European tragedy as requiem, ruin, revenant in Magnet Theatre’s Antigone (not quite/quiet) and Thomas Köck’s antigone. a requiem

Abstract

Offering a comparative case study of two different postcolonial responses to Sophocles’s tragedy Antigone from European and African perspectives, this article brings together Magnet Theatre’s Cape Town production of Antigone (not quite/quiet) with Thomas Köck’s play antigone. a requiem that premiered almost simultaneously in September 2019 in Hannover, Germany. Both re-examine Sophocles’s tragedy to come to terms with their respective colonial histories and postcolonial challenges: while Magnet Theatre engages with the ancient material to reflect on the difficulties of fully overcoming the legacies of colonialism in post-apartheid South Africa, Köck explores the afterlives of ‘thebaneuropean’ colonialism as manifested in current European migration policies. Comparing the adaptation principle of Magnet Theatre’s ‘ruinous’, fragmenting approach to the literary and theatrical archive of European colonialism to Köck’s postdramatic recomposition of Antigone as a requiem for migrant deaths and for European tragedy itself, the article discusses the productions in their respective contexts of political protest movements. Drawing on cultural theory of ungrievability, domopolitics, and postcolonial shame, it explores the central functions of the chorus – indecisive Europeans on the verge of anagnorisis in Köck’s play, the post-apartheid South African generation caught between rage and disillusionment in Magnet Theatre’s production – and as well as the prominence of Ismene as a problematic survivor figure in both adaptations.

Keywords:

• tragedy as travelling form
• tragic re-assemblage
• postcolonial adaptation
• Greek tragedy
• migration crisis
• Post-Apartheid theatre
• ungrievability
• tragedy as protest form

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 This article was written as a fellow of the interdisciplinary research project ‘Traveling Forms’ at the University of Konstanz, generously funded by the NOMIS Foundation. For our inspiring conversations, my thanks go to all members of the project and the participants of the conference ‘Traveling Tragedy’ organized by our group in autumn 2021. Special thanks to Mark Fleishman for providing me with the unpublished script and performance video of Antigone (not quite/quiet) and for many productive conversations about postcolonial tragedy during his fellowship in Konstanz. This article reworks two of my earlier publications: Christina Wald, ‘Migrant Deaths and European Revenants in Thomas Köck’s antigone. a requiem (2019): Sophocles’s Tragedy Recomposed and Decomposed’ Modern Drama 65.4 and Christina Wald, ‘Europas Wiedergänger und die postkoloniale Politik der Toten: Thomas Köcks antigone. ein requiem und Magnet Theatres Antigone (not quite/quiet)’ in Die Politik der Toten, eds. Marcus Llanque and Katja Sarkowsky, Bielefeld: transcript, 2022. I am grateful to the editors for our collaboration and for granting me permission to draw on the material.

2 After its premiere at the Staatstheater Hannover, directed by Marie Bues, antigone. a requiem opened in September 2020 on the Akademietheater stage of the Austrian Burgtheater, directed by Lars-Ole Walburg, and in Mülheim’s Theater an der Ruhr, directed by Simone Thoma. In December 2021, it was produced at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, directed by Franz Xaver Mayr in combination with Wolfram Lotz’s play Die Politiker (The Politicians). In summer 2022, while I am completing this manuscript, three more German productions have been announced for August and September 2002 by Dortmund’s theatre group HER.STORY (directed by Emel Aydo Aydog˘du), the Städtische Bühnen Osnarbrück (directed by Christian Schlüter) and the Ensemble für unpopuläre Freizeitgestaltung (ensemble for unpopular leisure time) in Dornbirn (directed by Stephan Kasimir).

3 See Hardwick and Gillespie as well as Van Weyenberg for seminal discussions on how Antigone was used as instrument of colonization.

4 Köck’s semantically compressed writing style and his extensive use of enjambments and semantic ambiguity make it hard to translate his writing into English. I have therefore included both the German original and my English translation that tries to preserve the rhythm and most of the ambiguities of the original.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NOMIS Foundation's research group “Traveling Forms”.