Antigone buries the body of Polyneikes against the order of Kreon (her uncle), the king of Thebes. Despite the warning of the seer Tiresias, Kreon condemns his niece to starvation. She commits suicide in her dungeon, after which her lover Haimon (Kreons son) stabs himself. When this news reaches Euridyce, Kreon’s wife, mother of Haimon, and she also takes her own life. Kreon remains behind.

Music-theatre performance by Ensemble Leporello
In 1991, after two months of rehearsal, Ensemble Leporello premiered “Satyrsong Antigone” in co production with national and international partners. The performance stood out because of the surprising mix of song, dance and spoken word.

A Dozen figures (‘satyrs’) gathers on and around a wooden, man-powered merry-go-round. Just like in a carnival, the disc is put on a slight rake so that the actors can make the thing revolve by moving their body. Accompanied by two percussionists and a soundtrack they whisper, sing and recite texts that all relate to the Antigone myth in one way or another. Sometimes meticulous, other times messy as skateboarders on a ramp, the players perform a ritual in which the protagonists from Sophokles’ tragedy function as a reason for speech and song. During the ceremony, some of the chorus members might get rid of their hats and gloves to take up the role of one of the heroes in a key scene but as soon as such a tableau is suggested the satyr-hero dives back into the jumble of the chorus.

Percussion, voice, a merry-go-round, props, gloves and hats.
Luc Brewaeys, the composer that works closely with the ensemble, provided this hodgepodge of players with a score for voice, percussion and soundtrack that is sometimes raw, sometimes ingenious. Dirk Opstaele, librettist and director, rephrased a couple of drafts and redrafts of “Antigone” into a libretto that acts as a script for the project. The main chorus is Sofokles’ first stasimon – the ode to mankind. The translation is by “Hölderin”, more like Sofokles than Sofokles himself. ‘Deinos’ – which means terrific, frightful, powerful – is retranslated into ‘Ungeheuer’ – monstrous.
Other than a chair (the throne), a stick (the weapon with which Antigone’s brothers kill each other), a veil (Kreons wife’s), a glove (Antigones Lover’s), is the wooden disc the most important prop. This little six-meter-diameter set reminds one of the bottom of an amphitheatre: the flat earth that floats between Tartaros and Olympos in the Ancient cosmos. In the hands of the actors, the disc is a toy that subtly turns the tragedy of the human condition into gravity and centrifugal forces.

The film by Jacques Servaes.
The libretto-script was re-written into a film script by Konrad Maquestieau and Jacques Servaes. The piece was shortened and some scenes – that only work in a theatre context – were changed or replaced. The disc is put in a black, abyss-like hall and the satyrs fling their expressions into the emptiness, except when they talk to the camera directly to explain what is going on.