Théâtre de l’Entrouvert & Chicago Puppet Fest: Anywhere

Making a Myth: Oedipus, Antigone, and the Burden of Care in Anywhere

An Essay by Skye Strauss

Tragedies in ancient Greece retold myths––foregrounding for audiences what was being changed to suit the moment, as a constellation of familiar characters collided in new ways. In the present, Anywhere relies on what we already know about accursed Oedipus and his daughter Antigone, but its self-set challenge as a piece of puppetry is to adapt a familiar story, not only to its contextual moment but to its medium. By forging Oedipus from ice director Élise Vigneron and “ice puppet technician” and operator Mark Blashford foreground the infamous king’s inevitable end. In this puppet performance, true to its unavoidable half-life both offstage and on, ice melts. Oedipus is always fading away before our eyes. Instead of asking how Oedipus’s story will unfold in life, audiences are asked to consider how it will endure after death. This is not the end. Rather, as ice melts, water flows, and rain falls, a mist rises upward. A man, cared for by his patient and fiercely loyal daughter, crosses over. When he does, a mortal body falls and fails, but his legacy and myth transcend. One story becomes the basis for another.

The performance’s reliance on changes of state for its metaphorical potential is clear from the first sequence. A sheet of ice, shot through with thorns of frost, gleams silver in the light. It becomes a tablet for a performer hidden by a hood and cloak. From the brush in their steady hand, black ink flows over the slick surface, as they write the opening words from Bauchau’s novel Oedipus on the Road, “Oedipus’s eyes which have bled for so long are beginning to heal…” This Oedipus might still be on the road to Colonus, but he is clearly past the suspense of his original struggle against fate––wandering blind, fallen from grace and undoubtedly in pain, in between the worlds of two extant tragedies that bear his name. Red light, like veins, shows through the thinning ice until it breaks dramatically, dropping fragments on the floor. This will be a story about fragility.

It is also a story about a journey. Walking a circle of slate tiles on the floor that clatter with every treacherous step makes a lengthy trek possible on a small stage.¹ A hooded marionette is the first one we see on the road, manipulated by a distant puppeteer (Blashford). The words “Father wait for me” are illuminated. The red neon in the crisp darkness makes a sharp contrast to the dripping ink. The words become a repeated whisper in the soundtrack as Antigone, played by dancer/performer Ashwaty Chennat, appears in a pool of warm light to join Oedipus on the road. She looms over him, but the effect is protective rather than menacing. Sometimes she cuts between him and the distant, more godlike puppeteer––guiding Oedipus’s strings with her gentle hands. As the performance progresses, different postures recall mothers with children. She cradles him in her arms. When she walks beside him, holding his small hand in hers, his arm is upstretched toward her. She lies down on the floor and lets him clamor over the landscape-curves of her body. When he settles, lying down so that he is spread out across her chest, her breathing becomes his breathing. His small form trustingly leans backwards against her, then he reaches up––expecting to be lifted into her embrace once more. The roles of parent and child, caregiver and receiver, have been reversed by the extremity of his need.

All the while, the ice onstage slowly transforms. The puppet’s opaque body becomes translucent, exposing the metal hinges within, as it drips water onto the black floor. From somewhere under the slate tiles, a milky substance begins to flow––highlighting the blackened pool of water already gathered there as the dark and light liquids swirl together. Despite Antigone’s diligence and care, letting go is clearly inevitable. At one point, a question is asked: “To the sea?” Yes, they agree, to the sea. Somewhere there is water all the way to the horizon. In the end, though, this Oedipus will not sink or swim––he will rise.  

At first, it is a game of catch and release. The ice-puppet Oedipus swings through space on his strings but returns to Antigone’s arms. Eventually, he is taken from her. As the anonymous puppeteer walks closer, Oedipus rises––floating away from Antigone as she lies on the floor, arching her ribcage upwards toward him before turning over to face down and away from him instead. She rolls again and comes up into a boat pose, arms raised and legs extended upward in a V-shape, as if her own upward energy is propelling him higher. Chennat also raises herself into a sustained shoulder stand so that the puppet standing above her appears to be mirrored across an invisible horizon line and “standing” on her feet. After she withdraws, pulling her legs back and kneeling, he keeps rising––dripping water, pieces falling, as it begins to rain and the change of state progresses. 

Icy Oedipus descends for a final moment of tenderness, cradled in Antigone’s arms once more. He runs his hands over her face, nuzzles her cheek. The ice grows slick; he slips from her grip. He tries to climb, but it is she who actively lifts him and offers him up into the rain. Rain that will accelerate the melting process, his crossing over. Mist rises from the circle of slate. Twisting the puppet’s strings, Chennat sets it in motion. The limbs splay outward as Oedipus rises through the golden fog. Sometimes, Antigone is also drowned in fog, only a shadow. Eventually, Oedipus is thoroughly lost to her, suspended somewhere above her as—if he is always still on the road somewhere (ahead or behind). As he floats upward with the rising fog, she journeys onward and walks out of his story and into her own, another tragedy with its own inevitable end. She does not look back. Which perhaps begs the question: In another medium, how will she transcend?