Susannah Perkins naked on stage in “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)”

The play, “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)” was written by Anna Ziegler. It opened at the Public Theater in March, 2026. In this contemporary feminist retelling of the Greek tragedy, Antigone has an abortion, in defiance of the law of her anti-choice uncle, King Creon.

Susannah Perkins played Antigone.

Video (not mine, of course).

The original version of Antigone was written by Sophocles about 2500 years ago, so the copyright has probably expired. That original story has nothing to do with abortion. It is as follows:

After a civil war over the throne of Thebes, two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, killed each other in battle. Their uncle Creon consequently became king. He ordered that Eteocles, who defended Thebes, receive an honorable burial, while Polyneices, who attacked the city, must be left outside to rot as a traitor.

A prophet eventually told Creon that the gods were angry with his decision to deny burial rites to Polyneices, since they had ordained those rites and they are, you know … gods. Creon ignored the prophet, which is never the smart play in ancient stories. In ancient Greece, that was the equivalent of betting on the Washington Generals to beat the Globetrotters. By the way, that prophet was the local blind man. The goddess Athena had blinded him after he accidentally saw her naked, but she offered him workman’s comp in the form of prophetic abilities. The gods would always hire the handicapped, but deaf and mute guys never got chosen as prophets because they either couldn’t hear or couldn’t transmit the divine instructions, so the blind guys got all the drachmas in the fast-paced, high-paying field of prophecy.

Creon’s niece, Antigone, sister of both slain warriors, believed that she had to follow the divine requirement to anoint her brother with burial rites. Creon thought that she should obey him instead since, as King, he was the law. He was the Judge Dredd of his own time. Antigone did not give Creon a “like” on his ancient Greek Instagram page, buried Polyneices ritually, and was arrested. Creon sentenced Antigone to be entombed alive in a cave, leaving her just enough food so that he technically wasn’t killing her, thus avoiding the wrath of the easily-duped gods.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, Antigone had been engaged to Creon’s son, who was also her first cousin. The Greek gods were not real sticklers on incest unless it involved a parent and child, in which case, hoo-boy, did they send down curses upon the offenders. You’ve heard of King Oedipus, the “Oedipal complex” guy, the original motherfucker. In another play by Sophocles, Oedipus unknowingly gave his own mom a ride on the ol’ love-log. When he figured it out, he blinded himself from the shame, and eventually went into exile. The pension system in ancient Greece was remarkably poor, even for kings, and the gods were displeased with him over that whole mother-fucking thing, not to mention the fact that he also killed his own father, so they refused to hire the blind Oedipus as a prophet. He was therefore relegated to the second-most common profession for blind guys: begging.

Well, our girl Antigone was actually the daughter of that same Oedipus, so you might say that incest … er … ran in the family, and she had no problem deciding to marry her cousin. But Antigone killed herself in that cave, which meant that Creon had simultaneously caused the death of his niece and his future daughter-in-law. Creon’s son was understandably grief-stricken to realize that his dad had caused the death of his cousin/fiancee, so he also killed himself. Creon’s wife, seeing her beloved son dead, then killed herself as well.

Creon, left alone with his own grief, started to wonder whether he may have overreacted a bit.

The ever-wise Greek Chorus ended the play by saying, “Ya think?”