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.