Um, what's your relationship
with the original play?
Why did you decide to adapt it?
Why did you decide to choose this one
out of all the Greekt tragedies you
could have chosen? Mostly because
again, in reference to to my earlier,
what I said earlier,
I read a lot of Greek plays and
I really, really enjoy them.
I really like them.
I think there's a lot of them,
particularly the really good ones
always seems to have something that
resonates with what's going on now,
what's happening. And quite simply,
Antigone is one of
my favourite Greek tragedies.
It's what I love about it is, its
simplicity really and the love,
the defiance of this young girl.
Yeah, yeah yeah,
stepping out and saying to the
established order i.e. Creon's empire
in Thebes, no this is not right,
this is not right. And in
her own subtle small way
she takes him on. And the subtle
way she takes him on is, of
course, burying her brother
when she's told,
in fact the entire city of Thebes is tol, this dead
brother's body is not to be touched.
And I've always just admired her,
yeah, given him that
she's young,
just that sort of inner strength
of hers and that sense of morality
and sense of right and wrong and her
willingness to kind of stand up to Creon.
And do what she feels is right.
And I just think it's just so that's a great,
inspiring story.
And I thought Sophocles tells it, it's
told so well and again like I said,
it's
my favourite Greek
play because of that simple core
story really.
And I've seen so many other
Greek plays been done before when
I've been inspired by by those,
and what I've always found is playwrights
they have always found a way to
make their stories their own.
They take the essence of the story
and place it in the setting or world
that is of interest to them and and
the play works around it.
And I just felt, yeah,
I I would have a crack at that.
I would like to sort of
do that. And the first Greek play
obviously I I came to was Antigone.
I just I've always felt for quite
some time how I could do it. How the,
how the story I could tell it
in that world that it's set.
And finally I was able to get the
opportunity to write this when I
was commissioned by Marcus Romer,
who at the time ran Pilot Theatre
Company and their company based
in York and did a lot
of touring round the country.
And their, their, their,
their ethos the way the
company works is they like to do
middle scale
plays geared towards young people
but not exclusively for them,
so I've I've worked with him before and
we were very keen to work together again.
And finally I I told him I said,
you know what I've always wanted to do
a version of Antigone and they
always knew and know how I can
tell it and he got very excited,
so he commissioned me to go and do that.
So we got the literal translation of
the play. Which is, yeah, it's well
it's basically it's not really, it's it's
it's almost probably isn't, but it's almost
word for word what Sophocles wrote.
But yeah, it's very bare. It's it's
there for a writer to take that on board
and make the dialogue and the world your own.
So that's why did so.
So I attempted that.
Suppose the reason why I set it
in the world where it set, it's
the world I've written about before
I've covered before in previous works.
And and I just I just thought I just had
a strong idea and I knew instinctively, I
just said I can see Creon as this sort of, at
least on the surface, sort of gang leader.
He controls his empire
and I just thought, oh,
there's something in there about,
you know, status and power.
And he acts and behaves like a
king so and Antigone is sort of
as a young girl living in living in that
world and at the time. And as I said,
I've written covered it back in
other works before,
but I've always been very
I don't know, trying to find the right
word is to describe
I've always had a concern and
interest in the way in in the way choices
some young people make their lives
in terms of the kind of gang culture.
And and and so on.
The sort of concern to me,
and it's a world I want to challenge.
It's a world I want to do my part
to tell young people no that's
not the way for you to go.
Yeah, there are other opportunities.
There are options in your life.
So so that was reason enough
for me to want to write, write,
write, write this play.
But obviously I didn't want
I don't want to be po faced about it, and self righteous.
Cos ultimately I've still
got story to tell and I think, I think
it's the dues of any any playwrights
when you, when you when you write
a story to make it complex
as possible,
even even giving characters who
you probably don't approve of
and wouldn't like in real life,
you've got to give them the floor.
You've got to give them a level of
understanding and compassion in order to tell
the bigger picture to tell your story.
So that's kind of where I
went at it with with Antigone.
Since this is going to be, and
thank you for that, but think since
it's going to be a GCSE drama set text
I was wondering how you yourself
would envision this play on stage
on the big, in the theatre and
um, how you would just how you would
see it being performed.
I mean, he was done so five
years ago and Pilot did it.
We opened at York and then
we went on tour and it was
it was very much, I mean,
when I was writing the play I had it in my
yeah, I pretty much had a sort of firm
idea where would be set and I always
imagined that it be like in a nightclub.
Someone like one of those sort of room VIP
rooms in a nightclub site, cordoned off.
So that's for me,
that's that is Creon's throne,
that that's his castle,
that's where everything
yeah, that's yeah,
that's the you know the situation room
where he rules his empire with an iron fist.
So I kind of had that in my mind.
Then when the play went into production,
Then Marcus as the director
his job is to kind of bring my play
to life and he works in conjunction
with the lighting designer and
the stage designer, and they bring the set to
life. And all they have going was
what was in the text, a nightclub.
And what they did was miraculous.
It was absolutely brilliant. More than what I
saw in my head, cos what I saw in my head is just
it's a mess, to be quite frank,
and so I never expect them to
replicate what's going on in in my head.
But the genius is that that they did,
but they made it their own.
Amd I mean and it was quite simple,
but absolutely brilliant.
It was it was
it was as I said,
a sort of VIP room cordoned it off.
But very but yeah, but very lot of um
cages and doors and and and and such
and very metallic as
well and is really really strong
it just invoked that
you know it's not.
it's not just a nightclub,
but this is this is the world of Thebes
so it's got a very hard
you know metal, metallic, almost militaristic
look. As the play begins with the war
which results in the death of
Antigone's brother, so they
and they captured it very much,
and the lighting and so on.
The genius
thing they did was also, cos in play
there's a lot of reference to gods.
Yeah,
they they they in in their world
they know that the gods exists.
And then they know the gods are looking
down on them and passing judgement
on them. And in the play the genius
thing they did is about the gods was
they have them cameras like street
cameras located and the characters
would refer to them and they were in
in their minds, in their universe,
those where the gods looking down
on them through video cameras and I
thought I was really, really clever.