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“It’s the individual conscience versus state-mandated laws. It’s a peaceful protest that is met with pretty aggressive violence.”
In a month when NSW police attacked peaceful protesters at Sydney Town Hall, actor Maddison Burridge is joining the dots to a 2500-year-old play.
“Antigone is protesting for the dignity of human rights, and I think we can see that in the climate of today’s politics,” she says.
Burridge is playing the title role in Sophocles’ Antigone at La Boite in March. It’s one of the three “Theban plays” – tragedies about the royal family of Thebes, a dynasty whose scandals put even the Windsors in the shade.
Antigone, a daughter of Oedipus (yes, that Oedipus), wants to bury the body of her brother Polynices after his death in a failed coup against her other brother, Eteocles, who has also been killed, and buried with honour.
However Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, has decreed Polynices should be left unburied and unsanctified as a traitor. This puts them on a collision course: an implacable woman against a male powerbroker.
“There’s something both ancient and shockingly current about Antigone,” La Boite artistic director Courtney Stewart says.
“[Antigone’s] act of courage continues to resonate, particularly when we’re thinking about whose voices are heard, and whose are expected to stay quiet.”
It’s an iconic role that has been played by Juliette Binoche, Vivien Leigh, Jodie Whittaker and Irene Papas, to name a few. Burridge is playing it in what is shaping up as her watershed year.
In July, the Brisbane-based actor will reprise her starring turn in Queensland Theatre’s Pride and Prejudice, as Jane Austen’s beloved heroine Elizabeth Bennet. The play was a big hit in 2024, and put Burridge firmly on the map.
“Elizabeth and Antigone both are fighting against something bigger than themselves: Antigone, against the state, and Elizabeth with the role of women in society. But they use very different tactics,” Burridge says.
“Elizabeth relies on her charisma and her charm, and she’s sparkly. Antigone – she’s the opposite of that. She doesn’t need to be liked by anyone. She relies more on the strength of her argument and her moral judgment.”
As is so often the case in showbusiness, Burridge had a long, hard slog to find overnight success.
She graduated from QUT’s bachelor of fine arts (acting) in 2015 and relocated to Sydney, where she struggled to find acting work. She eventually scored a contract with Brisbane’s Shake and Stir, performing shortened Shakespeare productions in schools.
High school audiences could be brutal. “They tell you if they’re bored,” she laughs. She recalls playing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet to an audience rowdily urging the actors to “Kiss!” “You learn to be flexible and adaptable to an audience, it’s a training in itself.”
She recalls playing Juliet to an audience rowdily urging the actors to “Kiss!”
Her first taste of a mainstage lead role came with Queensland Theatre’s 2024 national tour of Gaslight for director Lee Lewis, playing another character who fights back against an oppressor – her gaslighting husband – as understudy to star Geraldine Hakewill.
She went on stage more than once, including at the company run-through, with just 15 minutes’ notice. “That was the first moment I was like, ‘I could do this’, and I think people saw that.”
Daniel Evans, now Queensland Theatre’s artistic director and the co-director of Pride and Prejudice, certainly did.
“Everyone has an idea of who Lizzy Bennet is, and that never, ever challenged her – Maddy just found the heart of the woman very quickly,” says Evans, who looked at about 500 hopefuls for the part.
“She’s so fiercely intelligent, and just her wit, her intelligence, and her warmth – she kind of came in and took the role.”
Evans at one point worried that Burridge was too short to play opposite their Mr Darcy, Andrew Hearle. For someone of enormous stage presence, Burridge is surprisingly petite.
Which makes her #MeToo-style showdown with male authority in Antigone all the more potent.
“It’s been incredible watching Maddy craft this nimble, slightly scrappy, contemporary version of the character,” says Stewart, who is co-directing Antigone with veteran fight choreographer Nigel Poulton. “She has an incredible aptitude for physicality.”
Another truism of showbiz is the way careers take off at exactly the point where actors are about to give up. That’s why Burridge is now in her honours year studying psychology at UQ.
“I was like, I’ve enjoyed my time acting, but I think it’s time for me to try something else. Then, of course, as soon as I enrolled at university, the universe started giving me all these roles. But it’s been wonderful, so far I’ve been able to manage both.”
Antigone plays at La Boite, March 5-21; Pride and Prejudice plays at the Playhouse, QPAC, July 10-26.
