Biography de jean anouilhs antigone

Jean Anouilh updates the context of the classic Greek drama by Sophocles to make it resonate with the era in which it was written: during the occupation of France by Nazi Germany during World War II. As a result, Antigone can be interpreted as a member of the resistance to despotic tyranny that adheres to how the French Underground organized resistance to their fascist occupation.

At the same time, it can be easy for the modern-day reader to miss that connection since the characterization of Antigone as a rebellious freedom fighter (or terrorist from Creon’s perspective) is somewhat muted by ambiguity. That ambiguity turned out to be one of the greatest strengths of the play in the wake of its long legacy as it avoids seeming like mere political propaganda representative of a certain place and time. Worth noting is Anouilh had ambiguity forced upon him by the nature of the means of production: the premiere performance of Antigone took place in Paris in early when the Nazi censors were still controlling all aspects of the French entertainment industry.

One must assume that the artistic choices made were not entirely the result of the imposition of censorship which could result in exceptionally harsh punishment if violated. Anouilh chose to adopt a 2,year-old tragedy to speak to 20th-century audiences for a reason. One of that reasons was the ability to rip Antigone out of her classical world of ritual and mythic to situate her within the modern condition where the fates of most humans are dictated not by unseen petty gods but by terrifying petty despots. The symbolic connection linking the familiarity of Antigone’s story within that ancient world with the context of Nazi occupation thus allows the more ambiguous elements of

French playwright (–)

Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh (; French:[ʒɑ̃anuj]; 23 June – 3 October ) was a French dramatist and screenwriter whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government. His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries, having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise.

Life and career

Early life

Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, France and had Basque ancestry. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor, and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, Marie-Magdeleine, a violinist who supplemented the family's meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon. Marie-Magdeleine worked the night shifts in the music-hall orchestras and sometimes accompanied stage presentations, affording Anouilh ample opportunity to absorb the dramatic performances from backstage. He often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime. He first tried his hand at playwriting here,

The seventeenth-century French tradition of adapting classic Greek tragedies came back into fashion in the inter-war period. Jean Cocteau (La Machine infernale, ) and Jean Giraudoux (La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu, ) rekindled the Oedipean and Trojan legends in a French present. In parallel, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus wrote plays that presented contemporary political and philosophical views in action. At the crossroads between antique inspiration and modern debates, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone premiered on February 4 , while Paris was under Nazi occupation.

The theatre was then a welcome source of entertainment and escapism, as well as a literal stage of an intellectual rebellion against totalitarianism. In Sophocles’ BC play, Antigone, a young woman, stands against authority, embodied by her Uncle Creon. Popular culture remembers her as the pious daughter of accursed Oedipus, following her father in exile and only coming back to Thebes to die for having tried to bury her brother. The Résistance saw Anouilh’s Antigone as one of them:  writer and critic Simone  Fraisse affirms that ‘the spirit of the Résistance recognised itself in her.’ Sartre objected that Anouilh’s play was too kind to Creon, and therefore too conciliatory towards the figure of the oppressor. The far-right saluted the play for revealing Antigone as a ‘little goddess of Anarchy’ who had to be crushed for the preservation of the social order.

Anouilh never clarified the political dimension of his Antigone. His creations are much less political than the plays of Sartre and Camus. Yet Anouilh also mentioned that the writing of the play was prompted by his obsession with the ‘little red leaflets,’ collaborationist  posters that presented members of the Résistance as terrorists ready to kill French civilians to  fulfill their goals.

Antigone obeys the strict rules of seventeenth-century French theatre, inherited from Horatius and Aristotle. The action unfolds through a single plot

play by Jean Anouilh

Jean Anouilh's play Antigone (French pronunciation:[ɑ̃tiɡɔn]) is a tragedy inspired by the play of the same name by Sophocles.

Performance history

Original production

Antigone was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre de l'Atelier on February 6, , during the Nazioccupation. Produced under Nazi censorship, the play is purposefully ambiguous with regard to the rejection of authority (represented by Antigone) and the acceptance of it (represented by Creon). The parallels to the French Resistance and the Nazi occupation are clear, however. The original cast included Monelle Valentin (Antigone), Jean Davy (Créon), Suzanne Flon (Ismène), and André Le Gall (Hémon); the staging, decor and costumes were by André Barsacq.

British première

Antigone received its British première by the Old Vic Theatre Company at the New Theatre, London, on 10 February The production was produced by Laurence Olivier (who also played the role of Chorus) and had the following cast:

Productions and adaptations

Actress Katharine Cornell produced and starred in a production at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. Sir Cedric Hardwicke played the role of King Creon. Also performing were Bertha Belmore, Wesley Addy, Ruth Matteson, George Mathews, and Oliver Cliff, and Marlon Brando (as the Messenger), Michael Higgins (The Third Guard). The production was staged by Cornell's husband Guthrie McClintic. The translation was by Lewis Galantière. It has since been published many times. In , it was staged at the East 74th Street Theater in Manhattan, New Yo