I’ve
seen Antigone (running cautiously from one column to another, as if hiding from
no one). It was in the mid-eighties, during the early years of the internal
war. An art gallery
with a photography exhibit. Black and white photos showing brutal images
from Ayacucho: soldiers in training, caught while
leaping in a delicate balletic move, their chests
splattered with the blood of dogs they had killed to prove their valor. I step forward: a photo of the arcade in the Plaza
de Armas in Ayacucho, the
image of a woman dressed in black, walking silently, quickly,
almost floating, her shadows in contrast “under the
It was as if she had travelled, in all her antiquity, across the centuries to take flesh once more in all the women I’ve seen fighting in my country. I had always known about her, about her bravery, yet my readings were very superficial. But what stayed with me was the impression of her act. It slowly turned into an obsession, a recurring image, always waiting for the right moment to emerge and turn into something real.
Throughout those years we were
developing other performance pieces within our group. In the first notebook I
kept during this process, here in this first notebook, I wrote down these
disconnected words:
/Antigone, starving, with short hair (I had never cut my hair before in my life; I always wore it long. Until now.)
/Antigone,
her head shaved, builds her own prison on stage with adobe, with mud bricks,
until she walls herself inside and glimpses freedom through a tiny window./ That image of using mud bricks to build
something on stage filtered into another piece that all the group was working
on (Contraelviento, [Against the Wind]) about
violence in Peru).
I
also have a drawing that I’ve copied into several notebooks, a drawing that I
saw while we were in the midst of creating other theater
pieces: it was a woman with short hair, dressed only in what we in
I
think that ever since this obsession started, this question was always on my
mind: Why do I want to do this play? Why do I want to perform this piece? It was only in February 1998 that I
understood, after more than fifteen years of internal war, years in which we
saw women in every corner of
Studying the Text
We began to study Sophocles’ text,
at first strange and distant to me. We had already given a name to this
project: Antigone Huanca, which refers to a
mountainous zone in
The House of Labdacus,
the family of Antigone, her father Oedipus, her mother Jocasta,
her grandmother Jocasta, her grandfather Laius. Her brothers Eteocles and Polynices. All dead. The only one left, still alive, is the silent Ismene. Silent. I think of
the curse on the House of Labdacus. Aren’t my people, perhaps, a House? With wise ancestors, the creators of so many marvels? With strong, warlike women? And when did the curse fall upon
this House? When exactly did
We immersed ourselves in Sophocles’
text. It was an extraordinary
apprenticeship, difficult, rich in discoveries.
I began to make the text mine. I couldn’t take parts out, mutilate it. We are a theater
group dedicated to investigations in all languages, immersed in action as
words, in creative collaborations as a premise for action. Now I confronted a
monster, a text that seemed to be written for us, here and now. Discovering the
music in each syllable, the importance of one word and not another, the
structure of a thought put into words, the inner world of the characters
expressed in each speech.
The exercise of sitting down in
front of my colleagues and telling them the story of the House of Labdacus, starting with King Laius
until the final moments in the life of Antigone, was essential for me. My gestures were minimal, just enough to tell
the story. It was then that I began to
value the action in the word, not only through its meaning, but also through
its sound. I knew I could capture the attention of my listeners, first because
the story itself was fascinating, and second, because they would become caught
up in my words. Through this exercise, I appropriated the entire story, I made
it mine. I knew everything that happened between the characters, and I began to
fantasize about them. In our studio, we collected material, we pursued the text
in thousands of ways; we were looking for a device, a convention; if we found
one, we could tell the story. Would I,
alone, be able to speak of so much life, so much conflict, so
many feelings?
Looking for a Convention
My first
improvisation.
June, 1998. Alone in
the studio. I don’t think too much about it; my point of departure is
the fundamental act of Antigone -- covering her dead brother with earth. How is it possible to bury such a large man?
To perform the ritual, to spread earth over his body-- an act that today many
would like to perform for loved ones who have disappeared. To cover their loved
ones, tuck them into the warm earth, rock them to sleep, give them the dignity
of a burial, define a space for them. I
automatically define a space for her as well. It’s time to start asking
questions. Who carries the story ahead -- in my story? Antigone? Tiresias? Why him? He’s also
covered in dust, he’s come from many wars, a defeated
soldier. Defeated? Yes, because he’s always known about
everything, but hasn’t been able to change anything. What is the dramatic
action? Does it start with the actress? What does she want to achieve, respond
to, demonstrate?
As we searched for a way to tell the
story, we created various versions, ranging from one where I sat and told the
entire story (which Miguel liked the most), to another in which we built a
radio broadcasting studio for a woman journalist who told the news about the
war in
We worked in the studio for a long
time, drawing closer and closer to the presence of Creon,
Tiresias, Antigone. Searching for their
energies.
Tiresias:
a mystery. He has the key, he knows how he learned, how he began seeing with
other eyes after he lost his sight.
(It’s necessary to lose your sight to turn your vision inward.) Every
age has its Tiresias; perhaps Tiresias
is a journalist? A contemporary historian, watchful and
vigilant, but powerless to take any action? Tiresias
suddenly sees what he must say, he enters into a
certain trance-like state. He smells, listens, perceives, feels. And we are ALL open to listening to a Tiresias; we all have a desire, perhaps hidden, to know the
future.
Creon:
severe, stiff, solemn, rigid (Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini?) But
also devious, always doubting.
But it’s to his advantage to doubt; it’s a calculated move. He’s an old
tiger, the great antagonist. About this same time I find myself practicing a
Noh dance. With a fan. The fan turns into Creon’s dagger, the Noh sequence becomes a structure in
which I begin to make Creon walk, with solemn, slow
steps, yet he’s still able to jump if it’s necessary.
I can find Creon
in my reality today. I can identify Tiresias in my present world. Both are characters that send
me to my reality.
And Antigone: what is she like? She originates in tranquillity. Light. Emphasis on the solar
plexus towards the sky. A breeze on the back of her neck. Her gaze is slightly
vacant, as if floating. Few signs of grief. Not the wildly excessive grief of the
wives of dead policemen, whose photographs appear in the newspapers. She has
kept her smile. There’s a madness in her eyes, but
also determination. She has FAITH. Gestures connect her to a not-so-distant
childhood: she wipes her tears away. She
has an ideal. But also fear, expressed
by her soft-spoken voice, even though she’s able to scream like crazy. Also,
she’s a virgin: Antigone hasn’t been with any man. There’s a delicate obstinacy, a protectiveness, around her womb. That also is Antigone.
She is a doe. And yet Antigone has a thousand faces.
In the studio: our exercise is to
inhabit a situation and then step out of it and observe ourselves, turning
around to “look” at the steps the character takes, how she or he approaches and
then enters me again. It’s like watching a ghost come closer who “traps me once
more,” and like a collision or an electrical shock, it “takes” me and I’m no
longer the one who’s walking, it’s the character. I rehearse this action over
many days. I, the actress, take the space, and in each zone discover someone, a
world, and with a shout, a gesture, a word, suddenly I ENTER into another
state, I am she, Antigone, or I am Creon, or I am Tiresias. I can feel my muscles change, my breathing, my
backbone shifts automatically to allow the other to enter. My feet connect with
the earth in a different way, as the weight of my body changes. It’s like an
instantaneous trance, a rapture. Yet at a distance, I observe, because I
understand what is happening.
Antigone Knocks on My Door
Two years earlier, in 1996, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
Movement seized the Japanese Embassy at about
Now we were searching, exploring,
writing in the studio. Circling in on the atmosphere of the
palace, on the sobbing Creon who would now, yes, free
Antigone from the cave, on Tiresias who announced the
catastrophe. Now all that we had
lived through emerged in every gesture, every movement.
In the studio, I search for the
image of the woman who narrates the entire story: the war in
Ismene’s Shadow
The moment arrived during the
creative process when we had to bring Sophocles’ text closer to our own lives,
to make it contemporary: we had to make
our own version. We had a lot of scenic
material, improvisations, character studies. Yet we
couldn’t find a way to make these elements enter into a dialogue with each
other through one actress. We invited José Watanabe, an extraordinary poet and
screenwriter, into our group because his works already felt close to us. We showed him all our material, and from that
point on, a new stage in our work began.
We put the entire story on index cards and summarized the conflicts,
which helped me to establish an order and bring together the
improvisations. Then Watanabe proposed
that we turn the cards into poems. My fantasy was always to use contemporary
texts that spoke almost directly to my daily life, so taking up this proposal
was a difficult challenge for me. The
hardest point in our search for language was when we needed to answer the
question, who was this woman telling the story? First it had been an actress,
then a woman journalist, and now another possibility arose: who would be
interested in narrating the story, in recovering this memory, who would be so heavily
invested in it, in making each character live again? Who was still alive to
tell the tale? Ismene. Deciding on this convention was a detonator.
It was at that precise moment that
we resolved to get much closer to the Antigones of my
country. To listen to them, talk with
them . . .
We decided to interview women --
mothers, wives, sisters -- from the families of the desaparecidos in
Each story was hard, brutal. What all the testimonies had in common, I
realized, was the way in which the women narrated how their lives had changed
completely. One of these mothers, Raida Cóndor, later became
president of the Committee of Family Members. The day I met her she was sitting
serenely on the chair I would later use in the performance. In a very soft
voice, she told her story to me:
“I was a woman who woke up early
every morning to go to the market. I bought food and cooked it, I prepared my
children’s meals, I washed their clothes. Sometimes I watched the news. That’s what my life was like. Then one day,
my son didn’t come home. The moment I realized that they had taken my son from me
and I wouldn’t see him anymore, my life changed. I had to learn how to read -- I couldn’t read -- and I went to
school. I had to read legal documents, I
had to start knocking on doors when no one opened them, I
had to learn to speak, loud and clear.”
Her life, then, was transformed;
that’s what she told me. And as she spoke her appearance, her
whole image, all her gestures, had an incredible fragility. And yet she
had an inner strength of such magnitude that she was able to change, at the age
of 45 or 50, the entire horizon of her life with the sole objective of
achieving justice for herself, her son, and for other mothers. I began to search through my memory, to
confirm again that according to the existing image, the woman who fights for
something must adhere to certain standards of behavior,
that is, she must always be strong, she must always know what she has to do,
she must always be moving forward. Reality is much more complicated than that.
Within fragility there is often a hidden strength.
I’ve looked at these women with eyes
that are perhaps deep within my soul.
I’ve listened to each of their words as if they were making a confession
to me. And maybe that’s what it was like after so many years of demanding
justice: they had turned their demands into a role as well, one they play
tirelessly. This time we were alone, she and I.
Each one of her brief gestures spoke to me so deeply of her life. And the best homage I could give her would be
to feel all the memories inscribed on their bodies and thus confer them unto
Antigone.
That’s how another image of Antigone was born.
Not the strong Antigone who has appeared throughout the history of Antigones. There have been warrior
Antigones, furious Antigones
(there’s a version called “Antigona Furiosa” by Argentine dramatist Griselda Gambaro). Antigone, it’s believed, is strong; she will
stand firm until the end. My Antigone is fragile; even her voice breaks, a soft
voice not used to confronting others or making demands. Out of this fragility
(which she’ll never lose), a limitless strength and determination emerges.
Objects
The loneliness in the workspace can
be dreadful. Luckily for me, objects exist, my partners, which keep me company,
have meaning for me, reveal secrets to me.
I hide behind them when things don’t flow. From the time I began working
on Antigone to the end, I enclosed myself in a space that was well-supplied
with objects; some I struggled to keep while others I abandoned along the way;
others were transformed. A cane for Tiresias, a
blindfold for his face, Creon’s three-piece suit and
his insolent fan, Tiresias’ dark glasses and
epaulettes when he seemed like an aged gladiator who had survived a thousand
wars. A large piece of cloth, like a
shroud, that for me represented Antigone’s territory;
even after it disappeared I felt it still defined territories. A diaphanous, gigantic curtain, like those
used in hospitals, crossing the stage and creating small spaces, balconies,
living areas, between its panels, its translucency allowing the audience to
“peek inside.” A large wooden cup for Antigone to pour the three libations. And
a mask, which I carried onto the stage and wrapped in a gauzy fabric on the
first day. I’m not sure why, but this
mask always had to be with me. Perhaps it represented “the Greek” for me. By
the end of the process, this hidden mask would find the meaning it had been
looking for all along. It was Polynices’ death mask, kept safe by Ismene,
which would finally allow her to perform a symbolic burial. And from the
beginning up to the present, the chair.
It is my tomb, my bridal bed, the balcony, the characters I look at as
they sit there, it is my dead brother, an explosive rage, the caress of a
remembered love, the blindfold inherited from Oedipus that covers Antigone’s eyes, it is Antigone’s
senseless body, which Haemon gently embraces around
the waist, it is a savage dance in the implacable presence of death. And, above all else, it is waiting, waiting,
waiting. My partner in the loneliness of this empty space.
The Process Ends, the Journey
Begins
When we first performed the work in
February 2000, the Truth Commission hadn’t yet come into existence, but the
downfall of the dictator Fujimori, along with his
notorious assistant Montesinos, had already
begun. Slowly, years and years of
deception, crime and corruption began to unravel. This was before the newspapers started
reporting all that would happen later.
For me, the end of our road was clear: we wanted to perform Antigone
because it was only through a story that happened 2,500 years ago that we could
talk about what was happening to us at that moment. We had to recognize, all of
us, as citizens, that we had maintained a “despicable silence” before thousands
of corpses spread throughout all of Peru. The bodies had been silenced, yet
they waited to be buried so that they could rest in peace. As our tradition
tells us, those who are not buried are doomed to wander without rest, “haunted
spirits, who look in sadness or anger at their own bodies.”
Antigone’s
act, her attempt to bury her brother, was now symbolically completed by Ismene’s act which, though perhaps late, was still
necessary and urgent. We Peruvians were all Ismene;
we all needed to start making that symbolic gesture to complete the
burial. Some might believe that “to
bury” means to cover, forget, conceal. Maybe. However, in its most important sense, a
burial is an acknowledgment that someone is there, because you put a name on
the grave of the person you bury and say, he or she is there. And then both of
you can rest in peace. You come and visit, and you remember that person in a
place where slowly, as time passes, traces of pain will be washed away, only
leaving memory, now put in its proper place.
Those who haven’t been able to bury their dead have been stripped of
their right to determine a site, to name the absent one, to enact the necessary
farewell. For almost twenty years, half
the country lived in that reality. Antigone, the performance, arrived as a
necessary act of cleansing.
Now she travels all over Peru. In Huanta, a city in the province of Ayacucho,
I perform outside one night because the theatre isn’t working. During the
performance I look at the sky and see the stars above me. And I feel Antigone’s energy and her message reaching the people of
this battered city in Peru.
I only wish to add that from the
start up to the present, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t lit a candle to
my ancestors, nor a day when I haven’t prayed for my dead; I always feel they
are with me.