Revolutionizing Antigone: A Puerto Rican Adaptation of Sophocles’ Tragedy

摘要

This article focuses on Luis Rafael Sánchez's La pasión según Antígona Pérez (1968, The Passion According to Antígona Pérez), an adaptation of Sophocles’ seminal tragedy, and examines the manners in which the Puerto Rican dramatist reinscribes the Greek play into his contemporary sociopolitical context to redefine cultural identity. This study analyzes how the play blends motifs borrowed from Christianity and ancient drama for the purposes of promoting a revolutionary ideology. The article also challenges the existing scholarship on this rewriting of Antigone and contests some of the common assumptions made by the critics of La pasión, particularly with regard to its performative strategy and gender representation. It seeks to reveal why, in spite of a whole range of Brechtian devices built into the text of the play, the actual performances of the latter often fail to produce the effects essential to Brecht's concept of epic theater. The claim that La pasión disrupts a patriarchal narrative is, likewise, subjected to criticism: notwithstanding its counterhegemonic stance, the play applies the same topos of casting a female character as the dispensable “other” that is typical of the dominant discourse.View full textDownload full textKeywordsBertolt Brecht in Latin America, gender, Latin American theater, reception of Antigone , Luis Rafael SánchezRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08831157.2012.626375