As I have recently found out, there are apparently a large number of King’s students who have never actually stepped foot inside the Pit. This was upsetting to learn, as I assumed we had all lived through the very singular experience of standing in the black-box theatre, trying very hard not to let the strange, surreal atmosphere of it drive you slowly insane.
Since the Pit is being used by other productions, the cast of Antigone is forced to move their rehearsal to the KTS Lecture Hall, and so the booming lyricism of the translated Greek can be heard filtering throughout the halls and stairways of the NAB. In the lecture hall, Leah Parker, director of Antigone, sits on a dusty-cushioned folding chair with an open script in her lap, watching her actors rehearse. Stakes feel high as opening night, March 27, creeps closer.
Rehearsing in the KTS hall is a bit of a struggle. Partly because the cast is trying, for the first time, to make it through the scenes without the use of scripts. This means bouts of awkward, stilted silence as actors pause to wrack their brains for half-remembered phrasing, with a rueful stammer every few minutes of, “Um, line?” And partly because the whole thing is done while everyone attempts simultaneously to superimpose a mental image of the Pit’s dimensions over the room. This is the stage. This is a black wall. This is another, different black wall. This is the blindingly intense fluorescent lighting.
It would probably be better for everybody’s sanity if the play stayed here, in the relative safety of a room that didn’t by nature send its occupants spiralling into derealization. But, for better or worse, Antigone is a play that could only be produced in the Pit.
At the moment, the Pit is looking somewhat of a mess. Partially decked out in the set dressing for Christmas in July, the first of the King’s Theatrical Society’s (KTS) winter season productions, the space is cluttered with props and power tools, as well as a good amount of Christmas-related kitsch.
The walls of the KTS Lecture Hall, painted a bemusing choice of reddish orange, are at least broken up by a set of windows that allow the room’s occupants a general sense of time progressing naturally. The same can not be said of the Pit, wherein linear temporality achieves a disorientating wobbliness. You often enter in full daylight and leave after what feels like only 30 minutes, shocked to find the world has plunged itself into darkness while you were out of reach. Entire days pass running the exact same scene, the inky walls closing in on you as you struggle not to fall asleep, stomach clenching with hunger and throat raw from constant rhyming verse — only to emerge blinking into the sunlight less than an hour later, entirely baffled as to how you could possibly still be standing on your aching feet.
It’s wonderful. Something about the black lacuna of hollow space means the Pit can become anywhere you want it to be — anywhere at all. Your grandmother’s house. A Salem witch trial. Hell. Or, if you’re Parker and the cast of Antigone, it could be a late 19th century palace, city and forest — all at once, because why not? There are no rules about this. Nobody’s ever said a classic has to be set in Antiquity. And for Parker, Antigone is first and foremost a play about power, the balance and struggle for it and the uncertainty it produces. What better setting for a show like that than during the tail end of the Industrial Revolution?
It’s a very King’s production, according to Parker, and one that she has been looking to direct since first year, when reading Chekov’s Cherry Orchard inspired her to imagine a version of Antigone set similarly.
“I think if you were to put this on anywhere else besides King’s, it wouldn’t be the same play,” she says.
This year’s first-years read Antigone during Section I of FYP — explaining the disproportionate number of FYPers in the cast. The play also features the children of Sophocles’ Oedipus (apparently pronounced “eau de piss,” and not “ea-da-puss,” which is something I am learning I have been wrong about my entire life) who is another figure who FYPers of years past are well acquainted with.
There’s this general aspiration most people assume when trying their hand at historical theatre, whether it be Shakespeare or other classics: to make the lines resemble something somebody might actually say. This is a lot harder than it sounds. For Antigone specifically, this means delivering lines in such a way so it doesn’t sound entirely ridiculous being spoken by someone with a septum piercing/wearing dangling hoop earrings. I’m a little surprised by how well it works. A few times, I do forget I’m not actually being yelled at by a classical Greek king, but rather a first year King’s student with a mullet and a Beatles T-shirt.
Parker says she was surprised by how diligent the cast has proven to be. They’re committed to seeing through her directorial vision, making Pinterest boards and playlists to explore their characters, coming to set ready and focused. It’s a character-driven play, and quite a heavy one — but it’s also entertaining and topical.
“I think it’s really interesting how these plays are so old,” Parker says, “yet they’re still quite relevant one way or another. These themes still touch people.”
