Open to Public / Antigone in Ferguson at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church
Antigone in Ferguson at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church
Translated and Directed by Bryan Doerries
Music Composed By Phil Woodmore
Free Event
This innovative project fuses dramatic readings by acclaimed actors of Sophocles’ Antigone with live choral musicperformed by a choir of activists, police officers, youth, and concerned citizens from Ferguson and New York City. Each performance culminates in a powerful, audience-driven discussion of race and gender-based violence and social justice.
Featuring a rotating cast of actors, including; Amy Ryan, Chris Noth, Paul Giamatti, Jumaane Williams, Zach Grenier, Kathryn Erbe, Obi Abili, Linda Powell, Josh Hamilton, and David Strathairn.
With the following guest choirs:
R.Evolucion Latina
Brooklyn Interdenominational Chorus
United Voices of Hope
The Guardians
Bethel Gospel Assembly
Abrons Arts
Songs of Solomon
This production is exclusively supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Gospel strains that make the rafters tremble….Viscerally lifts the play into timelessness.
About the play
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Antigone by Sophocles
Sophocles’ Antigone is an ancient play about a teenage girl who wishes to bury her brother, Polyneices, who recently died in a brutal civil war. Creon, the new, untested king, has ruled that Polyneices’ body must remain above the earth, and that anyone who breaks this law will be put to death. Antigone openly and intentionally defies his edict, covering her brother’s body with dirt and publicly declaring her allegiance to a higher law, one that transcends that of the state—the law of love. Creon is then forced, by his own political rhetoric, and the by fragile social order that he has barely begun to establish since the civil war, to make an example of his niece, by sentencing her to death. In the process of following through with his own decree, Creon loses everything. At its core, Antigone is a play about what happens when personal conviction and state law clash, raising the question: When everyone is right (or feels justified), how do we avert the violence that will inevitably take place?
Cast Members
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Diamond Jones
Antigone
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Amy Ryan
Ismene/Eurydice
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Chad Coleman
Creon
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Obi Abili
Haemon/Guard/Messenger
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Willie Woodmore
Tiresias
Partners
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This hybrid presentation took place in person at the Toronto Harbourfront Centre Theatre and on Zoom Webinar on September 30, 2023.