Manny's Reviews > Antigone

NOT JUST ANOTHER GIRL-DOES-THE-RIGHT-THING-AND-GETS-KILLED-FOR-IT DRAMA, ALSO CONTAINS INTEGRATED AUDIO AND FRENCH SUBTITLES!



It's my pleasure to present the most ambitious project yet attempted using the open source LARA platform: a full-length play, with each part recorded by a different person. Access it in Chrome or Firefox here. You can appreciate it as a performance by just going through it and clicking on the speaker icons, but the intention is that francophones will also be able to use it to improve their English. If you hover over a pencil icon, you'll see a French translation of the preceding sentence, and if you hover over a word you'll see a translation of the word. Clicking on a word shows a concordance of places where the word appears in the text. If anyone feels like trying this out with a francophone school class, we'd be interested to hear what they think. I'm guessing it should be suitable for kids age 13 and over. I first read Antigone when I was in my early teens, and I immediately loved it. I've heard similar comments from several friends.

The cast who came together to record the play have done a terrific job, in particular the three leads: Rosa is very moving in the title role, Robert is powerful and credible as the king, and Gwyn's guard adds some great comic relief. The supporting roles aren't bad either. I had to listen to the whole thing several times while I was checking for technical glitches, and I never got bored.

In general, being involved in creating this unusual work of art was an amazing experience. We're also producing a French edition of the same play, with English translations - you'll find details posted here, the best parts are still available. If you speak good French, have a couple of evenings to spare, and fancy yourself as a doomed princess, a corrupt but interesting king or an oafish soldier, please contact us!