• DE

antigone. ein requiem

Thomas Köck

Bodies lie fermenting on Europe's beaches. Washed up, one after the other. The surplus of post-national planning games, the sum of our calculations. To whom do these dead belong? Antigone wants to bury them according to human custom. Creon does not. He feels that the foundation of his idea of democracy is threatened. An old conflict that can change societies is sparked: the legal order of the state versus subjective sense of justice. In the near future of our Western democracies, where state power and media power unite in personal union, it comes to a showdown. 

Thomas Köck, who won the Mülheim Dramatist Prize in 2018 and 2019, published "antigone. ein requiem," a recomposition of the Antigone myth written with a fine sense for the comic, in fall 2019.

An idea took root in the preparations for staging the play and prompted a team to embark on an adventure. The starting point was the Theater an der Ruhr in Mülheim an der Ruhr and the journey went to Potosi, in what is now Bolivia, 4800 meters above sea level. The travelers survived a lockdown and border closures. They became strangers on foreign terrain, became witnesses and reporters, became activists and presenters, entered politics and academia, became reminders of what they had remembered together from the beginning, before returning to their point of departure, the stage, the showplace of encounter and exchange. Here they negotiate anew their history, the myth of Antigone. They are confronted with a world that has everything documented, images that they can no longer get rid of. Dead people who move more and more into the center. They try to find their way, take stock and sense perspectives for a future that could not be more uncertain. An event in which the rite in festive garb seeks a new beginning.

 

Information

Premiere

03.09.2020

Location

Theater an der Ruhr
Akazienallee 61
45478 Theater an der Ruhr

Cast

Team