When Native Performing Arts Network and Bag&Baggage Productions set out to bring Antíkoni to life, they needed a designer who could hold the weight of the story in the clothes themselves. They found that person in Kellen Trenal.
A recipient of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation’s LIFT Award, Trenal is designing both costumes and properties for the production, a dual role that puts visual storytelling squarely at the center of the work. For a play set inside a museum of Indigenous belongings in a near-future world where Nationalists have seized power, every object and every garment carries meaning, where Trenal’s designs are not just a backdrop.
Antíkoni, written by playwright Beth Piatote (Nez Perce), is the final show of Bag&Baggage’s 2025/2026 season and marks the Pacific Northwest premiere of the play. The story follows a Nez Perce family caught between survival and sacred tradition. At its center is Kreon, a Native museum curator who complies with a nationalist regime to protect his position, and his niece Antíkoni, who refuses to let go of her people’s truth. The chorus is reimagined as a group of Aunties who carry traditional Nez Perce stories throughout the production.
Piatote has described her approach as a direct response to the original text: “Sophocles’ Antigone is a brilliant work that centers on a young woman standing up to the unchecked authoritarian power wielded by her uncle. While retaining many of the central questions of the original, my adaptation shifts the context and replaces the Greek chorus with a chorus of Aunties who tell traditional Nez Perce stories.”
The nine-actor cast is rich with Indigenous talent and includes Cassie Funmaker (Ho-Chunk Nation), Taya Dixon (Confederated Tribes of Siletz), Edward Lyons Jr., Cuin Moore, and Nathan Woodworth, a Karuk language speaker whose theater credits span London to Los Angeles. The artistic team also represents Tlingit, Navajo, Onondaga, and Native Hawaiian backgrounds. Sound design comes from musician Ed Littlefield, Tlingit from Sitka, Alaska.
The production is directed by Jeanette Harrison, NPAN Creative Director, who called the collaboration “epic and timely.”
“I love what Beth has done by using a Greek play and transforming it through a Native lens,” said cast member Taya Dixon. “I’m excited to explore a character I technically already know, but in a completely new context.”
Antíkoni runs June 4 through June 21 at The Vault Theater at Bag&Baggage Productions, 350 E Main Street in Hillsboro, Oregon. Performances run Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets are available at bagnbaggage.app.getcuebox.com.
