Bard on the Beach's Antigone centers women's voices in a timeless political tragedy

This year's production of Antigone at Bard on the Beach opens with the Chorus asking, "Who will care for us when we are gone?"—a question that reaches toward the heart of this adaptation from playwright Kate Besworth and director Ming Hudson.

The story of Antigone unfolds in the aftermath of Oedipus the King. After a devastating revelation about his parentage, Oedipus hands over the crown to his sons Polynices and Eteocles, who are meant to share rule of Thebes. When Polynices' turn to take the throne arrives, Eteocles refuses to cede power. Polynices raises an army and a civil war ensues, leaving both brothers dead and their uncle, Creon, king. He decrees that the rebel Polynices will be left to rot in the sun, and anyone caught burying him will be sentenced to death. Antigone refuses to heed Creon's edict, setting the stage for Sophocles' classical tragedy.

One of the most performed surviving plays from ancient Greece, Antigone has been staged famously in 1944 in Nazi-occupied France, in 1973 in apartheid-era South Africa, and in 1984 in Poland under martial law. The first few months of 2026 saw four different adaptations in New York City alone. New York Times theatre critic Helen Shaw described Antigone's omnipresence as "like a rush of white blood cells — there's an infection somewhere in the body politic."

Bard on the Beach's adaptation aims to bring the audience around a metaphorical campfire, mixing contemporary language and intimate two-handers with the poetry of choral storytelling. The production stars Yoshie Bancroft as Antigone, Kate Besworth as Ismene, Cameron Grant as Haimon, Paul Moniz de Sá as Creon, and Azeen Zare in the Chorus. Jennifer Lines plays Antigone and Ismene's mother, Jocasta—a character who does not appear in Sophocles' original text but who is given a voice in Besworth and Hudson's staging.

"With this adaptation, we were most interested in the themes of inherited trauma and the making of personal choices within that inheritance," Hudson said. "We also wanted to focus on the family unit. What happens to their relationships on the inside, in the midst of political turmoil on the outside?"

Antigone is a play about reckoning and rebellion. It stands up to authoritarianism and confronts the difference between what is law and what is justice. It examines the conditions we are born into and the choices we make because or in spite of them. In a world that feels increasingly divided, it asks what we owe each other.

Antigone runs until September 18 in the Douglas Campbell Theatre at Sen̓áḵw/Vanier Park.