Antigone in de Amazone

Milo Rau creates a political Antigone for the 21st century, together  with indigenous people, activists and actors from Brazil and Europe.

For Antigone in the Amazon, Milo Rau and his team traveled to the Brazilian state of Pará, where the forests burn due to the expanding soy monocultures and where nature  gets devoured by capitalism. On an occupied piece of land, in collaboration with MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra), the world’s largest landless workers’ movement, they create an allegorical play about the violent devastations and displacements caused by the modern state, which places private property above the traditional right to land. 

In 2020 the creation process was interrupted due to the corona pandemic: the team had to return from Brazil in the midst of rehearsals. In the  spring of 2023 it travelled back to finish the production, which premiered in May 2023. Since then, Antigone in the Amazon has been shown over a hundred times in a dozen of countries worldwide. The play received much accolades after its showing during Festival d'Avignon, but also in Sydney, New York and Taipei, among other cities. 

After the productions Orestes in Mosul in the former capital of the Islamic State and the Jesus film The New Gospel in the southern Italian refugee camps, Milo Rau and his team travel to the Amazon in Brazil to conclude their Trilogy of Ancient Myths.