Warriors Against the State

The play’s central characters, as well as the central character in the play that they present, are all warriors against State authority. The main plot is built around the experiences of two Black men, John and Winston, whose public acts of defiance towards the State-sanctioned, racist apartheid system in which they lived caused them to be imprisoned. The action arising from that experience is, in turn, built around what they discover about themselves and their situation while preparing for a performance of the Ancient Greek play Antigone. In that play, the title character is on trial for a similar public act of defiance towards the State as that in which John and Winston participated. Antigone’s motivations and actions echo and stimulate the motivations and actions of John and Winston, which makes the shared experience at the core of all three characters – i.e...