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Directed by Paul Lamb Armidale Playhouse - 1975 By Sophocles. English version by E F Watling. SETTING Before the royal palace of Thebes in Boeotia. SYNOPSIS When Sophocles began work on Antigone in about 442 BC he was drawing on sources already shrouded in antiquity, already existing in more than one version. From a narrative point of view Antigone was the last of the great poet’s three Theban plays, although it was composed many years before the others, King Oedipus and Oedipus at Colonus. After the abdication of Oedipus and his eventual departure from Thebes (preparatory to his passing from mortal sight at Colonus), Creon became King. The sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices, did nothing to ease their father’s sufferings, rather, even before his departure, they conspired individually to oust Creon and usurp the throne. Eteocles gained greater popular support and Polyneices fled to Argos, where he married the daughter of King Adastrus and later recruited seven champions to lead an Argive attack on seven-gated Thebes. In the battle that followed, the invaders were routed and the brothers fell, each at the other’s hand. For the third time Creon, whose sister had been Jocasta, mother and wife of Oedipus, assumed power. The accursed house of Labdacus, grandfather of Oedipus and grandson of that Cadmus who sowed the dragon’s teeth and founded Thebes, was now represented only be Anitgone and her sister Ismene. CAST Antigone, daughter of King Oedipus: Judith Morsley CREW Design: Lenore Crocker
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