Antigone. Una storia africana

Antigone. An African story springs at the end of a three-year training course consisting in a cycle of meetings/laboratories in Saint Louis, Senegal, from 2011 to 2013, that aimed to develop the planning and artistic abilities of young senegalese people in the theatrical field, enriching the educational path concerning the actor’s work as well as encouraging the development of their organisational and technical proficiency. During the Italian performances, the resident group of six senegalese young actors is joined by a number of non-professional senegalese actors, residing in Italy, that play the Chorus that interacts with Creon and asks to pospone the judgment and death of Antigone.
“Wherever racial discriminations happen, wherever there is conflict, religious intolerance, wherever a minority raises its voice to demand justice”, explains director Massimo Luconi, “Antigone takes on the role of the heroin that challenges totalitarian regimes in the name of universal pietas, a concept which extends to all humanity as a brotherhood, overcoming every boundary as well as every tribal and nationalistic division. Antigone’s story conveys one of the myths that has been cutting through our civilisation for over two millenniums, and that is still deeply and tragically rooted in contemporary Africa.
Upon staging such a symbolic and yet simple and immediate text, I’ve thought of Antigone as a thesis play, dry and solid, set up with the linearity of parabolical and pedagogical theatre, intertwining experiences and influences of avant-garde European theatre with the manners of traditional African theatre”.