Intercultural Adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone: Antigone Mania by Rabijita Gogoi
Subrat Jyoti Neog*
Abstract
Among the recent adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone is Antigone Mania, an Assamese language production directed by Rabijita Gogoi and presented by Jirsong Theatre of Assam in Northeast India. The cultural disparities between Eastern and Western contexts lead to significant modifications in the depiction of conflicts and characterization from the original play. Consequently, Antigone Mania transcends a mere translation of Sophocles’ text, emerging instead as a distinctive creative reinterpretation replete with innovative possibilities. This essay examines how director Rabijita Gogoi has reshaped Sophocles’ original work through her unique performance praxis, resulting in a contemporary text that speaks to current social and cultural dynamics. Long before Gogoi’s rendition, Prafulladatta Goswami and Satya Prasad Barua had adapted Sophocles’ Antigone into Assamese. This essay provides a comparative analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone and adaptations by Rabijita Gogoi, Prafulladatta Goswami, and Satya Prasad Barua, emphasizing the theme of interculturalism and the varying interpretations that arise from different cultural contexts.
Keywords: adaptation, performance text, Indian theatre, chorus
One story gives birth to another new story. As noted by Linda Hutcheon, “Art is derived from other art, stories are born of other stories, and there is a reason for the possibility as well as for the necessity of adaptation” (3). Like other literary texts, Greek dramatic literature has been presented in different styles and new interpretations in a variety of media. The plays of the Greek playwright Sophocles have also been broken down and presented in new ways in various media, such as cinema and stage, in order to provide new perspectives to the reader / spectator.
Sophocles is believed to have written about 120 plays, but only seven have survived to this day. Among the most significant is Antigone, which is thought to have been composed and performed around 440 BC. This play is the last installment in Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, which also features Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. Antigone was first performed in multiple languages in the early sixteenth century, and over the years, various dramatic adaptations of the play have emerged worldwide.
The book Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, edited by Erin Mee and Helen Foley, concentrates exclusively on Antigone’s performances and examines what happens to Sophocles’ play as it is altered and (re)produced internationally. The book focuses on how the material is transformed in various ways by social, political, historical and cultural contexts, and how audiences and artists engage with it in various social communities, in places such as as Argentina, the Congo, Finland, Haiti, Japan, and the United States.
In Manipur, a state in Northeast India, two exceptional performances of Antigone have been staged, one in 1995, under the direction of Nongthombam Premchand, and another in 2004, under the direction of Kshetrimayum Jugindro Singh. These performances explore the tension between national stability and regional autonomy, as a way to express, celebrate, and showcase Manipuri culture while also creating a regional identity that contrasts with, and often opposes, the national identity and culture imposed by the Indian government on the people of Manipur. Consequently, they challenge the federal government, both politically and culturally (Mee 107-14).
Two noteworthy Indian theatre productions of Antigone are Work in Progress: A Nationalism Project, directed by scenographer Deepan Sivaraman, and The Antigone Project, directed by Anuradha Kapur and Ein Lall. The first is the artist’s response to the post-Godhra riot of 2002, which many have referred to as a pogrom. The second, which prompts readings from the Indian Constitution, criticizes the distortion of the image of contemporary India (Sengupta 21-45).
Koushik Sen’s directorial venture of Antigone, staged in 2016, is another noteworthy Indian rendition of Sophocles’ play.The most precious human relationships are shown in this Bengali drama, along with how the equation changes depending on the situation. Hansgunther Heyme’s Antigone was staged in Kolkata; the director Indianized Sophocles’ Antigone. Bengali writer Alokranjan Dasgupta translated Antigone into Bengali. In 1979, Heyme directed the play with innovative theatrical language (55-8). Perhaps inspired by Heyme’s production, K.N. Pannikar, a well-known Indian theatre director, directed another production of Antigone at Avadh Theatre in the 1980s (Fischer-Lichte, 281). Ratan Thiyam (1948), an Indian playwright and theatre director, and also one of the leading figures of the theatre of roots movement in Indian theatre, adapted Jean Anouilh’s Antigone as Lengshonnei in 1986. Ratan Thiyam’s Lengshonnei was written in the Meitei language. In Assam, a state of Northeast India, Rabijita Gogoi’s(1972)[1] directorial venture Antigone Mania, an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone, was staged by the Jirsong theatre group in 2023 at Guwahati, Assam.[2]
One of the most recent adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone is Slavoj Zizek’s Antigone, which provides three possible endings to Antigone. In the context of Žižek’s play, H. Alwan writes in his paper “The Study of Modern Adaptations of Antigone”:
“Sophocles Antigone is a rebel but not a revolutionary……whereas Zizek’s Antigone is portrayed as a revolutionary character from Zizek’s point of view, challenging the established social and political order. That is why the play is understood as a story of radical political struggle. We saw that although Žižek’s play neglects Antigone and discovers the inherent mistakes in challenging the establishment, Antigone remains at its core a call for revolutionary-minded individuals to take action” (13).
Although he criticizes the character, Žižek portrays Antigone as a revolutionary figure and positions the play as an example of radical political struggle. Among the many adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone, Zizek’s production is distinctive in his presentation of the character of Antigone as a revolutionary being, similar to that of Rabijita Gogoi, who also presents the character of Antigone as a revolutionary rather than a rebel.
Rabijita’s representation is shaped by three main techniques: retention, omission and modification. She preserves the core plot of Antigone while incorporating numerous omissions in her portrayal. Prior to Rabijita Gogoi’s creation of Antigone Mania, two Assamese plays, inspired by Sophocles’ Antigone, had already been written, one by Prafulladatta Goswami and the other by Satya Prasad Barua. Prafulladatta Goswami translated Antigone from Lewis Campbell’s English version and occasionally drew on poetic translations by Gilbert Murray.
In Sophocles’ Antigone, a conflict arises between the two sons of King Oedipus, Polynices and Eteocles, who both perish in battle. As a result, Creon ascends to the throne of Thebes. He orders Polynices’ body to be left unburied on the battlefield, allowing crows and dogs to scavenge it, and proclaims that anyone who attempts to bury the so-called traitor will face severe punishment. Antigone, Polynices’ sister, defies Creon’s decree and gives her brother a proper burial. For this act of rebellion, Creon captures Antigone and sentences her to die in a cave. The prophet Tiresias warns Creon that his treatment of Antigone is unjust, but Creon dismisses his counsel. Antigone is betrothed to Haemon, Creon’s son, who ultimately takes his own life in despair over his father’s choices. Creon’s wife, Eurydice, also succumbs to suicide. In the end, Creon is left to mourn his actions. The play illustrates the clash of values: reason and civil order, represented by Creon, versus faith and emotional conviction, embodied by Antigone. It explores themes of individual versus state, conscience versus law, and moral versus human law. Rabijita Gogoi offers a fresh interpretation and style to this classic tale.
In Sophocles’ play, Antigone and her sister are seen arguing about whether to bury Polynices’ body. The chorus then depicts the conflict between Polynices and Eteocles, their death, and Creon’s appearance as king. Although the plot of Prafulladatta Goswami’s Antigone begins in the same way as in Sophocles’ play, it soon diverges from the original. Satya Prasad Barua issues a lengthy stage direction in which he describes the stage position of the various characters; only then does the chorus mention Creon’s kingship and the relationship between Antigone and Haemon.
Much like Satya Prasad Barua, Rabijita Gogoi departs from the original and creates a new Antigone. In Gogoi’s Antigone Mania, the story of Sophocles’ Antigone is told briefly in the background before the stage lights up, and a pantomime scene follows, enriched with the cries of the people. Next, a change of scene is created by lighting, and King Creon appears on stage. The scene which features the argument between Antigone and Ismene is presented in Antigone Mania only after a long dialogue which justifies King Creon’s decision regarding Polynices.
The chorus plays a significant role in Sophocles’ work. In the Assamese adaptation of Antigone by Satya Prasad Barua and Prafulldatta Goswami, the chorus serves as a central character. However, in the play Antigone Mania, there is no traditional chorus. Instead, Rabijita Gogoi conveys the play’s themes through public dialogue, illustrating how individuals from various backgrounds interpret the events of Antigone. She illustrates a scene in which individuals gathered in a salon engage in discussions following Antigone’s capture by Creon. The play features another moment where the public reads newspapers and deliberates Antigone’s situation from multiple perspectives. Through these innovative scenes, Gogoi reinterprets the original literary work as a contemporary performance piece. From a performance perspective, Rabijita’s rendition of Antigone is exceptional.
On the other hand, Satya Prasad Barua’s Antigone showcases a more sophisticated performance style as compared that of Prafulldatta Goswami. Barua’s adaptation was crafted with a focus on the performance elements, as evidenced by its detailed stage directions. Below is an example of the stage directions from Satya Prasad Barua’s Antigone:
‘‘Antigone enters. Ismene also runs after Antigone. The stage is blue instead of bright. Slowly the lights brighten again to signal the passing of time…at the top of the stairs stands Creon’’ (Deka 707).
Rabijita Gogoi, however, has omitted several key elements from Sophocles’ original play. For example, the love story between Haemon, Creon’s son, and Antigone, is absent in Antigone Mania. Additionally, the character of Tiresias, the religious leader and prophet, is not depicted in her adaptation, nor is the suicide of Creon’s wife, Eurydice, included. Rabijita chooses instead to focus on Antigone’s revolutionary spirit in a more realistic interpretation.
Adapting a literary work into a performance text is a challenging and demanding process. This transformation, known as adaptation, involves significant appropriation and assimilation. For a theatre director, this task can be particularly daunting, as they must overcome numerous obstacles to translate a story successfully from the page to the stage. The world is already familiar with the story of Antigone as chosen by the director; retelling a well-known story is one of the most challenging tasks for any adapter because they must compete with other adaptations. An adapter therefore retells the tale from a fresh perspective that is entirely original.
The process of integrating foreign elements of a source text into a particular area of the target culture by introducing locations, local customs or behaviors familiar to the target readers or audiences is known as domestication. Thus, as Venuti claims, “the foreign text is rewritten in domestic dialects and discourses, registers and styles, and this results in the production of textual effects that signify only in the history of the domestic language and culture” (471).
Different examples of connecting the foreign to a specific domestic region using indicators like dialectical variants, attire, cuisine, customs, and practices may be found in Antigone Mania. By means of such markers, people are better able to identify with foreign characters, and they are also instilled with a sense of community and shared identity.
Another instance of domestication is the use of indigenous culture to replace foreign geographical areas or cultures; these cultural elements provide a foundation for the adapter to construct a self, that is to say, a locally defined identity.
According to Newmark, food is “for many the most sensitive and important expression of national culture” (97), making it another important indicator of domestication. Many nations display a variety of eating customs based on social class, geographic location, educational attainment and religious beliefs. Through exploring the process of domestication, this study demonstrates how adaptations of Antigone into Assamese reinvigorated Sophocles in the local context by reconstructing the canonical Antigone within the culturally and contextually distinct Assam tradition.
Domestication is often accomplished by substituting local names for foreign proper nouns in the source text. When names fulfil their fundamental purpose of referentiality, they become memorable and culturally unique entities. An excess of unfamiliar phonological sequences and a large number of foreign names may serve as linguistic barriers. Adapters modify foreign names based on the phonetic rules of the target language so that the audience can recognize them, thus facilitating the audience’s familiarity and capacity to remember.
However, some historians strongly object to free translations that domesticate the foreign place, character names and themes while preserving the narrative of the original writings. They consider it a “worthless exercise” (V 73). They claim that the inability of the writer to match their ambition to create an original work in their own tongue is the basis for such creations. These historians contend that the art of a foreign nation teaches us about its history, culture, sociopolitical circumstances, customs, institutions and literary tendencies. These adaptations hinder native readers’ understanding by distancing them from the socio-political and cultural contexts of these nations. By assigning indigenous character names and settings to foreign literary works, they create an imagined and distorted universe. As Manju V.V. states, “Duranta Dussanka (Tragic Suspicion) by K.K. Pillai is a 287-page adaptation of Othello, structured into twenty-two chapters. Unlike many adaptations, Duranta Dussanka does not change the names of characters or places; it maintains the European Christian characters and settings from the original text” (74).
The characters’ names from the original texts have been preserved by Rabijita Gogoi and also by Pillai. Only partial domestication can be observed in Antigone Mania. Although partial domestication acknowledges the other’s presence, it also fosters an understanding of local conditions. Despite the presence of the original foreign characters, Antigone Mania incorporates several new elements to bring the foreign setting closer to home. A variety of domestication tactics are introduced in the plot, setting, and characters by the director to make Sophocles’ text more accessible to the Assamese audience. To fit the scene, the attire and appearance are likewise rendered indigenous. The character of Antigone is decorated with local flair, which makes Antigone our familiar Antigone; Rabijita portrays Antigone as a tribal girl. Along with Karbi folk music, the director showcases Karbi[3] culture by means of the character Antigone. Rabijita’s Antigone uses Pinicamflak, a piece of cloth tied around the waist like a Mekhela.[4] The character of Antigone wears Pe-kok, a piece of artistic cloth covering the upper part of the body. A very highly artistic waistband called “Wankok” is also used by Antigone.
The use of regional idioms that capture the social and cultural context of the work’s creation is another way to transplant culture. Many Assamese phrases and idioms are employed in the dialogue between the characters. For instance, when Antigone tried to set Polynices’ body on fire, two guards intervened. At that moment, one guard quoted an Assamese proverb: “ebar sape khale kesuloiku bhay,” which translates to “once bitten, twice shy.” By incorporating various Assamese idioms and phrases, Rabijita adds a local flavor to the foreign text. She also uses the standard Assamese language in the dialogues of the elite and royal characters, while occasionally the voices of the lower classes use dialectal forms of some tribal languages. Occasionally, the dialogues of some of the lower-class characters are presented in an unintelligible language. This innovative use of language adds a uniquely local perspective to the narrative and its characters, highlighting social hierarchies and illustrating the contrast between the elite and the common people. In the old Sanskrit plays, Sanskrit was spoken by the royal characters, while various Prakrit[5] languages were used by common characters.
In Antigone Mania, Rabijita Gogoi insightfully depicts the essence of the play and the characters through the use of language. By employing a contemporizing technique, she illustrates how the Greek tale of Antigone would have developed, had it been set in Assam, Northeast India, in the twenty-first century. The modern socio-political challenges are addressed in the altered text. One of the most interesting parts of Antigone Mania occurs during the fourth scene when the people, reading the newspaper analyze from a novel perspective what happened to Creon and Antigone.
This scene appears to satirize individuals in society who consume news and make grandiose statements but fail to take action. After viewing this scene, spectators are led to raise important questions, such as whether or not the media truly represent the opinions of the public, or whether or not the government is genuinely concerned with the influence of the media.
The following dialogues in the play demonstrate how Rabijita has adapted Sophocles’ Antigone to align with contemporary societal perspectives:
“People (9): Tell me, what does current research have to say on the corpse, the dead body? The most recent research studies suggest that insects form from dead bodies. Research on those insects will show how old the body is… On the one hand, the body is a research resource for our best students…
People (10): What are you saying? The unclaimed dead bodies that remain should either be placed in the morgue or disposed of with the permission of the law. …
People (11): May the legislators hear what we are discussing today They should reconsider the policy they have adopted regarding the body” (Gogoi 13).
Rabijita designed a new scene to express Creon’s frustration which was not available in the original play. Creon’s punishment of Antigone was arbitrary, and even though everyone condemned his act, he ignored them and went about his business. Yet Creon experienced internal conflict regarding his decision and felt disheartened by the offense he committed against the people. Creon’s frustration is beautifully portrayed in Rabijita Gogoi’s play, in a kitchen scene (Scene 10) which does not appear in the original text.
The scene shows Creon entering the kitchen and cooking to celebrate his victory. This joy of Creon is external. At the end of the scene, the frustrated Creon angrily discards the food and creates a huge mess in the kitchen. His reaction carries significant weight, underscoring how the royal family causes hardship for the common people by hosting festivals which are funded by the citizens’ money yet cater to their own desires. The people, tasked with cleaning up the mess left by King Creon, express their frustration, saying, “Are we always going to clean up the royal household’s garbage? I refuse to do it.” The playwright Gogoi illustrates the emergence of a revolutionary spirit through Antigone’s story.
A number of pressing issues such as unemployment and corruption are presented in the play through the narrative of Antigone. As Rabijita Gogoi notes, “I want to re-tell the character of Antigone in a way that fits the contemporary world. I think Antigone has a lot to say about the contemporary world, as she did what the real character could have done at the time” (42).
Antigone Mania opens with a deeply moving incorporation of Karbi folk music, setting a poignant tone as some characters weep in rhythm with the melody. This folk music is also masterfully featured in the final scene, where, similar to the opening scene, several characters express their sorrow through tears.
Between the first and last scenes, the story of Antigone is revealed. The first and last scenes are presented in the same way, thus suggesting that the essence of human life moves in a circle. By keeping the first and last scenes the same and inserting the story of Antigone in the middle, Rabijita Gogoi creates a circle, thus showing that there are many Antigones in the circle of our society. As a result of social, political and cultural change that occurs across the years, new forms of a revolutionary Antigone are born within each new society. Perhaps it is for this reason that Rabijita’s Antigone says, “Again and again I am born in Yemen, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Palestine… I grow like grass whenever human rights are violated and wherever abuses occur in the form of gender and racial discrimination…”. Like Rabijita Gogoi, Satya Prasad Baruah also creates a circle to present the plot of the play: he started his Antigone by depicting two guards playing cards, and he ended the play like the first scene, with guards who were playing cards.
The two meaningful pantomime performances of Antigone Mania also occur in the first and last scenes of the play. In the first scene, the screaming crowd wants to come together, but they are separated. The first scene seems to suggest how the politics of separatism penetrates society and prevents people from joining together as one unified community. As the story of Antigone progresses, it becomes clear that the first pantomime scene is related to the content of the play. Similarly, in the last pantomime scene, the screaming characters are separated.
The play concludes with the characters rising and coming together. While the opening scene depicts the crowd divided, the final scene calls for unity, culminating in a hopeful resolution by the playwright. This contrast between the bleakness of the first scene and the optimistic symbolism of the last enhances the performance quality of Antigone Mania. Ultimately, Rabijita Gogoi’s Antigone Mania stands out as a unique artistic production, successfully connecting Sophocles’ Antigone to contemporary issues through an innovative performance style.
Endnotes
[1] Rabijita Gogoi completed a Master’s degree in Theatre Arts from India’s prestigious National School of Drama, New Delhi, in 1997. Over the years, Rabijita has directed more than 45 plays performed in various Indian languages, including Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, and other North-eastern dialects like Karbi, Bodo, and Nagamese (Nagaland), as well as English. Her directorial repertoire includes works by renowned writers such as Sophocles, Harold Pinter, Joi Sankar Prasad, Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad, Rabindranath Tagore, Sisir Kumar Das, Mamoni Roisom Goswami, Marguerite Duras, and Mohan Rakesh. Rabijita has also ventured into devised performances, creating concept-based works like Gaantha – the First Text, Technicolour Dreams (Nagaland), Technicolour Dream 2 (Nagaland), Memsahab Prithvi (New Delhi), Untitled (Kerala), and Untitled-3 (Assam). She has translated plays such as Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, Marguerite Durus’s La Musica and J. M. Synge’s The Riders to the Sea from English to the Assamese language. These three plays are included in the anthology titled Nikhar Ragini and Other Plays, published in Assamese. Rabijita Gogoi has actively participated in international theatre projects, such as Miwa, an Indo-Japan collaboration project, in Japan (1998), Unbearable Dreams-Asia Meets Asia Chapter 3 & 5 in Japan (2005-08), and Theatre Sutra with the British Council at Edinburgh, Scotland (2008). She has also conducted over 25 theatre production process and acting mentorship programs in India, including a two-week acting workshop in Tokyo, Japan in 2014 focusing on the Indian Method of Acting.
[2] Established in 1995, Jirsong Theatre has been a prominent theatre organization dedicated to the enrichment and advancement of the theatrical arts in Assam, India. Registered under the Societies Registration Act in 1999, the organization has consistently demonstrated a commitment to fostering creativity, promoting regional voices and empowering women in the field of theatre. The mission has been to create a platform for diverse theatrical expressions, encourage innovation, and engage in meaningful dialogue on theatre, society and language of expression. Over the years, Jirsong Theatre has produced a diverse range of plays, including notable works such as Gaantha – The First Text, Antigone Mania, Nikhar Ragini, Rajai Hukum Dishe, and Untitled. Jirsong is one of the pioneering theatre groups to create performances in indigenous languages in 1999 with their production Rangpherpi Rangbe in Karbi Language. The reach of Jirsong Theatre extends beyond regional borders with the “Manchayatra – Theatre on wheel,” a unique initiative that involved traveling across India’s northeast to connect communities through the production of Gaantha – the First Text. It is the first initiative of this kind. Jirsong’s Production Gaantha – The First Text is recognized as the first postmodern Theatre production in Assam. The groundbreaking “SWAYAM – Women Director’s National Theatre Festival & Women Conclave” in 2015 and 2023 marked a significant milestone, and was the first event to create a dialogue of this nature in Northeast India. This festival brought together women directors from Punjab, Delhi, Manipur and other regions, providing a platform for approximately 150 women artists, entrepreneurs, social workers, and writers to exchange ideas and celebrate their contributions to the arts. Digital Innovation: Adapting to the evolving landscape, Jirsong Theatre, embraced digital theatre with Untitled-1 in 2020, showcasing a commitment to staying relevant and accessible in the contemporary world of performing arts.
[3] Ethnically the Karbis belong to the Mongoloid group and linguistically they belong to the Tibeto-Burman group. The original home of the various people speaking Tibeto-Burman languages was in western China near the Yang-Tee-Kiang and the Howang-ho rivers, and from these places, they went down the courses of the Brahmaputra, the Chindwin, and the Irrawaddy and entered India and Burma. The Karbis, along with others, entered Assam from Central Asia in one of the waves of migration. The Karbis, listed as the Mikirs in the Constitution Order, Govt. of India, constitute an important ethnic group in the hill areas of Assam. However, they never refer to themselves as Mikir but rather as Karbi and sometimes Arleng, which literally means a man. Although at the present time they inhabit the Karbi Anglong District, some Karbi inhabited pockets are also found in the North Cachar Hills, Kamrup, Morigaon, Nagaon and Sonitpur Districts.
[4] The traditional dress of Assamese women, known as the Mekhela Chador, is distinguished by its grace, cultural importance and distinctive draping design. Made from high-quality materials such as cotton, Muga silk, Paat silk or Eri silk, it is a two-piece costume that is frequently embellished with elaborate handwoven patterns and designs. The constituent parts of the Mekhela Chador are the following:
- Mekhela: The lower garment that has a cylindrical skirt-like shape. The pleated garment wraps around the lower body and is tucked into the waist.
- Chador: The long piece of fabric that is worn on top. It is usually tucked into the mekhela and draped over one shoulder of the upper body.
[5] Prakrita is a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. Prākṛta means natural. Prakrits were the regional informal spoken languages of people, whereas Sanskrit was the standardized formal language used for literary, official, and religious purposes across the Indian kingdoms of the subcontinent.
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*Subrat Jyoti Neog is Associate Professor, Dept. of Assamese, Tezpur University, Assam, India; his areas of interest are literature, theatre, and film studies. He served as the jury member of the highly acclaimed Indian Panorama of International Film Festival of India, 2021 and was awarded with the prestigious Assam State Film Award, 2023, by the government of Assam, in the category of Best Writing on Cinema. Subrat Jyoti Neog is also a playwright; his plays have been performed on All India Radio, Guwahati. He has also written 18 screenplays for Television fiction series, and he has directed one documentary film.
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