ANTIGONE
Ancient Athenians grappled with the best means to govern themselves, experimenting with democratic notions of participation from amongst its citizens. How has this influenced our own democracy, and what lessons can be learned from their experiments?
As we struggle to define and refine our own democratic systems of governance in modern times, these ancient texts allow us to reflect on these questions and offer insight into how and why these foundations were pursued in the first place. This staged reading of select scenes from Sophocles’ “Antigone” by members of The Warrior Chorus will be performed by military veterans and followed by a discussion centering on themes of isegoria (equality), omonoia (unity), dike (justice), and eleutheria (liberty). Join the conversation and hear these veterans’ unique perspectives on the age-old questions of what democracy represents, how it has changed over time, and the value of upholding and defending it.
To learn more about The Warrior Chorus and our 2022 programming, visit www.warriorchorus.org/antigone
Presenters
Dr. John Meyer - Chair
Jenny Pacanowski - Ismene and Eurydice
Nelly Saviñon - Antigone
James Edward Becton - Creon
Neath Williams - Messenger/Chorus
Caleb Wells - Haemon/Chorus Leader
Production Team
Peter Meineck - Program Director
Desiree Sanchez - Artistic Director, NYC
Dr. John Meyer - Program Coordinator & Group Leader NYC
Neath Williams - Program Coordinator & Group Leader NYC
Jenny Pacanowski - Group Leader NYC
Michael Castelblanco - Company Manager
Alex Duncker - Stage Manager
The Warrior Chorus is generously supported by:
PRESENTERS
Caleb Wells is an American actor and screenwriter. After military college, he spent 6 years in the Marines with two combat deployments to Iraq.Following military service, he moved to New York City and found a new passion in acting. His notary credits include Feed the Beast on AMC, Limitless on CBS, and Red Oaks on Amazon. Caleb also performed with Aquila Theatre Company in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. This month he will be completing his Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College.
Nelly Saviñon (U.S. Air Force veteran), is an actor and writer based in New York City. In theater, she made her acting debut in 2016 as Roberta in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. She was also in the musical Blueprint Specials which was part of The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival 2017 at the Intrepid Museum. Her latest film credits include: An Air About Her, The Actor, The Big Time, My Father's Heart and The Light of the Moon which is a SXSW 2017 audience award winner and is now available on Showtimes. Ms. Saviñon enjoys storytelling and is very grateful to have the opportunity to tell it through acting and collaborating with other artists. And she also thanks her family and friends for their support.
Jenny Pacanowski is the Founder and Director of Women Veterans Empowered & Thriving; a reintegration program that utilizes writing and performance to empower veterans to thrive in their daily life. She is also the program director of Poetic Theater Productions, Veteran Voices and the Associate Director of Lucid Body’s Impact theatre. Jenny believes that partnerships and collaborations are the key to reintegration for veterans and their families. She travels all over the country performing, speaking, facilitating workshops and inviting people to empower themselves from within. https://www.womenveteransempowered.org/
https://www.poetictheater.com/about-ptp/veteran-voices-main/
Dr. John M. Meyer is an artist and scholar who studied at the University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D., 2020). He currently serves as the co-artistic director of the Thinkery & Verse theater company. He earned a three year graduate research fellowship from the National Science Foundation for his research on organized violence. The larger themes of John's work include collective memory, ethical and unethical behavior during war, risk-taking in combat, and competition within military units. He performed at the Obama White House thanks to Aquila Theatre's outreach program "Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives." In 2016 he performed off-Broadway in Sophocles' "Philoctetes" with Aquila Theatre, and returned to the company in 2017 to perform at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and in the U.S. national tour of "Our Trojan War." As a soldier, Meyer deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and his awards include the Combat Infantry Badge, the Ranger tab, and the Bronze Star.
James Edward Becton is honored to collaborate with Aquila again and dive into some Classics… they never get old. James Edward has been here, there and everywhere. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Neath Williams served in the US Navy ‘99-’09, US Navy Reserves ‘09-Current and is an actor/writer/director based in NYC. Creative Director of Society of Artistic Veterans and honored partner of Aquila Theater Company and the Warrior Chorus program.
Program Directors
Peter Meineck (Program Director) Peter founded Aquila Theatre in 1991 and has worked extensively in theater in London and New York. He holds an endowed chair as the Professor of Classics in the Modern World at New York University where he specializes in ancient performance and the application of cognitive science to the study of the ancient world. He is also Honorary Professor of Humanities at the University of Nottingham and has held fellowships at Harvard, Princeton and the University of California and the Onassis Foundation. He has published numerous translations of Greek plays with Hackett, and was awarded 2001/02 Lewis Galantiere Award for Literary Translation for his translation of Aeschylus' Oresteia. He received the 2009 NYU Golden Dozen Teaching Award, a 2009 Humanities Initiative Team Teaching Award, the American Philological Association Outreach Prize. Peter is a regular performing arts contributor to the humanities journal Arion and has published several scholarly articles on Greek drama and Shakespeare. His recent publications include Theatocracy: Greek drama, cognition and the imperative for theatre, published by Routledge and Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks, which he co-edited with David Konstan (Palgrave). He has produced and/or directed more than 50 professional productions of classic drama. He has received significant grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for devising and directing the groundbreaking public programs: You/Stories, Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives (Chairman’s Special Award), and Page and Stage: The Power of The Iliad Today. He also acts as an advisor of Greek literature and mythology, recently to National Geographic, Disney, Fuse TV and Will Smith (I am Legend). He is a graduate of University College London (BA hons. Ancient World Studies) and the University of Nottingham (PhD Classics) and a former Royal Marines Reservist. Peter continues to serve as a Lieutenant Firefighter and EMT in Westchester, NY.
Desiree Sanchez (Executive Artistic Director) has been Aquila’s artistic director since 2012. For the 2022 season, she directed both her new adaptation of The Great Gatsby and Macbeth. Past productions she has directed include Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Odyssey (2019); A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Frankenstein(2018); Hamlet and Sense and Sensibility (2017); Much Ado About Nothing and Our Trojan War (2016); Romeo and Juliet, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Philoctetes (2015); The Tempest and Wuthering Heights (2014); A Female Philoctetes at BAM Fisher's Hillman Studio (2014); Twelfth Night and Fahrenheit 451 (2013); The Taming of the Shrew and Cyrano de Bergerac (2012); Herakles (2012) at the Festival of the Aegean in Syros, Greece and at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens and at BAM in 2013; Macbeth and The Importance of Being Earnest (2011); and Six Characters in Search of an Author (2010). Desiree wrote the stage adaptations for Frankenstein, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Wuthering Heights for the Aquila Theatre and choreographed for: A Very Naughty Greek Play, based on Aristophanes' Wasps (2004); Julius Caesar (2006), Catch-22 (2007); The Iliad: Book One and The Comedy of Errors (2008). Desiree had a twenty-year career in dance which included working as a principal dancer for the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.