A theme for this year’s women’s history month has been “monstrous women” and the lengths women have had to go through to be heard. Four students from the theatre department tackled this topic through their portrayal of the play, Antígona Furiosa, written by Griselda Gambaro and translated into English by Marguerite Feitlowitz. Antígona Furiosa broughgt attention to the voices of women who have been silenced and what/who contributed to voices being silenced.

Christiana Molldrem Harkulich of the Eastern Illinois Theatre Department directed and instructed the staged reading with the support of the Latinx American Studies department.

This particular rendition of Antigone is written by an Argentinian playwright through the lens of the Dirty Wars with Antígona being the one to give a voice to the voiceless. The Dirty Wars took place in Argentina from 1976 to 1983 when the military junta took over the government and began terrorizing the nation. Over 30,000 people disappeared, with many yet to be found.

The dictatorship’s reign was most tangibly combatted by the women of Argentina’s anger. The mothers, sisters, wives and friends of the disappeared rose up and demanded justice and to this day demand justice for those who never came back home.

Harkulich is passionate about the need for people to hear this message and to really soak in what it means for them and for society as a whole. The staged reading time was followed by an open forum question and answer time. The open forum presented itself as an opportune place for the audience and actors alike to voice what it was like to portray this topic, to relay their personal experiences and the feelings it invoked inside of them.

Antígona, Antinous and Coryphaeus/Creon were the characters within the play whom each grapple with a different set of internal struggles. Clarence Carmody played Antinous, who was mainly a bystander to the tragedies being committed, simply too afraid to disagree with the king, Creon.

Carmody gave insight on what it was like to play a character that relies on cowardice as a motivation. To really get into character it took humanizing the character and putting into perspective who these characters are in the context of a war and specifically with Antinous how “there’s always the people who comply because they’re afraid of getting hurt.”

Harkulich’s main takeaway from the play and performance in particular that she hoped others will leave with as well is “power succeeds when people say nothing.”

Isabella Nantes can be reached at 581-2812 or at iwnantes@eiu.edu.