As an avid reader of renderings or interpretations of the tragedy of Antigone (my favorite: Luis Rafael Sánchez’s La pasión según Antígona Pérez), I was very excited to read about Puerto Rican artist Natalia Lasalle-Morillo’s film En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Puerto Rico, 2024, 63 minutes). In Caribbean Beat (Issue 190: September/October 2025) Jonathan Ali (Film Buzz) speaks to Lasalle-Morillo about her film. [See Caribbean Beat for full interview.]
The Caribbean is not unfamiliar with its artists adapting classical Greek literature to an Antillean context. St Lucian poet Derek Walcott’s Omeros, his island-epic version of Homer’s Odyssey, is an acclaimed example of this. In her recent film, En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy, the Puerto Rican artist Natalia Lasalle-Morillo has also reached back into the classical canon for a cinematic reworking of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone.
In the original play, Antigone seeks to defy the King of Thebes, her uncle Creon, and bury her dead brother in the aftermath of catastrophe. In her film — first shown in an art gallery on multiple screens, then modified for single-screen cinema exhibition — Lasalle-Morillo relocates the drama to modern-day Puerto Rico and its diasporic New York community.
In this thrillingly radical reimagining, Lasalle-Morillo (and her four female collaborators) turn the play inside out, making it a shared, open-ended space for rehearsal, discussion, digression, and — ultimately — catharsis. Natalia spoke with Jonathan Ali about their process.
How did the idea of adapting Antigone to a Puerto Rican context first come to you?
In September 2017, I had just moved to California to pursue a master’s degree in theatre directing. On 20 September, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico. I found myself living a very strange diasporic experience, watching the aftermath from a distance. I was feeling profound grief. My mother in Puerto Rico told me: “I think this is a good time for you to start reading Greek tragedies, because this feels like a Greek tragedy.” She mentioned this because in my journey studying theatre, I had focused on experimental and political theatre and rejected the classics. But following her advice, I engaged with the Greeks. Antigone was the one that stuck with me. Despite being over 2,000 years old, this tragedy felt urgently familiar, and relevant. [. . .]
Excerpts reprinted with permission from Caroline Taylor, chief editor of Caribbean Beat. For full interview, go to https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-190/i-wasnt-interested-in-creating-another-adaptation-of-antigone-film-buzz1
See more on Lassalle-Morillo at https://natalialassallemorillo.com/