MEDEA

MEDEA

On Tuesday 18th September we worked on a new play with Sharon called Medea this was a one person play, before we even started working on it I made my own hypothesis on what the play was about as my own homework I wanted to research it however I find that when you research the plays you tend to copy the ideas so instead I went with my mind and created my own idea on what was happening in the play. Moving forward to lesson we were separated into groups where we were given a section of the speech to work on. My group was consisted of Me, Ben, Taylor, Katie, Daniella and Lucky. Together we read through the speech and decided that each of us would read a sentence, this became our first idea then Sharon told us that that we needed to create a performance just using the speech that was given to us. My groups whole general idea was to create an abstract piece, we used a variety of different techniques to create it such as the use of voice, we projected out the words at the audience to show our moods then we used facial expressions to show our emotions. We decided on levels as well, this was effective as it made our piece more abstract which was really nice. Then we decided on freeze frames and still images this was to capture the essence of our piece. Finally we joined in all our ideas and created a very nice performance. After we watched other people's performances one that really liked was a group that used echoes in their piece it made people really astonished and wowed because it worked really well.

Carrying on with the week on Wednesday 19th September we went back to our scenes that we created and with help from Sharon we were able to perfect it even further. Such as the beginning as we said the lines we would say them to each other but in partners as if each of us was having a conversation, the idea was to react all the time and after reacting we would freeze to show our reactions. Then we managed to finish up to the ending but yet it wasn't still good so Sharon gave us feedback. We should never lose the energy on our body language or facial expressions we should keep the energy the same throughout and how we should space it out it was really good advice because in the end we created something that really went with the speech. Finally we saw the other group's performance their one was different it was more realistic, they had the idea to pretend to talk to Medea as if she was up in the ceiling and they did that by focusing on an object in the ceiling. Another great idea they had was reacting to every word they said and repeating it again to show how important that word was such as "King's palace" I thought it really brought the scene. After we managed to join them together to create an amazing scene which really looked awesome if I do say so myself.

RESEARCH

Research

Before we even started on the course we were told how it was going to be about Greek Theatre so due to that I decided to do some research on what Greek Theatre was about and what it involved. 

The Greek theatre history began with festivals honoring their gods. A god, Dionysus, was honored with a festival called by "City Dionysia". In Athens, during this festival, men used to perform songs to welcome Dionysus. Plays were only presented at City Dionysia festival.

Athens was the main center for these theatrical traditions. Athenians spread these festivals to its numerous allies in order to promote a common identity.

At the early Greek festivals, the actors, directors, and dramatists were all the same person. After some time, only three actors were allowed to perform in each play. Later few non-speaking roles were allowed to perform on-stage. Due to limited number of actors allowed on-stage, the chorus evolved into a very active part of Greek theatre. Music was often played during the chorus' delivery of its lines.Tragedy, comedy, and satyr plays were the theatrical forms.

Tragedy and comedy were viewed as completely separate genres. Satyr plays dealt with the mythological subject in comic manner. Aristotle's Poetics sets out a thesis about the perfect structure for tragedy.

Tragedy plays: Thespis is considered to be the first Greek "actor" and originator of tragedy (which means "goat song", perhaps referring to goats sacrificed to Dionysus before performances, or to goat-skins worn by the performers.) However, his importance is disputed, and Thespis is sometimes listed as late as sixteenth in the chronological order of Greek tragedians.

Aristotle's Poetics contain the earliest known theory about the origins of Greek theatre. He says that tragedy evolved from dithyrambs, songs sung in praise of Dionysus at the Dionysia each year. The dithyrambs may have begun as frenzied improvisations but in the 600s BC, the poet Arion is credited with developing the dithyramb into a formalized narrative sung by a chorus.

Three well-known Greek tragedy playwrights of the fifth century are Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus.

Comedy plays: Comedy was also an important part of ancient Greek theatre. Comedy plays were derived from imitation; there are no traces of its origin. Aristophanes wrote most of the comedy plays. Out of these 11 plays survived - Lysistrata, a humorous tale about a strong woman who leads a female coalition to end war in Greece.

Antigone: In Greek legend, the daughter born of the unwittingly incestuous union of Oedepus and his mother, Jocasta. After her father blinded himself upon discovering that Jocasta was his mother and that, also unwittingly, he had slain his father, Antigone and her sister Ismene served as Oedipus’ guides, following him from Thebes into exile until his death near Athens. Returning to Thebes, they attempted to reconcile their quarreling brothers—Etecles, who was defending the city and his crown, and Polynieses, who was attacking Thebes. Both brothers, however, were killed, and their uncle Creon became king. After performing an elaborate funeral service for Eteocles, he forbade the removal of the corpse of Polyneices, condemning it to lie unburied, declaring him to have been a traitor. Antigone, moved by love for her brother and convinced of the injustice of the command, buried Polyneices secretly. For that she was ordered by Creon to be executed and was immured in a cave, where she hanged herself. Her beloved, Haemon, son of Creon, committed suicide. According to another version of the story, Creon gave Antigone to Haemon to kill, but he secretly married her and they had a son. When this son went to Thebes to compete in athletic contests, Creon recognized him and put him to death, whereupon his parents committed suicide.
HAEMON:Antigone's young fiancé and son to Creon. Haemon appears twice in the play. In the first, he is rejected by Antigone; in the second, he begs his father for Antigone's life. Creon's refusal ruins his exalted view of his father. He too refuses the happiness that Creon offers him and follows Antigone to a tragic demise.