This season, our three year-cycle baptized “Tryptich of the Young Girl” is coming to a close with Antigone. After Salomé (2023) and Ondine (2022), Antigone is the third and final chapter of a three part journey through myth in search of the dangerous and elusive figure of the young girl. In different ways, Ondine, Salomé and Antigone each embody cataclysmic forces in the female form with the potential to shatter our world.

At once horrible and sublime, Oscar Wilde's one-act tragedy Salomé is a visionary take on the biblical myth of Salomé, princess of Judea. Capturing the violence of the male and female gaze on the body, this symbolist poem depicts Salomé's lust for the prophet Jokannaan and her transcendence and transgression into blasphemy. A subversive portrait of female desire through the radical pursuit of art.

Translation from the French by Lord Alfred Douglas (1894)

Combining rich poetic language and extravagant humour, this French play by Jean Giraudoux tells the tale of a young water-nymph falling in love with a knight-errant as two foreign worlds collide: the human, and the supernatural.

Impulsive, frank, and filled with wonder, Ondine is a young water nymph drawn to the human world. One stormy night by the lake, she meets Hans, a knight-errant travelling through the nearby forest, and immediately and violently falls in love with him. To free herself of the water world, Ondine is forced to make a secret pact with The Old One, ultimately bringing about the tragic end.

Translation from the French by Philomène Cheynet (2021)