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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?”
It’s a question that gestures at the heart of this adaptation from playwright Kate Besworth and director Ming Hudson.
The story of Antigone starts 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. The two brothers are to share rule of Thebes, but when it is time for Polynices to take the throne, 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 that anyone who is 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 of the surviving plays from ancient Greece, famous adaptations of Antigone have been staged 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 of Antigone in New York City alone. Says New York Times theatre critic Helen Shaw of Antigone, “Her omnipresence is like a rush of white blood cells — there’s an infection somewhere in the body politic.”
In Sen̓áḵw/Vanier Park, Bard on the Beach’s adaptation of Antigone 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,” says Hudson. “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 it is we owe each other — or, in other words, “Who will care for us when we are gone?”
‘Antigone’ runs until Sept. 18 in the Douglas Campbell Theatre at Sen̓áḵw/Vanier Park in Vancouver.
Bard on the Beach’s 2026 season runs until Sept. 19 and features ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor,’ ‘Macbeth,’ ‘Goblin:Oedipus’ and ‘Antigone.’ Tickets start at $30. For more information and to buy tickets, visit Bard on the Beach’s website. ![[Tyee]](/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
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