"Antigone 2500 Years Later"

The French playwright Jean Anouilh's Antigone, his 1944 interpretation of Sophocles' 2500 year-old story of the daughter of Oedipus, depicts the inherent flaws of any political activity. Sophocles' Antigone was, in part, a response to the need for a democratic state, and Anouilh's text was largely a response to the condition of occupied France in 1942, says director Ianthe Demos.

Four members of the theatrical group, One Year Lease (composed of Vassar students and alumnae) with Tella Storey as a compelling Antigone and Ariane Barbanell as Creon, give a spectacular performance of this wrenching play drenched with existential questions. In the play's highly effective staging, the rest of the characters - those who express their position through inaction - are played by mannequins, their voices projected through a sound system. "In the end," says Demos, "the line between death and the mannequins is obsolete. The message is clear, in a society that rides itself on individualism, mediation and compromise have become unavoidable, the question is resounding: why fight at all?"