The Antigone (441 B.C. – present)
[Instructions to the Mime]
Raise your right hand
like making a pledge
and face the audience.
Both your hand and your face open,
stare blankly.
Turn your palm
out from the audience.
Your hand is an open face,
the term Janus-faced
coming back to you from mythology.
Pass your hand
across your face.
Smile,
a new expression emergent.
You are happy for a time.
Pass the hand back
to express sheer fright.
Hold steady.
Pass again
to show despair.
Pass, jealousy.
Pass, compassion.
Work with anxiety
degrees of joy
veneration
lethargy
boredom
approbation.
I feel vulnerable,
achingly so,
though I’ve wiped away
the face of jealousy,
though I’ve been trying on
dumb faces all day long,
I feel like a stone at the bottom of a river.
How now to finish as I started?
[The Antigone]
Say there was a young woman whose brother lay dead in the street rotting.
With nothing other than these details to go by,
either facing the audience or looking away,
say aloud four possible reasons for not moving the body in the first place.
Otherwise, making two indistinct columns and working as quickly as possible,
jot down like a regular Sophocles your responses to this thing without body:
What is
the val-
-ue of
life with
or with-
out love?