This is a brand new range of books and they are perfect for revision before the exam. The A4 photocopiable book contains 10 essays. The essays are all centred around Antigone and will be written from the perspectives of directors, designers and performers. They would serve as great extra reading, perhaps as a homework, or would form the basis of a revision lesson.

The essays cover a range of topics such as: the burial rites of the ancient Greeks, the portrayal of disorder and conflict in the play and how to show this on stage, staging the motif of blindness, understanding the divine wills of the gods and how these are shown in performance, how to portray the idea of absolute power and punishment, as well as looking at major characters such as Creon, Antigone and Ismene and how to interpret these for a production from the standpoints of directors, designers and performers. The booklet also gives students a detailed background on the role of democracy in Sophocles' time relating this directly back to key moments in the play and how this theory helps us to understand the consequences of Creon's actions. Another essay provides students with an in depth analysis of the theme of suicide in this play and it looks at the various forms that suicide takes within the play and the significance of the weapons use to assist the dying. Another essay takes the perspective of a sound designer and considers how to approach the use of sound effects in the various structural elements of the play such as sound in the parodos, or the exodos.


Any quotes from the play used within the essays have been taken from the Penguin Classic edition of Antigone (as specified by the AQA specification). However, the theory contained within the essays would work with other translations of the play.