.MaryNorrisTNY remembers her final visits with the former New Yorker editor John Bennet, who died earlier this month.
If a writer was having trouble with structure, John Bennet would recommend telling the story chronologically. It’s not original, but it works. So here goes. I went to Saugerties, New York, to visit John and his wife, Dana, three times earlier this year. The first was in April. John had learned that a student from Bard College was staging a production of Sophocles’ “Antigone” at Opus 40, a sculpture park on the site of an abandoned quarry.
John had not been feeling well for a while. He’d had knee-replacement surgery a few years ago, and then the pandemic hit, and he wasn’t getting a lot of exercise. As it happened, the play did not go forward that April weekend, but it was a beautiful time of year to be in the Catskills—fresh green unfurling at the tips of trees, magnolias blooming, rock faces seeping with snowmelt. We decided to check out Opus 40 anyway.
“Antigone” was rescheduled for the weekend of May 14th, and I asked if I could come back. John wrote, “Weather says a few light scattered showers and poss a T storm or two on Sat. Said don’t change outdoor plans but be aware. So Zeus may call.
The play had been translated into English by Francis Karagodins, a classics major at Bard, who comes from a Latvian background; the production at Opus 40 was his senior project. The show opened with the muffled sound of French horns from around the rocks. Antigone, played by a young woman with dark curly hair, entered and enjoined her sister Ismene to help her bury their brother Polyneices, killed in a war against Thebes. From the outset, Antigone is doomed.
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