Antigone

Of the many variations on the story of ''Antigone'', without a doubt the most famous is the one by Sophocles. However, Anouilh's version is at the same time closest to Sophocles' and a reaction to it. The champion of European modern theatre had always followed Greek tragedians in his dramatic oeuvre, managing to write texts which have been revealing themselves to us today as contemporary versions of classical tragedy and as its commentary. It is the case with Antigone as well, where the Chorus pronounces the lines such as: ''The spring has been strung up. The rest will develop itself. That's what's so pleasant in a tragedy...'', ensuring a kind of theatre within a theatre, a performance that is not pretending not to be a performance, but, on the contrary, emphasizing the fact. This is precisely the space that interests the Macedonian director Aleksandar Popovski the most. For the past few years he has been directing equally throughout Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia and further, whereas in Gavella Theatre he has so far staged the multi-award winning and year in, year out successfully performed ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', by Shakespeare, as well as Ibsen's ''Peer Gynt''. With Anouilh's ''Antigone'' he will try to move even further in questioning the possibilities, meanings and communicativeness of classical theatre today, when, surely, we relive many of the doubts which Antigone, Creon, Ismene, Haemon or the Nanny express in their lines, through their eternal conflicts...