The translation, written in 2004, will be directed by Alexander Harrington. The production has a musical score by Carman Moore and choreography by Claire Pavlich.

The cast includes Jessica Crandall as Antigone, Frank Anderson as Creon, Louise Flory as Ismene, John McCarthy as Haemon, Janice Bishop as Tiresias and Liz Frost as The Messenger. The chorus members are Jason Adamo, Rebecca Austin, Judith F. Bradshaw, Maija Lisa Currie, Sarah Ecton-Luttrell, Erik Gratton, Carrie Anne James, Christopher Keogh, Liz Sanders, Randi Sobol and Jason Weiss.

The Burial at Thebes went up at the Abbey Theatre in Ireland in spring 2004 as part of the theatre's centennial celebration and is inspired, in part, by the war in Iraq. Heaney wrote in the Guardian in 2005, "Early in 2003 we were watching a leader, a Creon figure if ever there was one: a law and order bossman trying to boss the nations of the world into uncritical agreement with his edicts in much the same way as Creon tries to boss the Chorus of compliant Thebans into conformity with his. With the White House and the Pentagon in cahoots, determined to bring the rest of us into line over Iraq, the passion and protest of an Antigone were all of a sudden as vital as oxygen masks."

Heaney, who won the Nobel in 1995, is the author of an acclaimed translation of "Beowulf," plus the poetry collection "North" and an adaptation of Sophocles' Philoctetes entitled The Cure at Troy, among other works.

Harrington is founder of The Eleventh Hour Theater Company and is an assistant professor of theatre at Clemson University, where he previously staged this play. Harrington's previous La MaMa credits include Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Shakespeare's Henry IV and Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamozov. The play goes up at The La MaMa E.T.C.'S First Floor Theatre at 74A East Fourth Street in Manhattan. Tickets, priced $18, are available at (212) 475-7710 or at www.lamama.org.