From Noble Prize Winner Seamus Heaney
Sophocles' Antigone has proven itself one of literature's most malleable and perpetually relevant texts, and Seamus Heaney reworked it once again in 2004 as THE BURIAL AT THEBES in response to the Iraq war. More specifically, he used the play's state vs personal freedom themes to explore the atmosphere of the early 00s that equated foreign policy dissenters with terrorist sympathisers.
The Irish Rep stage Heaney's play as their first show of 2016, with Charlotte Moore directing. Rebekah Brockman (The Knick) stars as Antigone, who learns that her two brothers have been killed fighting each other in a war. Her uncle, and King of Thebes, Creon, declares one brother a hero, while the other is a traitor to the state, who shall not be granted a proper funeral. Antigone wilfully disobeys the King's orders and sets out to grant him a proper burial, knowing that almost certain death awaits her.