By Elizabeth Scalzo
Staff Writer
The University Players is a theatre club open to students, faculty, and alumni at the Fairleigh Dickinson Metropolitan Campus. The organization presented the show ‘Story Theater’ during the Fall semester, and has wowed their audiences once again with their Spring production of ‘Antigone Now.’ The show is a more modern rendition of the classic Sophocles’ play, Antigone.
The show lasted for about one hour, bringing the audience into the crazy world of Thebes in the midst of the war between two brothers who are fighting for the throne. The brothers Polyneices and Eteocles end up killing one another in battle which leaves the thrown to their uncle Creon who creates a law that Polyneices can not be buried because he was the cause if the war.
Antigone in The University Players performance was portrayed by Taylor Hayman. Antigone is seen as the problem child and the rendition by Hayman was spot on. Antigone goes ahead and buries Polyneices anyways because he is still her brother and is then sentenced to death by Creon.
Creon who was portrayed by Zachary Savage, had just the right amount of coldness towards Antigone in his performance. Once Antigone was sentenced to death and injected with a lethal injection, Creon gets word that his son Haemon has killed himself because he was in love with Antigone and did not want to live if it meant living without her. Creon’s wife then also commits suicide because she believes she has no purpose as a mother with no children.
At this point, Creon realizes he has no purpose in the world and decides he needs to save Antigone from death, but she is already gone. This part of the performance is when the show began to get emotional because Creon realizes he lost everything.
The most emotional part of the performance was at the end when Ismene who is Antigone’s sister tells her how she watched her take her first breath and not Polyneices, that he was not even there for her birth, but she was willing to die for him and not live for her. At this moment, many audience members were left wiping away tears.
After the show concluded, The Equinox interviewed Hayman about the struggles she faced during the show. Hayman started with The University Players last year as a freshman after having the leading role in her final musical in high school.
Hayman said, “My biggest issues had to do with costuming, but as far as the show at the end everything moves at a fast pace and I had lines in-between everyone else’s and those lines were the hardest to remember.”
The University Players never seem to disappoint their audiences even though they may have struggled throughout their rehearsal process. Every semester brings anticipation and excitement to see what they bring to the stage next.
Bottom: Madison Martinez, Taylor Hayman, William Henri.
Top: Angie Perez Garcia, Zachary Savage, Stephen Trombetta, Thomas Swanzey, Athos Vardouniotis
Photo Provided by University Players
