A r t s & C u ltu r e
December 10, 2021
ARTS & CULTURE Established 1874
Volume 151, Number 8
Oberlin Theater Performs Zora Howard’s AtGN
Yesterday, the Oberlin Theater department premiered its mainstage production of AtGN, which will be showing through Dec. 12. Sydney Rosensaft Senior Staff Writer On Dec. 9, the Oberlin Theater department premiered AtGN, a modern adaptation of the classical tragedy Antigone. While the play was originally written by the Greek poet and playwright Sophocles sometime around 441 BCE, Oberlin students are preforming Zora Howard’s 2016 version, which weaves contemporary questions into the ancient narrative. Howard, a writer, director, and performer from Harlem, intermingles present-day discusON THE RECORD
As the show progresses, arguments brew between family members and friends, resulting in the eventual deaths of Antigone; Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s lover; and Haemon’s mother, who commits suicide after the death of her son. With Howard’s help, director Justin Emeka, OC ’95 and associate professor of Theater and Africana Studies, brings this modern spin on Antigone to the stage of the Irene and Alan Wurtzel Theatre. Howard engaged in transforming the story from script to stage, attending the initial rehearsSee Oberlin, page 13
Joanna Rakoff, OC ’94, Journalist and Author
Maeve Woltring Arts & Culture Editor Joanna Rakoff, OC ’94, is the author of bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and novel A Fortunate Age, winner of the Goldberg Prize for Fiction, the ELLE Readers’ Prize, and a San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller. Rakoff began her writing career as a journalist, and has written frequently for The New York Times, Vogue, Marie Claire, O: The Oprah Magazine, and many other publications. My Salinger Year was adapted into a film that was released March 5, 2021 in North America. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How did your relationship to writing develop before and during your time at Oberlin? I come from a family in which no one is a writer. My parents were first-generation Americans, and though they were very intellectual, arts-oriented people, they considered the idea of being an artist — of any sort — a nightmare. As a very young child, I wanted to be a writer, but I couldn’t even articulate that desire or ambition because it didn’t seem possible to me. At Oberlin, it began to seem possible to me, partly because I made friends who were from a very different milieu — who grew up in households where it was normal to work in some avenue of the arts or in publishing or media. I started to realize, “Oh wait, this
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sions regarding performative and radical activism with the central tenets of Greek tragedy, offering profoundly resonant ruminations on individual consciousness and collective accountability. Oberlin’s performance of AtGN is the first-ever run of Howard’s script and is showing through Dec. 12. Howard’s version of the play sets the show in a Black church with a majority Black cast. The play begins as Antigone returns from burying her late brother, Polynices, who was murdered for his homosexuality. Antigone and Creon, a priest, butt heads as she stands up for her brother.
Courtesy of Maeve Hogan
is something that a real person could do.” It took me a while to have the courage to actually do it, but that kernel entered my consciousness at Oberlin. Then there’s the academic component. I took one Creative Writing class while I was here — really only one. I was an English major. At the time, I kind of thought that Creative Writing classes were too lightweight for me; I thought of myself as a serious English major and scholar. I was interested in reading very difficult books and writing very politically-oriented, analytical papers. I felt like if I wanted to write a short story, I could write a short story, but I didn’t need to take a class to do it. I realize how silly this sounds now, but that was really how I felt. After Oberlin, you went to graduate school and then decided to leave in order to pursue poetry writing in New York. What inspired this radical shift? While I was at Oberlin, I was part of the department’s honors program. The program was designed to prepare students for doctoral work, which I planned to do, as it seemed like a safe way to be a writer to me. The truth is that my advisor and my mentor — David Walker and David Young — both said to me, “Don’t go into academia.” They kept suggesting that I go work at a magazine. All these years later it’s so obvious that they were saying to me, “Academia isn’t for you; you’re not someone who See Joanna, page 13
Joanna Rakoff Courtesy of Mark Ostow
