Antigone: relationships between performers and audience

Antigone: Relationships Between Performers and Audience

Role of Performers

• Performers facilitate the viewers’ emotional investment in the unfolding drama. Their performance can amplify the spectators’ empathetic response towards the characters.
• Skilful nuances in performances can serve to establish Antigone as a moral heroine and Creon as the stubborn authoritarian, eliciting sympathy and antipathy respectively.
• The delivery of monologues and dialogues can command the audience’s attention and comprehension of the thematic preoccupations in Antigone. Effective navigation of Sophoclean language is instrumental in this respect.

Role of Audience

• The audience, as spectators, are invited to reflect on the ethical questions and moral dilemmas presented in Antigone.
• The audience is expected to sympathise with Antigone’s resistance and Creon’s downfall, highlighting the tragic consequences of the collision between personal conscience and state authority.
• The spectators’ understanding and appreciation of Antigone is shaped by their cultural, social, and political perspectives, underscoring the universal relevancy of the play.

Role of the Chorus

• The Chorus serves as an intermediary between performers and audience. As observers, they comment on the action and provide a moral framework that the audience can understand.
• Their interventions allow the audience to engage with the play at a deeper level by providing necessary backstory, predicting outcomes, and expressing public opinion.
• The Chorus’s shared wisdom and moral lessons further impart a humane and empathetic dimension to the story, enhancing the audience’s emotional engagement.

Both the performers’ craft and the audience’s response shape the dynamic experience and interpretation of Antigone. An understanding of this relationship is crucial in assessing the overarching themes and moral complexities of the play.