Another Greek Tragedy? Director Gino Tomisich Explains...

I was asked a little while ago: Is Antigone relevant to today?

This is a reasonable question since the play is over 2000 years old and many things have changed since its opening night. There is no question that the play is good. To have been in constant production, and constant study for that long it must have something going for it. It has something that appealed to the Ancient Greeks, to the Elizabethans, to the Victorians, to us.

It can’t be the simple story line of a girl defying a King. It has to have something deeper than that: something that touches us all, as well as all before us and (no doubt) all after us. What appeals to us, and those that went before us, is recognition. The theme of recognition is a constant in Greek Tragedy, and perhaps in all tragedy.

The core of recognition is self-discovery. It is the ability to see through the facade that we portray for our every-day dealings as social beings, and come to grips or battle with our inner selves. Antigone is a fine example of how the Greek tragedies are able to put this recognition into a context that the audience can follow, or foresee, but can not actually predict the moment that it will occur.

Gino Tomisich has been active in Australian theatre and film, with various companies, for 25 years. He has worked with the Australian Film Corporation, the Tasmanian Film Corporation, headed the drama department of a high school in Papua New Guinea and established Square One Theatre, a youth and community theatre group based in Broadmeadows.

Square One Theatre developed many innovative and influential performances in museums and galleries, and it was also the first Australian theatre company to be officially invited to the International Theatre Festival in Istanbul. They were at the Adaturk Cultural Centre as one of the opening night performances.

Gino became involved with the Moreland Theatre in 1998 as the director of Mending Broken Bits, which was written by a young company member.

Following this, Gino began a series of Greek Classic productions that focused on women. The first two, Women of Troy (1999) and Lysistrata (September 2000) both followed the theme of women in war (although one was a tragedy and the other a comedy).

Medea (May 2001) was about “about the role of women in society” and was “steeped in a fair bit of mythology. It was a play that had a lot of social commentary for its day, and still has today,” Gino says.

The current work in progress, Antigone, again looks at the actions of a strong woman.

Gino explains:  “A lot of the modern plays these days don’t really have a lot of strong female parts, and I think that’s a little bit of a pity. You know, and even in film, the women are more appendages to the male, whatever he is...

So it is a thing of trying to find strong and interesting roles for women, because I think there are lots of plays out there which have got ample opportunity for men, but not a lot for women.”

So why does Gino keep coming back to the Greek Classics? He says there are a couple of reasons.

“One is that they’re not performed all that much, especially by groups like this (The Moreland Theatre Company). Everyone thinks you have to be a professional actor with many, many years of training to pull it off. I think it’s a great way of developing performance skills.

The plays are incredibly tight, there’s nothing wasted in them, there’s no padding. And the characters are intense, and I think that’s what people are looking for. They’re looking for theatre that will grab them and move them, and move the emotionally, not intellectually.

The Greek plays are all about passions and emotions and the ones that we can identify with. So I think it’s good for both the cast and the audiences to see these plays and realise the strength of writing as well as the strength of performance.”