By Ciera Terry
Starting at 7:30 p.m. next Thurs. Nov. 20, through Sun. 23, at 2 p.m., the Cameron University Department of Art, Music and Theatre Arts will present its “Resilience and Reverie,” with Ian Johnston’s 2005 translation of “Antigone,” the classic Greek tragedy by Sophocles.
Dr. Natalie McCabe is one of three professors who decide what plays the theater performs.
“We do four plays a year, usually a contemporary, a classical, a musical and lately a student-driven or student-written production, like a festival of new plays that they’ve written. The three of us usually bring ideas for productions that we’re interested in, ones that the students have expressed interest in, and ones that we feel like would benefit student learning,” she said.
The students hadn’t previously gotten the opportunity to do a Greek adaptation.
“So that’s why we’re doing Greek this year. We try to consider the manpower, basically so we have enough students to reasonably do the production” She said.
“Antigone” is a play that speaks truth to injustice.
“It’s the ancient Ancient Greek play. She’s (Antigone) the daughter of Oedipus. And so still dealing with that, the curse, essentially, of them trying to avoid self-fulfilling that prophecy.” she said. “This play begins right when Antigone’s brothers have fought against each other. One is allowed to be buried with ceremonial rights, and one is not.
And in a world where gods are nearby and real for these people in this mythological story, that doesn’t sit well with Antigone because it goes against what the gods say to do for your family,” she said.
The production of the play has been promising.
“It’s a large cast, larger than normally I would do for what we call a straight play, meaning it’s not a musical. But it doesn’t require a large run crew or anything like that, so we’re able to be more inclusive of students who aren’t theater majors,” she said,
BK Hidalgo, a part of the chorus for “Antigone,” only recently stepped into the theater scene.
“I’ve been in theater for like, three months now. I honestly came in, like just happy to just be here, but it’s been a lot of fun getting into my role and everything,” she said.
The cast of “Antigone” have worked hard on rehearsal the past couple months.
“There were a lot of monologues and a lot of complicated words because it was translated, but it’s been a lot of hard work, and we would appreciate that kind of recognition,” she said.