I Am Not A Man, Not Now

I Am Not A Man, Not Now is a collaborative performance and video made with Chelsea Knight in which we direct scenes from Sophocles’ Antigone that refer to the roles of women in ancient Greece, roles of subjugation that are in many ways still fully recognizable in the modern world. In this story of a woman committing an act of civil disobedience against the state, social roles and prejudices are substantiated through concepts such as fate and the will of the gods. In this performance and video, we seek to re-cast those roles in terms of language and its translation, its loss and gain of intention through time, choosing a contemporary translation of the play by Robert Fagles, performed by David Margulies, and older translations performed by three Antigones. The piece explores Antigone as both a proto-feminist play, and a misogynistic one, highlighting the comparison of the texts to show the subjective nature of translation.