Antigone in the Amazon

Antigone in the Amazon description

“Much is monstrous, yet nothing is more monstrous than man.” – Antigone by Sophocles 

Antigone’s heroic protest is restaged by Brazilian activists and members of Belgian city theatre NTGent’s global ensemble in this innovative new work. 

Award-winning Swiss theatre director Milo Rau returns to Adelaide Festival in 2024 after making his incredible Australian debut with La Reprise: Histoire(s) du théâtre in 2019. In his latest piece, he creates a political Antigone for the 21st century, working together with Brazilian and European actors, musicians and indigenous activists. 

[Milo Rau] has perfected the art of bringing real events onstage, by laying bare the process and inviting audience members to think along.

The New York Times

Antigone in the Amazon began in the Brazilian state of Pará, where the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed by the effects of industry and agriculture. Milo Rau and actors from NTGent travelled to the state to collaborate with Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), the world’s largest landless workers’ movement. Together, they created Antigone in the Amazon, a play about the devastations to the land and its people.  

Milo Rau fuses elements of storytelling, music, film and the theatre-making process in moving and unexpected ways. Filmed in Brazil and mixed with live sequences on stage, the play weaves together political protest, collective heroism and the brutality of the state – the ancient themes of Antigone transposed to an Amazonian village today.  

Antigone in the Amazon is a powerful work of theatre from one of the “most influential” (Die Zeit), “most awarded” (Le Soir), “most interesting” (De Standaard) and “most ambitious” (The Guardian) theatre artists of our time. 

Not one video that doesn’t hit the mark. Not one word that does not enhance the images. Not one movement on stage that does not resonate with the images. The realisation sets in that theatre, when it moves so far out of its comfort zone, makes one experience and understand something that is so much bigger than itself.

Le Monde