Narratives   of   Violence:    The   Antigone    Project 
An Interview with Ein Lall and Anuradha Kapur 
Jutta Phillips-Krug (Berlin) 
Theater director Anuradha Kapur and video artist Ein Lall turned to 
Brecht's adaptation of Antigone coupled with video material to 
create a response to the pogroms in the Indian Federal state of 
Gujarat. The pogroms were triggered by an attack on a procession of 
Hindu pilgrims who had visited the Tempel of Ayohdya in the North 
Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in February 2002. Fifty-nine persons died 
in the attack. Anti-lslamic pogroms followed with 2,200 victims. 
Anuradha Kapur teaches acting and directing at the National 
School of Drama in Delhi, where she frequently cooperates with 
painters and video artists in her productions. She authored the book 
Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: The Ramllla at Ramnagar. Ein Lall 
studied video in London and produced in the early 1980s a series of 
experimental art/dance videos. In 1993 she founded Kuveni Films, 
which supports women making experimental short and long films 
about women. Lall's own video films include: A Flowering Tree (about 
dancer Leela Samson), Komal Rishab (about singer Shubha Mudgal), 
The Colour Blue (about painter Arpita Singh), Dhara (about architect 
Revathi Kamath), The Broken Spine (about artist Nalini Malani), and 
Shatira (about dancer and choreographer Chandralekha). "The 
Antigone Project" was featured in September 2003 as part of the 
Berlin festival "body.city-New Perspectives from lndia" at the
House 
of World Cultures (Haus der Kulturen der Welt). 
Phillips-Krug: How much of Brecht's version of Antigone has survived in 
your production? While Brecht refers to Hitler, World War II, and the 
defeat of the dictator, you seem to be dealing with an ethnic conflict 
by relating the story to Gujarat. 
Lall: We didn't see the dictator and the destroyed city in our context. 
We wanted to create the true recuperating sound of memories and 
put Antigone into the context of contemporary India, which is 
actually split by state complicity, allowing such massacres as in 
Gujarat. We place that in the center; it is not a dictator but the state

allowing violence to happen on this scale. And we look at the 
possibilities of resistance within that context. 
Und über der Untat wuchs ihnen kein Gras 
Phillips-Krug: Brecht writes in his poem "Antigone":. noch je vergaßest

du Schimpf und über der Untat wuchs ihnen kein Gras." Your play

starts with a video that concentrates on a body and on memory. 
Mahagonny. com 
Stephen Brockmann et al., eds., The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch

Volume 29 (Pittsburgh: The International Brecht Society, 2004)