Fifth century B.C. Greek tragedian Sophocles is a serious choice for the 21st century Sydney Festival; not something bright and breezy you might expect from your standard summertime show. But if anything could rouse this city out of its silly season torpor, Antigone in the Amazon is it.

This piece of political theatre, is the third in a “trilogy of ancient myths” from Swiss journalist turned theatre director Milo Rau. In 2019 he adapted Aeschylus’ Oresteia in battle-scarred Mosul, using Iraqi actors after the Islamic State took control, and then created a passion play, The New Gospel, inspired by the life of Jesus Christ, using refugees in the southern Italian city of Matera.

Antigone in the Amazon. Photo © Stephen Wilson Barker

This time Rau shifts our gaze to a South American struggle. To Brazil, in a co-production with Belgium’s NTGent, where he was artistic director until recently, with the world’s largest landless workers’ movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST). The idea first came about in 2018 with the election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, whose plans to deforest the Amazon started to unfold as fast as illegal invasions of...