Situating Brecht’s Antigone Project

Brecht’s ‘The Antigone of Sophocles’ (1948) was considered a marginal and transitory piece by the artist himself, a mere experiment and practical testing ground during the brief final period of his 15-year exile (in Switzerland, from November 1947 to October 1948) before Brecht’s return to Berlin and its cultural scene which was slowly re-emerging from the ruins of World War II and Nazi rule. But contrary to authorial self-perception, the project - which manifested itself in a few performances in Chur (Switzerland) in early 1948 and the first of Brecht’s ‘model books’ (Antigonemodell 1948, published in 1949) - is a landmark in Brecht’s work and in 20th-century theatre history as a whole while also making a distinct contribution to the long and diverse reception history of Sophocles’ Antigone. Focusing on select aspects of the project, this paper attempts to situate the importance of Brecht’s Antigone (the script, the production as well as the ‘model book’) by integrating the disciplinary vistas of Classics, Theatre Studies and Comparative Literature.