The Island is about two men who have been incarcerated in an unnamed prison, which is clearly based on Robben Island, the island that held Nelson Mandela captive for twenty-seven years. Each day, they are forced to do intense labour or run while they are shackled to each other, and each day, they treat each other’s wounds and practise for their upcoming concert performance. They choose to perform Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone, which mirrors the conditions in South Africa, where despotic rulers eliminate all forms of opposition.
The use of metadramatic elements in The Island alludes to the unjust apartheid system, and suggests that South Africa itself is a prison, and its people are its inmates, especially people of colour. Winston’s performance as Antigone further highlights the issue, and smudges the line between reality and performance, and transforming The Island into an act of defiance against apartheid and those who condone it, much like Antigone defying
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It has a strong political statement running through the whole play; to provoke the prisoners to think, understand and fight the injustice. Winston says, ‘But if I had let my mother’s son, a Son of The Land, lie there as food for the carrion fly, Hodoshe, my soul would would never have known peace,’ and it is evident to Winston how essential it is to do the honourable thing and to defy what is unjust, even though he almost loses the will to continue the struggle against apartheid when he hears of John’s impending release. John and Winston’s performance of Antigone in The Island establishes parallels between the fate of Antigone and that of the two prisoners John and Winston, but also that of the actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. Just like Polyneices, they