My Creon - The Antagonist?

I could write a book about Greek theater, Our Antigone, being on Dramaturgy, or Greek culture as a whole, but I’m just gonna let everyone else do that for me. I have the privilege of playing the most intense and sophisticated character I’ve ever been given in all my years at STC and in theater. Creon’s taken a lot of work, but it has been so much fun!

At the beginning of Antigone, Creon makes it clear that no one is to bury Polyneices, because he attempted to take the throne from his brother, Eteocles. When Antigone, the sister of the brothers, buries Polyneices despite Creon’s proclamation, she causes some major controversies in Thebes and her family. There are three major confrontations that warn Creon not to bury Polyneices and punish Antigone. After blinding himself from these warnings, Creon finally pays the price. I won’t spoil it, but by the end, Creon is left completely and utterly helpless.

In every Greek tragedy, the plot is extensively influenced by the flaw of a character who is relatively good. An example being Oedipus; he’s a solid guy who tries to find out who killed his dad to discover that he himself is the murderer. His flaw being his temper. In the end, he cuts out his eyes and runs away. When you look at Antigone, though, it’s harder to see because Antigone is a good person, but she doesn’t have a distinguished flaw and Creon definitely has flaws, but there’s nothing relatively good in him at all! Or is there? If you just read Antigone with no idea of what Creon is like in the rest of the Oedipus Rex series, you’d probably see that. I only started realizing Creon wasn’t all that bad once I looked into him in the other plays of the series. Creon actually believes he’s doing the right thing. He honestly believes that if someone dishonors the gods, they don’t deserve to be honored. This completely changed how I viewed Creon as a character. He was no longer just a bad guy, but an intricate character who constantly battles between doing what is right with the gods and keeping the power for himself.

Once I understood who Creon was and what he wanted, I then had to (and still am doing) dissect my script and separate the points he’s trying to gain power, trying to honor the gods, and when he’s at conflict with the two. Vivian has worked a lot with me on defining which of these Creon is going through moment by moment.

I once played the part of Orlando in As You Like and in the show, Orlando goes through a switch in goals challenging me to naturally transition between his beginning and ending objectives. Creon is similar in that he has two goals, but this time I’m challenged to play through both objectives at the same time. While most characters have one main objective, Creon has two conflicting ones. This is what I think makes Creon such an interesting character.

Josh Gartin

Creon/Brent and a Dramaturg