Antigone in the Amazon

“Many things are monstrous, but nothing is more monstrous than man.” Such is the wisdom of the most timeless play in the ancient canon, Sophocles’ Antigone. Now this 5th-century BCE Greek play speaks more loudly than ever in Swiss theatre-maker and agitator Milo Rau’s adaptation, which restages Antigone as a global endgame on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Pará, Brazil.

There, the future of humanity is at stake – and with it every form of life on Earth. From a classical story of one woman’s stance against the state emerges a dark song about the dangers of exploiting the land and its people. 

After his attention-grabbing production of Orestes in Mosul, staged in the former capital of the Islamic State, and his film The New Gospel, inspired by the life of Jesus and set in the refugee camps of southern Italy, Rau concludes a trilogy of ancient myths. Described as one of the “most ambitious” (The Guardian), “most controversial” (The New York Times), “most influential” (Die Zeit) and “most interesting” (De Standaard) artists of our time, Rau continues to push the limits of theatre. 

Antigone in the Amazon brings together Indigenous people, activists from Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) and actors from Europe in this stark portrayal of a tragedy that may overwhelm us all.