Make Antigone Accessible: Auslan Interpreter Fund

We’re Sydney Dramaturgical Company — a team of emerging theatre-makers working at the intersection of language, politics, and performance. Our work combines rigorous dramaturgy with bold, minimal staging, and a commitment to access that’s structural, not symbolic.

Our 2025 Antigone brings together performers, writers, Auslan consultants, and academics from across Sydney. We’re queer, multilingual, multidisciplinary — and driven by the belief that access is not something to add on at the end, but something that shapes the work from the start.

This fundraiser supports our attempt to stage Antigone in three languages — English, Ancient Greek, and Auslan — and to rehearse that complexity properly, with time and care. Your donation helps pay for Auslan interpreters, rehearsal space, and preview sessions with Deaf audiences.

We’re not a major company. We’re not backed by a university or institution. We’re just a small team trying to make serious work — and make it properly.

We’re raising $5,000 to cover key costs for our upcoming production of Antigone — one where Auslan isn’t an add-on, but part of the structure and meaning of the show.

This production is multilingual: English, Ancient Greek, and Auslan operate side by side. Ancient Greek is often treated as a prestige language — studied, preserved, and placed at the centre of cultural value. Auslan, by contrast, is still treated as secondary. But Auslan carries its own grammar, poetics, and embodied history. It deserves to be seen alongside Ancient Greek — not beneath it.

We're working with Auslan Stage Left to develop meaningful interpretation that takes the dramaturgy seriously. One performer signs as part of their role onstage. Another interpreter will be live at all six performances. Auslan is not just being translated — it's being shaped, rehearsed, tested, and refined in context.

We’re seeking support to cover:

This includes 3 working sessions with our interpreter and signing performer to translate key Ancient Greek terms (nomos, atē, phronēma), 6 interpreted performances, and 5 hours of rehearsal.

We need 5 additional rehearsals at Actors Pulse Playhouse to test multilingual blocking, spatial dynamics, and rhythm.

To make sure the work communicates clearly and effectively before opening.

Antigone is a story about denied speech, criminalised grief, and state control over the body. These aren’t abstract ideas. For Deaf communities, they’re familiar — through education systems that punish signing, public services that exclude, and institutions that assume access is optional.

This isn’t access as charity. It’s access as structure. It’s about putting Auslan onstage with the same seriousness given to Ancient Greek.

If you can contribute, you’ll be directly funding a production that treats Auslan as dramaturgy, not decoration. Every dollar helps!

Thank you.

— Aubrey Wang

Sydney Dramaturgical

sydneydramaturgical.com.au