THC: Do you try to translate the physical aspects of “Antigonick”—the illustrations, the hand-lettering—to the stage somehow, and if so, how?

ID: Yes, I have tried to translate what those images evoke for me to the stage somehow. Not translating the images as such, because I don’t believe in any theatrical work that what you’re doing is taking what’s on the page and trying to make it happen; you’re interpreting it, and so it is an interpretation of those images as well. That said, what do those images evoke for each of us? For me, they evoke this sense of vastness, this sense of the smallness of our existence in this vast universe, and yet perhaps the anger, the grief, the frustration, and also the humor that comes in that, when we can kind of understand a little bit about our place in this vastness, how it is laughable in one sense.

THC: Do you try to reach behind Anne Carson to Sophocles, or are you just interacting with the text as Carson presents it?

ID: I think you’re always trying to reach back, because she’s reaching back. I think one of the points of her text is this idea of how the ancient fuses into our modern understanding of the world, and that what’s inescapable about “Antigone” is the recurrence, not in a cyclical fashion, but… in that the same story plays out in different versions. So I think Carson taps back into it, and I think as a result, we can’t help but tap back into it. So one of the things I’ve played with—who knows if it’s successful or not—is at times to go toward what I think is very traditional staging and then blow it up.

THC: What made you want to do “Antigonick” in the first place?

ID: That it was impossible. That it was absolutely a challenge for me, that I think when we approach things for the stage we should always be challenging ourselves, and also that I was compelled by it.… It was that terrifying moment of “I have no idea of what I would do with this—so let’s give it a shot.”