LCCC’s ‘Antigone’ production to connect ancient wisdom to modern era

CHEYENNE, Wyoming – A 2,500-year-old tragedy will come alive in Cheyenne in November as Laramie County Community College Theatre presents “Antigone,” revisiting ancient wisdom to confront questions that remain unsettled in today’s world.

There will be two weekends of performances, each starring a different student actor as Antigone. Lee Noyes of Green River will play Antigone in the November 13-15 performances, each starting at 7:30 p.m. in the Playhouse on LCCC’s Cheyenne campus. Afton Powell is from Riverton and will play Antigone in the 20-22 performances, also starting at 7:30 p.m. in the Playhouse.

Admission is $10 and free for all students, including K-12, college and university students. Tickets are available at the door or online at lccc.wy.edu/theatreTickets.

Sophocles’ play explores the tension between the political and the personal, between what is right and what is lawful. At its heart is the clash between Antigone, who insists on burying her brother out of family loyalty, and Creon, who enforces his rule for the stability of the state. Pasqua said the dilemmas presented are deliberately unresolved.

“There’s right and wrong, and then there’s legal and illegal, and those may or may not always be the same thing,” said Jason Pasqua, LCCC Theatre instructor and director. “Antigone has to break the law in order to follow the law, which creates a tension between the political and the personal.”

For Pasqua, choosing “Antigone” was not just about presenting a cornerstone of classical theatre, but about challenging students to wrestle with its ideas. He said he hopes the process helps them learn to have more nuanced conversations, develop empathy for multiple perspectives and emerge as more well-rounded people. The language and scope of a Greek tragedy demand that students stretch themselves artistically while also engaging with the human questions at the center of the play.

The LCCC production also brings a contemporary layer to the stage. Large-scale video projections will mimic the look and feel of cable news programming, with sequences ranging from stylized battle scenes to breaking news updates unfolding across the walls of the Playhouse. While not altering a single word of Sophocles’ text, Pasqua said the design “aggressively contemporizes” the story, dragging it into a recognizably modern setting that mirrors the aftermath of conflicts audiences see reported today.

Pasqua said the play also echoes the complexity of modern debates, where actions can be seen as both heroic and detestable depending on perspective. The ambiguity of those judgments, he said, makes “Antigone” especially powerful for a contemporary audience.

“There are absolutely gray areas, and you may find yourself identifying with one character at one moment and then realizing the other makes a really strong case,” Pasqua said. “What I want is to move past the extremes, past the internet comment section way of thinking, saying, ‘Let’s have higher-resolution conversations that push us to think in more complex ways.’”