On Saturday, 19th October 2019, The Croatian National Theatre (HNK) in Zagreb, Croatia inovativelly presented premiere of famous philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s Antigona, directed by the German/Croatian theatre director and activist Angela Richter, thus positioning itself at the top of European theatres.

In the first 20 minutes the play is frontal multimedia and then it becomes a total work of art, introducing the surprising performance art of the choir characters from the audience: randomly judging from the left, right and back balcony, as well as from the audience parterre. Choir characters were accompanied by a spotlight and a video camera with simultaneous projection.

The auditive, musical part of the play was impressively fitting into visual multimedia.

Firstly Žižek adhered to the classic content of the tragedy, but then technically and  humorously by „flashback“ restrospection he examines three possible, elaborated solutions: in addition to the classic ending, Žižek recognizes a rigid or fundamentalist actuality, and finally he directly questions political thinking and leader’s responsibility. Appearing personally as a huge projection, Zizek harnessed the holistic and existentialist potential, like the great creator of proposed trinity (thesis-antithesis-synthesis).

Which of the three versions is the correct one?! The prophet Tiresias concludes that only in solitude by stopping the buzz of the world, we stop the chaos.

Still, the impression of over-controlling the play remains, it lacks the kind of „camp“ freedom, performative anarchy, although there were rhythmically impressive experimental audio-visual breaks in the play directed by Angela Richter! In my oppinion this could be achieved with a deeper and greater momentum towards the real audience, not filmed before the play, including all audio-visual risks.

Ph.D Vesna Srnic

 

 

 

MV