Antigone’s gaze through time

Tragédia, by Quatroloscinco Teatro do Comum

Abstract

For more than two thousand and five hundred years, the tragic character Antigone has
cast her gaze upon the positive laws of men and the fundamental right to bury her brother’s corpse.
Each new appearance of the character raises questions about her role and her political insistence in
the context in which she is reenacted. This article presents a critical reading of the dramaturgy of the
play Tragédia, by Quatroloscinco (2019), based mainly on Georges Didi-Huberman’s theory on the
critical image, with the aim of analyzing how the group reads this classic character and inserts itself
in a lineage of rewritings of the myth, relating it to the political context of the country. To this end,
we propose four central questions about the character in the play: where does Antigone’s gaze come
from? What does she observe? What does she tell us? Where does this gaze lead us? The conclusion
of this analysis is that the group, therefore, calls on the public to question their perspective and
points of view on the current political context in Brazil, presenting an Antigone who insists on
appearing, despite being dead so many times.