Tragic Play In Greek With Song And Dance? No Prob

UC Classics Assistant Professor Anna Conser is collaborating with UC's College-Conservatory of Music, or CCM, to stage a new production of the famous tragedy.

"'Antigone' dramatizes the conflict between what is legal according to the government and what we feel is morally or religiously correct.," Conser said.

The play is sometimes used as a metaphorical framework to discuss other social or political ideas, Conser said.

"The main character in 'Antigone' is not Antigone but her uncle Creon, the king who follows the letter of the law without making exceptions for family," she said. "He is trying to do what he thinks is right, but he refuses to compromise and loses everything as a result.."

And the chorus is at the center of everything. Conser said it would be wrong to think of the chorus as mere background performers reciting lines in the shadows. Their odes, originally performed with song and dance, were showstopper performances, she said.

"Modern performances often make the chorus feel 'ancient' or conventional," Conser said. "But it was actually more like a Broadway show.

"You had 12 people singing and dancing in unison in an athletic manner, and that is extremely entertaining - that's not what most people think when they imagine Greek tragedy, but it is actually more authentic. Being able to work with CCM to bring this to life is a real dream-come-true for me as a researcher."

Conser will work with a CCM composer to create new musical settings for the chorus' odes, based on her digital analysis of the meter and pitch accents.

"The fun part is the interpretation: there is a lot of technical data, but the melodic patterns it reveals can be very exciting, adding new meaning to the words.," she said.

"Greek tragedy was originally a form of musical theater, so it makes sense to interpret it with techniques borrowed from opera and musical theater. In all these genres, words and music work together to make meaning. The words are only one part of the whole."

Conser has some experience in theater herself. While working on her doctorate, she scored a production of Euripides' "Herakles" and directed a musical production of Sophocles' Women of Trachis.

"I was able to see Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'Hamilton' while I was in New York," she said. "There's a short section in my book on how he uses music to shape characters and themes."

Sophocles, the author of "Antigone," and Euripides were incredibly popular poets in their time.

"When Athenian soldiers were stranded in Sicily, some escaped slavery by singing odes from Euripides' tragedies," she said. "That's how desperate people were to hear the newest Euripides songs. When these soldiers got back to Athens, they thanked Euripides for saving them."