Antigone [not quite/quiet]: adaptation, the anarchive and afterness

Abstract

This article focuses, from an insider perspective, on a contemporary South African production that was a response to Sophocles’ Antigone, performed at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town in 2019. The production was titled: Antigone (not quite/quiet) and formed part of the Reimagining Tragedy in Africa and the Global South (ReTAGS) research project. The author is credited as the director of the production. The article provides a detailed discussion of the production dramaturgy and the strategy of adaptation used, and argues that this strategy is different from previous adaptations of ancient Greek tragedy that the author has produced since the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994. The article relates this strategy of adaptation to the anarchive following Jacques Derrida. It then goes on to discuss the production in relation to ideas of afterness and metamorphosis with reference to Ovid and Franz Kafka.