Showcase feedback 19th Feb

Monologue:
Movement
1) Stand straighter! Shoulders pushed back.
2) Pacing too much and makes the character look uncertain
3) Touch the tomb more!
4) Vary hand actions more (not just open arms/one hand gestures/ touch self)

Voice
1) Angry= fast =loose enunciation. Dont do that! Keep the pace, enunciate better.
2) Play with volume- extreme soft, soft, medium, loud, extermely loud, scream...
3) Need to see more Despair!!!- perhaps even to the point where your voice seems to break
4) Try high and low, loud and soft for same emotions. (see which one is best)
5) Try using the argumentative lyric style for "pious...impious"
6) Pause after imp parts to let the message sink in.

Costume
1) Wedding dress + veil?

General
1) Be BIGGER!!!- railing against the God's
2) No matter what the emotion, tone, volume, it must be level 10! Intense!

Duologue
Movements
1) Try to remain standing (1st time i stand) when drinking.
2) Cigaratte, learn how to use one! Ash.
3) Create more character traits and ticks. Make the necklace thing more obvious.
4) Hands too 'flowy' both mother and daughter.
5) Mother-daughter touching awakward! Not right for the relationship

Voice
1) "I hope i've always done that"- said in a childish 'i feel hurt' tone.
General
1) Try out different levels and kinds of anger
- At myself for having raised such a daughter
- At Amy for making such a horrid choice and being so stubborn about it
- At Dom cause he's taking my daughter away from me, cause he's a playboy who has little potential and because he doesnt appreciate the theatre.
Get motivations ad subtext V CLEAR.
How are these anger's different from each other. How will i show these differences?
2) Where is the climax?
3) Could add more reflective/introspective moments to Esme.
4) Change intensity of response to Amy. From- 'I need a drink!' to "Why? Why?" sliently playing in her head.
5) End-make it more obvious that Amy is the adult, that she knows what she is doing. Sort of control shift.

Miss N's comments
1) Pace- Swallowing words
2) Smoking weird
3) Keeps standing up
4) Reaction- revelation
5) Sarcasm more than concern. Monotonous.

Consultation 28th Jan- Changes

My greatest fear was that my audience would not pity Antigone because she would seem to harsh, too strong and too defiant. So what I tried to do was to tone her down, make her plead with the chorus more and make her seem more 'human' by portraying her more as a woman who fears death and is trying to reason her way out of it.

But then at my 1st consult with Miss N after the assesment, i realized that i didnt have a climax! What a crime that was in Greek tragedy and in a monologue! My intensity kept varying, following a roller coaster of ups and downs; and that was not working to my advantage. She told me to play up the dispair to get sympathy, up till the point of the climax. I know it seems dumb but it never occured to me to do that because I always played this formulae in my head pleading for mercy=soft 'feel sorry for me' voice.

So now the new Antigone will be much more intese, staying true to Greek tradition; and there will be a climax! There is only one point which will lead to an increase in energy and from there it will only go higher. The line that goes "Never had i been a mother of children"

Another thing that i managed to get rid of is the unsightly awakward habit my character has of kneeling or sitting on the ground. Now at the new high intensity level i have no motivation to sit down. AND, a great suggestion was a imagine that my family members appear to me as ghosts instead of having to look at the ground and somehow imagine their skeleton's underground. That helps to make it more real as her emotions run so high that she imagines her family around her, their prescence has never left her since their death, thats how close she is to them and shows how she is unable to let go of them, much less their memory.

New thing! Is the emotion of JOY in my monologue. When I see my mum, dad and bro, there is a new sense of happiness and calm that Antigone feels. That gives her more layers and shows off the love she has for her family members.

V IMP change of staging. Now the tomb wil be behind me not to my left, which kind of makes it seem that its hauting me, looming behind me, ready to engulf me. Chorus will be split on my right and left; makes it seem as if everyone aroud her is against her, makes her seem more trapped. Creon remains on my right, downstage, a little furthur off than the chorus.

6th Jan

When approaching the role of Antigone, i thought that it would be an emotionally draining one; and indeed it was. However im not sure if i approached it the right way. I wanted the audience to feel the pain and injustice that had been caused to asntigone and so i portrayed her as a sad, angered victim; complete with the tears, emotional voice and actions that portrayed a distressed character. However i was reading a bit from Stan's book Building a character when something struck me. He said that it was an actors job to pour out all the emotions at home and then on stage use that energy to portray and convey those emotions to the audience so that they instead of him will feel those deep emotions. How in the world does one do that? Aren't we suppose to feel the character first and seeing what the character is feeling the audience being human wil respond. I do understand that he wants us to do this so that we dont choke during the [erformance; but how do we know how much to show, and how do we make the audience feel what we felt?

With ref to my monologue and Sophocles, he took the psychological approach, wanting to display characters in distress experienceing such overpowering emotion, his aim must have been for the audience to feel it. In some ways it is like Brecht's Epic theatre. He draws the audience to sympathize with his protagonists and then asks them to step back using the Chorus and analyze the scene from a 3rd person perspective so as to balance tyhe play out.

Sophocles aim was never to give the answer of right and wrong, in fact there seldom is any because there is nothing more to it than fate. What one God considers right may be wrong to another God since there are so many contradictory God's. What he does is to present the two sides and sort of ask the people to choose, although at times he leans towards one side more than the other. What Antigone did was wrong in the eyes of men's law and what Creon did was wrong to the God's. So both are kind of wrong in a way, so there is a sort of balance between the two.

Q and A

Does Antigone have a voice of her own or is it Sophocles voice? What is he trying to say?

1) MYTH- Antigone was a tale that had been passed down from generation through generation. She was a legend for her sacrifice for her family and defiance of the king. We know that the skeleton of the story was passed down. However, we aren’t sure how much of the content was. The justification that Antigone proposes for her actions might not be the same every playwright writes the play. So, one can say that Sophocles was the puppet master behind Antigone’s arguments, but not behind her actions.

2) SOPHOCLES- His characteristics play a great part in trying to figure out the purpose behind his work. He was said to be kind and patient, one who held high positions but was never judged critically. There are two theories as to why he wrote what he did.
- IMAGINATION- It is said that he had never experienced feelings of sorrow and grief and pain and thus he wrote plays on it, trying to experience through them these great emotions.
- FAÇADE- Having occupied such high positions; he could not express himself freely. Tragedies were his outlet, where he could express his sorrow, grief and anger without having to put his name to it.

This isn’t really a matter of reasoning, since one can’t be sure if sources can be trusted. But working with the information given I have come to a decision that the argument of imagination prevails. Why?

(i) He was an intellect, having studied under the best teachers and coming from a respectable family. His background might have contributed to the way he approached plays; psychologically. Most of his plays focused on the emotions of the protagonists and their reactions to what takes place around them. Unlike other tragedies which revolve mostly around the Gods.

(ii) When he was in power he would have done something if he wanted to.

(iii) His son filled a law suit against him? But yet he still helped him write plays.

(iv) It was a myth; he took it and wrote it from a psychological perspective. Why would a lady do that? -- Obvious reason: Any human would put their family before state-- He was just presenting that aspect of it.

(v) He didn’t do it from Creon’s view because he had already done Oedipus and they were both pretty similar. (Was Antigone written before Oedipus?)

(vi) One can only pent up their feelings for that long. It’s bound to come out one day.


(vii) During his life, Athens was at its best. What could cause him such fury and pain that he would have to vent it out through a play?

What are the issues that it deals with? Are they relevant to us now? If so how?

1) Fate
2) Inheritance of suffering.
3) Tyranny and its dangers.
4) Family vs the state
5) God’s laws VS Humans laws


Was Sophocles the 1st to use a female as the main character in a Greek tragedy? If so why? (When was ‘Electra’ written?)

Does Antigone follow the mould that Greek tragic heroes usually follow?

1) She was fighting for a cause.
2) She suffered because of it. Ultimately dies for it.
3) The Gods were on her side.
4) People opposed her stand but she persisted.

Why give the female role a voice? And to top it all a contradictory one at that? What was he trying to say?

Does he HAVE to want to say something?
The myth was about how a lady went against the law.
He took it and asked why would she do that?
Ladies are loyal to their families, obvious they would choose family over state.
He expanded the argument and VIOLA there was a play.

What are the arguments that Antigone and Creon throw at each other?
Sophocles had the option of writing the play from Creon’s perspective. Why didn’t he do that? Did taking things from Antigone’s perspective have more meat?

The Greek's...

GREEK THEATRE PERFORMANCE- AN INRTODUCTION
By Davis Wiles

-The subject matter as well as themes and how the tragedies ended were not predictable.

-The physical sense of earth as home of the dead is constantly exploited. The actors performed on a floor of beaten earth, and their feet created dust and characteristic thud.

-The theatre was where the men came to question who they were and how they should live.


GODS

-Zezus was the head of all the Gods and he ruled the sky. His children ruled other things and were mostly involved in quarreling amongst themselves and creating chaos by dabbling into human affairs. His siblings were the gods of other elements like the sea, under world, indoor world and corn fields.

-Dionysos a child of Zezus is the WINE GOD and he dissolves boundaries, moving freely. Associated with darkness, nocturnal drinking bouts, and the loss of mental clarity in moments of collective emotion, with the loss of boundaries around the self experienced in a crowd, and the hiding of the self behind the theatrical mask. He also dissolves Identity, GEENDER in particular. His instrument is the haunting double oboe which can whip up wild dances. His worshippers tend to be women.

-Gods can be understood as social and psychological projections. Female experience like reproduction, the frustrations of the married state, the wildness of adolescence, etc; and Male experiences of travel, power, fighting, drinking, labour, etc.

-The Gods have no morality and represent irreconcilable opposites. Their fighting is mirrored in that of the humans.

-Statues were a symbol embodying a variable degree of divine presence.

THE FESTIVAL

Served the purpose of-
(i) Showing of the best of the city to foreigners
(ii) A place where men could question who they were and how they lived.
(iii) A place where political concerns were raised and possible real life situations and problems were presented to the men.
(iv) To celebrate the God of Theatre and Wine.

THE MATERIAL

-All Greek tragedies observed the same principle, refracting the past through the present to make old stories generate an infinite number of new meanings.

-They transferred immediate political hopes and fears to the world of myth, encouraging the audience to judge, feed and sympathize with the person that the author had picked.

-The same storied could be used over and over again and yet be different as writers wrote from different perspectives, new shifts in sympathy, new interpretations of motive, and new moral dilemmas.

-Dramatist constructed new myths to get rid of the gap between males and females in society, while others chose to explore deep tensions and contradictions within the democratic system.
Power and danger of women was a recurrent.

THE ORIGINS
-“Mythos” means “something spoken” and this was how the great tragedies were first formed and performed. By word of mouth.

-It started with the women, who were in-charge of the child’s education. They were to tell these myths to the children so as to educate them. Hence most choruses comprised of women. They used these stories as analogues for present events.

-Another form that it originated from was poetry – memorized by individuals for a competition—the poems were then recited by then and they had to start when the other one stopped – this helped to improve vocal skills as well as to help the with their tactic of building suspense. It also taught them how to fit a story into a short time frame.

-Playwrights looked at these epic poems and drew material from it. Changing the content, motives and the order of events.

-Messenger speeches also originated from here—They often described the climax of the play, forcing people to use their imaginations.

CONTEXT
Not all Greeks held the same political and religious views and beliefs. Some didn’t believe God existed while others thought they did, but not in the forms that humans portrayed them to be in.

GREEK TRAGEDIES

-They are very malleable. Made so, so that it can be changed as the political landscape changes, making it harder for the later generations to reverse.

-The REACTION of the characters to the same situations was what differed from each tragedy.

-It always had something to do with killings within the family and between generations. The reactions were based on the time period and its social and political situation.

-All tragedies are linked in one way or another, like a very long story situated in the same place, just from different peoples perspectives and with a progressive time period. This like rituals, rules, punishments, etc are all relatable. Hence, the audience knows the rules of the form, giving them more pleasure as well as making life easier for the playwrights.

-Tragedies derive part of their formal structure from the law court. Regularly we find two individuals pitted against each other, and each makes a long speech approximately equal length.

-Almost everything said is to please the chorus= the general public and the judges (in a law court)
They were NOT interested in the drive behind the words (What Stan follows) but in the effect of the words. Rational arguments were meant to stimulate emotions in support for the protagonists expressed ideals, so as to gain the support of the people.

RITUALS

-The Athenians were actively involved in a large num of rituals, which helped to breed a theatrical imagination in them.

-The line between ritual and theatre is fuzzy.

-Narrative ritual- Rituals opened up a vein of symbolism for the dramatist to exploit, drawing on language of symbols that was part of Greek culture.

-Tragedies were also used to EXPLAIN rituals.
(i) Supplication- Ensuring personal protection. Could be asked for from God’s or elders. One could not harm another if they had a protector.
(ii) Funeral practice- Burial rights are critical if the dead were to find peace.
(iii) Purification- Death was experienced as a source of pollution, a mind of filth which contaminated those who came close to it. Places were purified with Pigs blood as was the beginning of many ritual acts.
(iv) Prayer- Athenians prayed making noisy demands upon their Gods, reminding them of their obligations. Prayer was usually tied to other rituals, like sacrifice or pouring of wine into the earth, for a gift to the gods imposed an obligation to them to reciprocate.

POLITICS- A quick overview

-Democracy= rule by the people. Ironically, People= Male citizens of the city ONLY.

-They went to great lengths, leaving chance and the Gods to make up some of the decisions as to who gets voted into office. Cycles were adopted and everyone was given a chance at holding a position.

-Public speaking was of great importance, but it was not so much for the truth to be spoken as for the speech to evoke strong positive emotions from the audience and judges. It required great skill and power.

GENDER

Closely linked with politics
Democracy=
(i) the people have to be one large family- family units now invisible
(ii) All possible areas of conflict have to be gotten rid of- women and $ differences. The strength of the city state was a matter of life and death. The men had to fight side by side for the collective purpose of the city. (pg69)
(iii) Emotions took the backseat (because the actions are said to be taken on the basis of emotion and codes of honour rather than the calculation of the collective interest)- LAWS and RULES were what was important

THE MASK
(i) Ritual Interpretations- Characters social status, etc.

(ii) Neutrality- lack of expression of face forced the body to be more expressive.

(iii) Alientaing mask- The mask actually brought the audience closer to the performers since they were so far away. In addition giving the audience the freedom to imagine the expression of the character allowed the emotion to be even more powerful.

(iv) Acoustical Mask- Helps to focus the sound and make sure it does not get dispersed AND it increases the actor’s awareness of the architecture of his own body and sense the presence of the others acting.


SOPHOCLES
· His plays frequently portrayed powerful men choosing between the lesser of two evils, experiences from a position of personal knowledge.

· He was the model citizen and had wealth, fame, body and talent. He used his plays as a medium through which he could voice out his frustrations and problems that he could not in real life because he needed to appear good before the people. It was his escape.

hopefully the final crit com..

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

Imsurenla Priscilla Jamir

Monologue- Antigone

09A06

Directorial Vision/ Concept-

The purpose of my scene is "to question whether i should follow the way of the God's or that of the law" The scene that I have chosen is the climax of the play, where my character, Antigone is sentenced to death for the ‘criminal’ act that she has performed.

I will be using the Stanislavski method to try and bring out the emotions that are necessary to play the role. Through the variation of pitch, volume and pace, I will be able to show the change in the characters emotion and mental state, thus leading to the main question and main conflict.

Performance Theory/ History of Tradition-

The play is a naturalistic play, set in the Greek period. It was originally written to be performed to the Greek Gods during a festival the people held every year. Usually perfromed in a prosenium, actors had to make sure that the thousands of spectators could see and hear them.

I used the Stanislavski method of creating a Dramatic ‘I’ that would behave as human as a real ‘I’ to portray my character. By studying the political, religious and social values and conditions of the time, I prepared a before and after storyline and arguments from various characters involved. This helped me to believe in my characters situation and analyze it better.

Many of the emotions called for are ones that I have experienced before, and thus I looked at past experiences and emotional memory, I tried to get in touch with my character. Physicality was also a great help, I tried to use it to figure out the impact the punishment had on my character by the severe way that she reacts to it, by changing not just her moods, but her physicality, voice, and everything else.

Imagination played a huge role as well, as my characters though processes involved a lot of flashbacks of her past. Thus, I had to imagine them happening to me to be able to connect to the emotions.

Evaluation of creative process-

The setting was in a cave that I imagined to be relatively small and dark, except for one hole in the ceiling from which light entered. In the area of physicality, I had to train myself to react to the cave, in order to be able to how the audience its size with out actually drawing it out for them.

The script was originally written to be performed before she was thrown into the cave, however, since it was a monologue piece, I though it would be more dramatic if the new setting was to be inside the cave, just after she had been thrown in, as in this way it would involve a lot more emotion.

My costume is a Greek toga that was worn in the days the play was first performed.

NEW crit com

Directorial Vision/ Concept-

The scene that I have chosen is the climax of the play, where my character, the protagonist of the play Antigone is sentenced to death for the ‘criminal’ act that she has performed. Here, the audience is presented with the question of ‘What law do I listen to, the law from the God’s or the ones set by men?’ through the contrasting traits of Antigone. She is strong and defiant, yet vulnerable and hurt.

The different sides of the characters will be displayed to the audience through the highs and lows of the dramatic monologue. There will be times when she is blaming the Gods for everything, and there are other times when she come to accept the fact that maybe she did deserve the punishment that she has been given. I will be using the Stanislavski method to try and bring out the emotions that are necessary to play the role. Through the variation of pitch, volume and pace, I will be able to show the change in the characters emotion and mental state, thus leading to the main question and main conflict.

Performance Theory/ History of Tradition-

The play is a naturalistic play, set in the Greek period. It is very similar to contemporary realism in the sense that is a naturalistic play, and is a narrative. I used the Stanislavski method to get in touch with my character. Many of the emotions called for are ones that I have experienced before, and thus I looked at past experiences and tried to get in touch with my character. Physicality was also a great help, I tried to use it to figure out the impact the punishment had on my character by the severe way that she reacts to it, by changing not just her moods, but her physicality, voice, and everything else.

Evaluation of creative process-

The setting was in a cave that I imagined to be relatively small and dark, except for one hole in the ceiling from which light entered. In the area of physicality, I had to train myself to react to the cave, in order to be able to how the audience its size with out actually drawing it out for them.

The script was originally written to be performed before she was thrown into the cave, however, since it was a monologue piece, I though it would be more dramatic if the new setting was to be inside the cave, just after she had been thrown in, as in this way it would involve a lot more emotion. Also, I had wanted to end of the monologue with Antigone committing suicide, but I did not want to give the audience everything, so I decided to end the monologue with hints of me wanting to kill myself, but not actually doing it.

My costume definitely had to be something Greek, and after watching the movie, the plays that had been previously performed and searching for picture, I decided that I had to add on an additional cloth to symbolize the fact that I was from a royal family.