THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH: THE ANTIGONE OF ARIS ALEXANDROU, A PLAY OF ISLAND DETENTION FROM THE GREEK CIVIL WAR

Abstract

Abstract This article offers a thematic reading of the Antigone play that the Greek poet Aris Alexandrou finished writing in 1951, while pushed into isolation on the prison islands for leftist detainees of the Greek Civil War. It also discusses the 2003 stage production of the play by director Victor Arditti and the State Theatre of Northern Greece. Alexandrou's free adaptation of Sophocles' Antigone delivers the complex other side of the radical resistance that inspired postwar Greek politics and culture. The playwright's political views made him suffer exile within the ‘internal exile’ of his detainment on the prison islands, and the same holds true for his young and idealist protagonist Antigone. Thus the play becomes an essential piece of the less well documented debate between the Greek Left and those pushed out from within. Therefore, too, it has been particularly vulnerable to criticism – or to a fate worse than criticism: oblivion.