AAS (1) - Greek theatre & Antigone

To begin this lesson we discussed Greek Theatre. Having done the Historical Context unit, Lewis and I already knew quite a bit about Greek Theatre (see my blog entry on Greek Theatre by following this link - http://lornaclarkra.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/hc-greek-theatre.html). But we also discussed the three main playwrights at this time: Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. These three were alive and writing at the same time so were always in competition with each other to get named the best playwright of the year.

The main thing we discussed about Greek Theatre was the use of chorus. The noun "chorus" has many meanings, including a group of people performing in unison, or the part of a song which is repeated at intervals. If we think about Musical Theatre, audiences tend to look forward to the large chorus numbers, and are not as infused about the scenes in between - this was the same case for Greek Theatre audiences. One would assume that a Greek chorus has to speak in unison and move in unison, but this isn't necesssarily the case. We then watched a video about National Theatre's version of "Antigone" and the role of the chorus in their production.

We got the script for the scene leading in to the one on the video. The part of the script we have contains the chorus and Choragos. We sat down as one big group and worked out how we would split the lines up. We were learning how a chorus doesn't have to be as one, and can in fact have contrasting opinions. Therefore, we read through the script carefully, looking at where parts contrasted, and split the lines up and allocated them to each of us and worked out what personalities our characters had. To make the play more modern, we kept the idea of us all being soldiers, we set it during World War Two.

 The first paragraph of the script, we decided, was the army general congratulating the troops and pointing out the obvious - that they won. This character was James, and so we also allocated him the lines that were positive about the victory. Where it made sense to, we allocated whole paragraphs to different people, but some paragraphs we split up. For example, the third paragraph is very high energy and suggests that the speaker is very excitable. Too build on this sense of excitement, we split this paragraph into two. Rob and Lewis shared this paragraph as if they were talking about the battle. Continuing to think about characters, the next couple of paragraphs were split between James and Charlie. I particularly liked how we split fifth paragraph:

"We heard his shout of triumph high in the air
Turn to a scream; far out in a flaming are
He fell with his windy torch, and the earth struck him.
And others storming in fury no less than his
Found shock of death in the dusty joy of battle."

James had the first line, as it matched his character's enthusiasm and wish to have his voice heard. However, Charlie took over on the second line. This shows that Charlie's character disagrees with James and therefore creates tension within the chorus. To continue this tension between the two characters, they also split the next paragraph between them. 

Once we allocated all the lines and read through it a couple of times, we then got up and formed a line in order from lowest status to highest status. This made us really think about our character and their position within the army compared to the other characters. We read through this script standing in this line, however, we could move up or down the line as we spoke. I found this exercise really useful as it helped me to understand what was going on and the influence each character had in the conversation. I have the seventh paragraph and I basically say that we should stop talking about war and should just celebrate! My character therefore has quite a low status as I don't say anything until nearer the end of this scene. Also, my point is pretty much ignored as the next paragraph is then about the King's arrival.

After reading through our lines in this status order, we then read through the scene again but this time we began staging the scene. We are all either sitting or lying down having just won the battle. However, we positioned ourselves logically - we considered who we communicate with. For example, as Rob and Lewis talk to each other, they sit next to each other, whilst Hope only says one thing and in disgust at everyone's attitude, so she sits at the side with her back to us all.