Antigone (LARA edition) in LARA

Nov 22, 2008 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: french

[Original review, Nov 2008]

Read this play any time you feel you're being talked into something which sounds plausible, but which you know in your heart just stinks. It was written to encourage French people not to collaborate with the Nazis during the occupation. A miracle that it was ever performed. Were the Nazi censors simply stupid, or did some bureaucratic hero take a huge risk to get it cleared? Perhaps a bit of both... it's hard to see how just one would be enough.

The story is kind of he [Original review, Nov 2008]

Read this play any time you feel you're being talked into something which sounds plausible, but which you know in your heart just stinks. It was written to encourage French people not to collaborate with the Nazis during the occupation. A miracle that it was ever performed. Were the Nazi censors simply stupid, or did some bureaucratic hero take a huge risk to get it cleared? Perhaps a bit of both... it's hard to see how just one would be enough.

The story is kind of heartbreaking. If you haven't fallen in love with Antigone by the end, you should probably seek medical attention.
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[Update, Sep 2020]

I don't know why I didn't do this earlier, but I looked up the play on French Wikipedia. It's a very interesting article. Some of the more striking passages:

« L'Antigone de Sophocle, lue et relue, et que je connaissais par cœur depuis toujours, a été un choc soudain pour moi pendant la guerre, le jour des petites affiches rouges. Je l'ai réécrite à ma façon, avec la résonance de la tragédie que nous étions alors en train de vivre. »

— Jean Anouilh.

[Sophocles' Antigone, read and reread, which I know by heart since forever, suddenly struck me with its force during the war, on the day of the little red posters. I rewrote it in my own way, with the resonance of the tragedy were then all in the course of living out.]

Anouilh se rappelle que « la salle était pleine tous les soirs, il y avait beaucoup d’officiers et de soldats allemands. Que pensaient-ils ? Plus perspicace, un écrivain allemand, Friedrich Sieburg, l’auteur de Dieu est-il Français ?, alerta, m’a-t-on dit, Berlin, disant qu’on jouait à Paris une pièce qui pouvait avoir un effet démoralisant sur les militaires qui s’y pressaient. Barsacq fut aussitôt convoqué à la Propagandastaffel où on lui fit une scène très violente, l’accusant de jouer une pièce sans avoir demandé l’autorisation. C’était grave. Barsacq fit l’imbécile innocent, la pièce avait été autorisée en 1941 – il montra son manuscrit tamponné et on retrouva le second exemplaire dans le bureau voisin. Les autorités allemandes ne pouvaient pas déjuger sans perdre la face. On lui suggéra cependant d’arrêter la pièce.

[Anouilh remembers that "the theatre was full every evening, there were many German officers and soldiers. What were they thinking? Rather more alertly, a German author, Friedrich Sieburg, author of Is God a Frenchman? contacted, I have heard, Berlin, informing them that there was a play currently being performed in Paris which could have a demoralising effect on the members of the military who were attending in large numbers. Barsacq was summoned to appear before the Propagandastaffel where they gave him a very hard time, accusing him of producing a play without having requested permission. It was extremely serious. Barsacq did his best to appear innocent and dimwitted, explaining that the play had been duly authorized in 1941 - he showed his stamped copy of the manuscript and they found the duplicate copy in the adjoining office. The German authorities couldn't reverse the decision without losing face. All the same, they suggested to him that he should stop performing it.]

...more

65 likes · Like · see review

Aug 24, 2020 Manny added it

Shelves: french, fun-with-lara, older-women-younger-men, translation-is-impossible, transcendent-experiences

CHERCHONS : 2 x GARDES BRUTALS, 1 x PAGE INNOCENT

Do you have a good francophone voice, and can you imagine yourself as one of the brutal, vulgar guards who arrest the noble princess or as the innocent young page who accompanies the king? If so, you might want to voice one of the three remaining roles available in the virtual production of Antigone that we've been putting together using the open source LARA platform. In the table below, roles in red are not yet taken and the numbers show how ...more

58 likes · Like · see review

Oct 29, 2020 Manny rated it really liked it · (Review from the author) · review of another edition

Shelves: fun-with-lara, french, translation-is-impossible, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts

NOT JUST ANOTHER GIRL-DOES-THE-RIGHT-THING-AND-GETS-KILLED-FOR-IT DRAMA, ALSO CONTAINS INTEGRATED AUDIO AND FRENCH SUBTITLES!

It's my pleasure to present the most ambitious project yet attempted using the open source LARA platform: a full-length play, with each part recorded by a different person. Access it in Chrome or Firefox here. You can appreciate it as a performance by just going through it and clicking on the speaker icons, but the intention is that francophones will also be able to use it ...more

42 likes · Like · see review

Oct 30, 2020 Chadi Raheb rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: plays, read-in-french, 20th-century, read-in-english, favourites, all-in-one-sitting, litt-ελληνικά, my-shelter, fun-with-clara

[ We are still looking for 2 Gardes (male) and Le Page (boy) for the French edition. If you’re a francophone or a francophile and interested in recording a few lines, or if you know someone who would be interested, please let me know et tout sera réglé :) ]

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« C’est laid un homme qui a peur ! »

If you've already read this fantastic play and wanna re-read it, it might be a great opportunity to hear it -while reading. It is now possible to listen to this play, read by a bunch of native E ...more

30 likes · Like · see review

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