In September 2025, Sydney Dramaturgical Company staged Antigone! at The Actors Pulse Playhouse, 103 Regent Street, Redfern (Gadigal Country), as part of Sydney Fringe Festival 2025. The production of Sophocles' Antigone ran from 16–20 September 2025, with a preview on 16 September and performances on the remaining four nights. Running time was approximately 90 minutes. The show played to full houses across its run.
This was a world premiere. Adapted and partially translated from Ancient Greek by Aubrey Qiu-Qi Wang, who also co-directed, working with the ensemble through a collaborative process, the production worked from a transliteral, interlinear rendering of the Sophoclean text — preserving the syntax and rhythm of the original Greek rather than smoothing it into idiomatic English. Key terms (atē, nomos, kakon, timē, phrenos, phronēma) remained in Ancient Greek, left untranslated because their philosophical weight resists clean equivalence in English. The program included a glossary. Wang's adaptation drew on his own experience with English as a second language, and the dramaturgy was developed in collaboration with students of political science who had studied the play.
Antigone! was performed in three languages: English, Ancient Greek, and Auslan (Australian Sign Language). The Auslan was not a supplementary access provision but an integrated performance language, embedded in the staging from the outset — making this one of the few fully Auslan-integrated theatre productions staged in Sydney in 2025.
Naomi Belet played Antigone. Warren Paul Glover played Creon. Adam Lee played Haimon and also served as choreographer. Mimi Aitken played Ismene. Andrew Cremen played the Sentry. Daniel Saunders played Aristos, the chorus role.
Paul Sorauer played Polyneikes, Antigone's dead brother — conceived in this staging as a ghostly, spectral figure, present onstage throughout the action but separated from the living world. Sorauer's face and hands were covered in silver paint, with dark black around the eye sockets. He entered alone at the opening carrying a large knotted rope, a motif whose connection to death became fully apparent only at the play's end. Sorauer simultaneously signed onstage dialogue in Auslan while performing the role, functioning both as a character within the drama and as a silent commentator on the unfolding action.
In his letter of support, Sorauer described the difference between this kind of integrated work and conventional theatre interpreting:
Rather than standing to the side of the stage and translating for a designated section of the audience, I was performing a role within the production while signing — and working directly alongside a Deaf actor whose performance was also integrated into the staging. The Auslan wasn't a separate access layer; it was part of how the production told its story.
James Kerwin, a Deaf actor, played Teiresias. In a departure from the traditional staging of Teiresias as a blind prophet, this production reimagined the character as a Deaf prophet. All of Kerwin's dialogue, including his prophecy monologue, was performed entirely in Auslan.
In his own account, Kerwin wrote:
Performing as Teiresias with his character adapted to being a deaf person created the unique opportunity for me to join the cast of Antigone. Signing as Teiresias, I was able to express the powerful messages of prophecy visually in Auslan. The nature of Auslan being visual allowed me to make it poetic and larger than life and the audiences could understand what Teiresias' messages were about.
Kerwin has previously worked with the Australian Theatre of the Deaf in Sydney, toured Australia in Theatre-in-Education shows, and performed at Belvoir St Theatre.
Amber Allayiotis composed and performed the live score on traditional Greek lyre. The music included the Seikelos Epitaph — the oldest recorded piece of music in the Western canon, originally found inscribed on an Anatolian tombstone — as well as the First Delphic Hymn to Apollo. The lyre accompaniment ran through and between scenes, grounding the production in an ancient sonic register. Allayiotis also appeared onstage in the role of Eurydice.
The staging was spare. The production drew on Brechtian gestus, ancestral ritual, and political theory. A large gate created by Sid Darawshe (a reference to Kafka's parable Before the Law) was a central scenic element. In Kafka's story, a man comes to a gate seeking the law. A guard tells him he cannot enter yet. He waits his whole life. Just before he dies, he asks why no one else ever came. The guard tells him the gate was made only for him, then closes it. This parable ran through the production's engagement with questions of law, access, and exclusion.
A voice-to-text projection screen at the front of the stage provided an additional accessibility measure.
Performances Wednesday through Saturday were preceded by public lectures from 6:00–6:30pm, with doors opening at 5:00pm. The Tuesday preview had 7:00pm doors and no lecture. Attendance at the lectures did not require a ticket to the show.
The production was developed alongside a program of scholarly engagement with the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales.
Dr James Collins, Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, delivered a public lecture titled Sophoclean Stagecraft and Invention and led an audience discussion in conjunction with the production at The Actors Pulse Playhouse. In his lecture, Collins discussed how these plays were first presented inside the Temple of Dionysus, and the centrality of religious life in Ancient Greece.
In his letter of support, Collins wrote:
The production demonstrated a thoughtful and moving engagement with Sophoclean material and integrated performance with scholarly discourse. The company's approach reflects a serious commitment to classical texts, accessibility, and public education. It was one of the most original and powerful productions of Greek drama I have seen.
Dr Tamara Neal, Lecturer in Ancient Greek (Education Focused) in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney, attended the 2025 preview. In her letter of support dated 2 March 2026, Neal wrote:
The company's approach demonstrated intellectual engagement, creative innovation, and a thoughtful integration of performance and scholarship. I whole-heartedly support Sydney Dramaturgical's continued development of this work and their broader programming plans.
The integration of Auslan into the production was a central artistic and ethical commitment. The Sydney Fringe listing carried accessibility tags for wheelchair accessibility and Auslan-interpreted performances. The production's visual accessibility rating was listed at 50%, and its aural rating at 50%.
In his letter of support, Kerwin emphasised the importance of staging plays in Auslan:
It is important that plays are staged in Auslan because inclusivity, access, and equality matter. The Auslan community (deaf people, families, friends, students, interpreters) is a rich and vibrant group who deserve access to theatre they can understand and appreciate. Including Auslan signals to the wider community that diversity in performance is valued.
Several members of the Deaf community attended performances across the season and their feedback was positive.
Sorauer, in his letter of support dated 2 March 2026, emphasised that integrated Auslan work depends on early creative collaboration:
Doing this kind of integrated work well depends heavily on how early interpreters and Deaf performers are brought into the process. With dedicated funding, Sydney Dramaturgical would be able to involve Auslan collaborators from the development and rehearsal stages, which in practical terms means more time to build the relationship between signed and spoken performance — and a stronger, more considered result.
Interviews with the cast were conducted by Romy Wild and published in the production program.
Speaking about her connection to the role, Belet described interpreting the family curse as intergenerational trauma. The story appears simple — she wants to bury her brother — but the emotional reality reverberates through everything. On working with classical Greek text versus contemporary Australian theatre:
I love a lot of contemporary Australian theatre, and it often explores the small, intimate pains of everyday life. But these ancient texts let us go to emotional extremes that we don't often allow ourselves in this culture. They're cathartic.
Glover described wanting to portray Creon not just as a king but as a man with paternal feelings and tenderness, who also makes difficult decisions for the state that collide with his family. He drew a personal connection through Brexit:
When Britain left the EU, it was the worst foreign policy decision in my lifetime. It caused rifts between families and friends. That's where I connect with Creon — the tension between personal loyalty and public duty.
On a moment in rehearsals where something clicked but couldn't be explained:
Acting is spiritual, even if we don't believe in the Olympian pantheon. The characters have a connection to the gods, and you have to take that seriously. I believe Dionysus is behind us as theatremakers. It's something you feel, but can't explain.
Saunders pointed to the ghostly Polyneikes haunting the events of the play — something transcendental, present, and impacting the characters but not fully explicable or rational. He noted that the use of Auslan with Polyneikes was an intelligent staging choice, connecting it to the original myths in which shades brought from Hades could not speak without an elaborate sacrifice.
Antigone! received three published reviews during its Sydney Fringe season.
Edwards described the production as a singular work still replete with revelation, and characterised the tone as raw and brutal with huge performances. Of the trilingual approach:
A tight, stark setting allows the true centre of this play's naturalistic power to emerge through its (surely) unique combination of language — movement and gesture, Australian English, Auslan and Ancient Greek. The upshot is an Antigone devastated by the weight of faith, religion and ritual.
Elevated by its rich use of Auslan, this version also retains key Greek terms (nomos, atē, phronēma), and it just works. To my ear, the combination of these languages adds a powerful ceremonial splendour and gravity.
Edwards described Naomi Belet and Adam Lee as striking particularly dolorous notes as the doomed lovers, called Warren Paul Glover a wonderful Creon, and noted that Andrew Cremen and Mimi Aitken provided outstanding bench impact. He called Amber Allayiotis a mesmeric Eurydice, doleful behind her extraordinary Greek lyre. Edwards also attended Dr James Collins' pre-show lecture, which he described as delivered with an endearing po-faced reverence.
The reviewer situated the production within a lineage of twentieth-century reimaginings of Antigone — from Cocteau and Honegger's opera with designs by Picasso and Chanel, to Félix Morisseau-Leroy's Haitian Creole Antigòn, to Fugard, Kani and Ntshona's The Island, to Brecht's Antigonemodell 1948. The reviewer identified three main strategies in the production: the Auslan integration, the selective use of original Greek terms, and the live Greek lyre accompaniment.
On the Auslan integration:
The most important innovation was the Auslan interpretation. This was not a vague adjunct to the action, creating a spectacle of accessibility for its own sake. As with the Greek, the crew found ways to make signing a vehicle for drama's essence.
On James Kerwin's Teiresias:
His prognostication of the fate of the house of Oedipus, and Creon's place in the downfall, was rendered inscrutable to any but the Auslan literate. This worked brilliantly, creating the sort of weighty strangeness of prophecy that would not have been out of place on the Greek stage.
On Amber Allayiotis' use of the Seikelos Epitaph — the reviewer called it a nicely Hölderlinian touch, referencing Walter Benjamin's observation about Hölderlin's Sophocles translations, in which meaning plunges from abyss to abyss. The reviewer concluded:
The bones of this production are full of spirit. The lyre, the koine and the Auslan transposition are all inspired means of making Athens speak to the present. The production enriches language by leading it up to the point of its own collapse, and subverts the typical gesture of "speaking truth to power" by showing the ways that power refuses to hear.
The reviewer described the concept as fabulous and unlike anything they had heard before, and stated there is space for a production of this nature in Sydney. The reviewer praised Paul Sorauer as fascinating to watch:
Paul Sorauer (Polyneikes) was fascinating to watch. He translated all the spoken words into Auslan and became a silent commentator on the unfolding scenes. At times he was the most interesting thing to watch. I really commend Sorauer on his ability to hold the stage without even speaking.
The reviewer found Naomi Belet and Adam Lee to be standout performers — describing their handling of the heightened language as effortless and their stage presence as hypnotic. On James Kerwin's Teiresias:
All of Kerwin's dialogue was in Auslan including his prophecy monologue. There was no need to be able to understand Auslan. We breathed when he breathed, we were scared when he was scared. In a weird way, we listened when he spoke. Kerwin was able to take us on an emotional journey just with his energy.
The reviewer also praised the reimagining of Teiresias as a Deaf prophet rather than a blind one.
The production was presented as a ticketed event through Sydney Fringe. Ticket prices ranged from $0 to $34.50, with a preview ticket at $15.00 and Deadly Tix (for Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and other First Nations communities) at $22.00. The production was rated PG. Genre tags on the Sydney Fringe website included Theatre and Workshops and Talks.
The production operated on a profit-share model. Total ticket income across the season was $9,074.43. After expenses — including venue hire and tech ($1,450), insurance ($300), set/props/costumes ($500), marketing and design ($500), guaranteed base fees ($2,400), Fringe admin fees ($450), music ($500), rehearsal hire ($500), and bump-in/out assistance ($100) — the estimated net profit was $2,374.43. Eighty percent of the profit pool was allocated to the cast, distributed equally among eight performers, each receiving an estimated payout of $237.44 plus a $300 base fee. Twenty percent of the profit pool went to crew, split between Lara Kariatlis and Sid Darawshe.
Sydney Dramaturgical Company is continuing to develop Antigone! and has applied to Creative Australia for further funding. All four letter-of-support writers — Dr James Collins, Dr Tamara Neal, James Kerwin, and Paul Sorauer — have endorsed the company's continued development of this work and its broader programming in accessible, multilingual theatre.
Producer — Aubrey Qiu-Qi Wang
Choreographer & Haimon — Adam Lee
Composer (Greek Lyre) & Eurydice — Amber Allayiotis
Antigone — Naomi Belet
Creon — Warren Paul Glover
Polyneikes / Auslan — Paul Sorauer
Teiresias / Auslan — James Kerwin
Ismene — Mimi Aitken
Sentry — Andrew Cremen
Aristos (Chorus) — Daniel Saunders
Assistant Producer — Romy Wild
Stage Manager — Lara Kariatlis
Set Design — Elise Kemp
Set Design — Sid Darawshe
Rehearsal Photographer — Bronte Godden
Production Photography — Jack Okeby, Bronte Godden
Presented by Sydney Dramaturgical Company.
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