Antigone and Nurse script analysis and staging 1 - 1st scene

On Mondays lesson the actors playing the part of the nurse and I began to lolok over the first scene between Antigone and Nurse. The characters are very close to one another, the Nurse has raised Antigone from childhood so feels a very maternal need to make sure she stays safe and makes the right decision. However, it is also quite a friendly relationship, we decided to show this by starting the scene by making Antigone walk on stage to see the nurse asleep in her chair, pick up some grapes and see an opportunity: she drops one of the grapes into nurses mouth which wakes her up choking, we then go straight into the script. This is not an action Antigone would do to someone like Creon, it shows both the childishness of her character and her fondness for her Nurse.   As is evident in the script, Antigone has obviously just had an incredibly sensory experience with nature - because she knows this is one of her last moments to experience nature in all its beauty so she fully takes in every aspect of it (the immersion of herself in nature is shown through one piece of staging in particular in which Antigone sits down in the soil and digs her feet her in when she says 'melted into the landscape' which appals nurse to a high degree as these are not the actions of a well brought up girl of high status). Another reason Antigone had this sensory experience with nature is because she was burying her brother- the thing she has decided to dedicate her life to, so while she describes the beauty of the landscape and the colours and the nature, she is also talking about the beauty and excitement of burying her brother.  Here Antigone makes a false admittance to having a 'rendezvous ' in order to perhaps save Nurse from the painful truth- for if Nurse found out what Antigone was really doing she would know Antigone was going to die and given their relationship and how emotional the Nurse is, it can be imagined how extreme and devastating her reaction would be. However, even a mild cover up of the truth makes Nurse rant endlessly both in anger and a hint of enjoyment- she's a character who enjoys drama and gossip and makes a big deal out of things.In this final section Antigone is given an extensive, rather boring lecture about the implications of an action she has not done. Nurse gets increasingly more hysterical and Antigone has to settle her down. We showed this in the staging by having Antigone physically come up to Nurse and place her in her chair (which holds significance because Nurse is the only character to have a chair and it is the place she begins the scene peacefully sleeping wrapped in her shawl before Antigone comes a long and disrupts her peace entirely by choking her with a grape and getting Nurse flustered and worried). Although in Antigone's final speech she is trying to comfort her Nurse, Antigone and the audience are aware of the double meanings behind her words: she swears she will never have another sweetheart than Haemon, to Nurse this is a reassuring proclamation of her love for her fiancé but to the rest of us it is a quiet reminder that Antigone has very little of her life left to live. This final speech does also show Antigone's caring side, perhaps a side that is longing to live ever so slightly, she becomes aware that her actions are not only affecting the people she wants to be affected but also people like her Nurse, who love and adore her and always will. Even though Nurse is being very melodramatic and annoying, Antigone still makes the effort to reason with her and comfort her because after all this will be one of Nurse's last memories of her.