruin of their house. Three of the play’s four scenes of actor’s lyric feature Antigone; through song Euripides traces her progression from a sheltered maiden to a distraught mourner and finally to a mature woman who takes charge of her own and her father’s fate. Euripides here experiments with monody not only as a structural device to shape plot and create meaning but also as a means for the development of a complex female figure through the presentation of her evolving emotional state.

This chapter explores in particular the 'greek presence' in the small organon, as manifested in the form of greek tragedy and/or its theorist aristotle. This is embedded within a broader analysis of this key work as a fundamenal contribution to theatre theory. New archival material in the form of brecht's type-written inserts into his personal copy of aristotle's 'poetics' is published for the first time and discussed in detail.

The significance of the model book, which developed out of the 1948 production of the antigone, far exceeds its immediate context. Like the production which it is based on, it is an exemplary case study for brecht's novel kind of theatre in its dramaturgical, actorial and directorial dimensons. The diverging format of the two editions of the model book and their significance are discussed. The chapter concludes with a plea for re-inventing the model book format.

This chapter discusses the autobiogrpahical background to brecht's 'greek year' 1948 in switzerland, seeing it as a year of 'krisis' (='decision').

An integrative concluding exploration of the book's key themes and insights which is also designed to function as a stand-alone piece.

Key themes of this book are introduced. This includes brecht's position relative to the western dramatic tradition, the structure of this book and the range of brecht's exposure to (greek) tragedy. The notions of genealogy and analogue are introduced. The chapter concludes with a case study, brecht's use of masks.

This chapter is a detailed analysis of brecht's 'the antigone of sophocles' and its first production (directed by brecht himself) in chur (switzerland) in 1948. Ruth beralau's set of colour photographs, which is published here for the first time in its entirety, is fully integrated into the analysis. The play's reception history is also considered.

Ostensibly a translation of Sophocles' Antigone, Anne Carson's Antigonick (2012) is in fact a genre-bending, hybrid construct which defies boundaries. It is a crossbreed between translation, adaptation, and rewriting, as well as between text and image. It incorporates a great variety of discourse types and literary or paraliterary genres, and amalgamates hand-inked blocks of text with original colour drawings (by Bianca Stone). This 'transtextual palimpsest' engages in a fascinating dialogue not only with Sophocles' Antigone but also with its translators and commentators, as well as with authors as disparate as Hegel, Beckett, Brecht, Butler, and Irigaray. At times provocative, stirring, funny, and often all of the above, Carson's Antigonick asks us to push the boundaries of genre, textuality, and visuality towards a new synthesis, which may capture something of the unity of speech, visuality, music, and movement that Greek drama managed to achieve.

In 2015, Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre staged a highly controversial adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. The critical reception could not have been more polarised and was seemingly entirely split down gendered lines. This chapter, written by the author of (and an actor in) that adaptation, provides both a personal account and academic theorisation of the production. Analysing the context of the Malthouse Antigone, the chapter explores issues of cultural appropriation, national identity, gender performativity, and creative pragmatism that underpinned the creation of the show and contributed to the controversy surrounding it. The chapter also proposes a pragmatic twist to the tendency of classical reception studies to attribute intentionality to production decisions. Whereas analysis of the finished production can give a false sense of a secure directorial intention, analysis of the process demonstrates that the journey from page to stage is constantly at the mercy of contingencies, collaborations, and compromises.

This chapter explores Wagner’s use of Greek myth as a framework for his operatic reform and as the basis for key aspects of plot and character in the Ring cycle. Providing an overview of the composer’s lifelong fascination with the Greeks, it highlights Wagner’s aim of creating a new form of “music drama” that would capture the spirit of ancient Greek tragedy while constituting its rebirth in a modern Germanic guise. It further calls attention to parallels between the Ring and elements of Greek tragedy but shifts the customary focus away from Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Prometheus trilogy toward the Oedipus myth and specifically the character of Antigone, who bears several similarities to Brünnhilde. Wagner’s apparent use of Antigone as a model for Brünnhilde reflects his understanding of both figures as redemptive agents who, through a self-effacing and thoroughly human kind of love, enact a symbolic destruction of the state and thereby point the way toward a more utopian future characterized by a downfall of the existing world order along with a return of the cultural and artistic significance of myth.

Chapter Two provides an original interpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone, arguing that the play illustrates the tragic consequences of perceiving law exclusively in its human or divine form. It builds on and diverges from the Hegelian reading of the play, drawing out the role of hubris, as characterized by Creon’s myopic view of law as human fiat, as well as Antigone’s exclusive concern for the gods’ commands, and shows that either form of hubris results in tragedy. To approach justice, the law must instead be conceptualized as not only human and divine but also as natural, for it is natural law that could have mediated the divine and human aspects of the law that clash in the persons of Antigone and Creon. The prudential voices of Teiresias and Haemon suggest how this natural law of justice could inform both Creon’s and Antigone’s views of law and avert the tragedy with which the play necessarily ends. This chapter also takes up the issue of agonistic politics, which some have interpreted the play to illustrate, and shows the peril of this view of politics for religious freedom.