Week 19:Classwork

Monday

After creating the Ismene tumbril sequence in the past couple of weeks, we noticed that there were some changes that need to be made. We found that Ismene had to pause at certain points so that her lines corresponded with the actions and movements that were being made by the chorus members such as the line that references the guards and the line that tries to explain the consequences of Antigone's actions if she continues to have the need to bury her brother. Having these pauses caused there to be dead spots which meant that the tension in the atmosphere was broken and so we came up with a solution.

We decided that throughout the speech, the chorus members involved in the mechanisms of the lift could whisper lines about the brother because we thought that this could reflect the angry mob that Ismene refers to in the speech. We tried the full sequence 2 times; one without whispers and one with.

Without whispers: https://youtu.be/G3heO5UAauE

With whispers: https://youtu.be/pS4zczmro3Y

I think that the whispers one works better as the atmosphere grows with the speech and also, a small improvement could be that when there is a dead spot certain words from the chorus could be pronunciated more so that there are certain words that stand out whilst Ismene isn't talking but when she is the words quieted down and become only slightly audible.

Wednesday

We used the start of Wednesday's lesson to go over the Haemon scene and one of the lines that we all found quite intriguing was "I'm dark and thin. Ismene is pink and gold like an apricot." We all thought that this was Antigone's way of telling Haemon to go and be with Ismene because Ismene is the one who is going to live and be alive once Antigone has gone. We thought that it was her way of selling Ismene to Haemon and trying to convince him that Ismene would have been a better choice than her and there is still a chance that they could be together.

Once we had run trough separate scenes, we did a full run through which brought up some changes that needed to be made. First of all, I need to be louder in the scene with Nan so that my voice is projecting out to the audience and also we fixed the staging when Nan sits down on the chair and Antigone is standing at the side of her. We said that it would make more sense for Antigone to stay at the front of the chair instead of moving slightly behind it because it would mean that the two could be closer together and it would make the relationship more believable.

We also found that all but 2 of the cast ended up on the same side and so we decided that after a short scene between Antigone and Ismene they would both go off stage right so that it balanced the amount of people on each side.

Also once Antigone has been captured after the machette physical sequence, we noticed that the energy levels drop drastically and so we said that Antigone would make more struggling noises and her breathing would still be increased which would keep the audience on edge and also would keep them focused on the scene.

When the cast has stopped being their characters in a scene , we a agreed that once they were offstage they became their actor character and joined the rest of the chorus members around the side watching what we going on. We also said that rather than having the chorus members around the edge being quite passive we said that they could be actively watching what was going on as though it was the first time that they had seen it and if something was funny, we agreed that they could laugh and also when the audience were drip-fed information the chorus could react to that because they know what is to come and they could start making connections between the action that was being shown and what the end consequence is.

Week 18: Classwork

Wednesday

On Wednesday, we split into small groups so that we could go through each section in more detail and it would also be easier as we would only have to focus on two or three people at a time and also it would make the pace of the work quicker.

I spent majority of the lesson going over the Ismene scene again as we had discussed some problems that needed to be fixed like the positioning of the chair, as it needed to be in a certain place on a certain line, and we also discussed the showing of the sisterly relationship that they have.

We discussed the fact that we thought they were very close and we wanted to make sure that the audience got a sense of the relaxed atmosphere and the genuine comfort that the two feel in each other's company.

We thought that combining the movement of the chairs with trying to created an easy atmosphere could be done after the Nurse has run out to get the two a drink. We thought that Antigone could see the unease that Ismene felt towards the dirt and so Antigone would grab the chair and wipe the dirt off of it as though she was a servant to Ismene, who would give her a look and play along by doing small bow, the two would then proceed to laugh at each other and sat down together with Ismene on the chair and Antigone on the floor leaning on her leg.

There is a section of this conversation where Antigone starts to talk about the two of them when they were little and how much more pretty Ismene was and how miserable it used to make her because even from a little age, Antigone knew that Ismene was prettier and always would be. This allows the tow to reminisce about their younger years and shows the pranks that Antigone would pull on Ismene. For example, Antigone says "...and once I tied you to a tree and cut off all your hair." To which Antigone finds fun but Ismene just responds with a small nod and a disappointed smile.

As the scene continues we tried to identify the point in which the two stop enjoying each other's company and the point when the conversation becomes less of a reminisce and more of an accusation/argument. For me this point is when Ismene clearly states that "we can't do it" which completely changes Antigone's view towards Ismene as she thought that this was the least they could both do to say goodbye to their brother but not Ismene has refused to do it and so the real pressure has now been placed on Antigone as she realizes that she is now isolated from everyone else.

Week 17: Classwork

Monday

After exploring the scene with Ismene last week, we found that there was a paragraph that we all agreed could have some choral movement added to it. We wanted to explore the realistic of what Ismene is trying to get Antigone to understand; that dying is too big of a consequence just for wanting to bury a brother that neither of them had known very well.

Before this Ismene has refrained from giving any explicit details about what is to happened, but at this point I think that Ismene has had enough of Antigone being so at ease with the idea of dying that she tries to experiment with telling Antigone the details of what will happen to her if she does go through with the burial. 

We explored the lines that could be use and we came up with 3 main ones:

• "They'll seize us with their thousands arms"
• "...their great clean hypocrites' hands, their loutish stare."
• "And the suffering haven't you thought of that?"

We felt that these were the lines that we carefully crafted by Ismene to try and get through to Antigone the seriousness of the consequences of burying their brother. We decided that we wanted to lift Ismene as she is the one with the control over this situation throughout her speech, as Antigone doesn't interrupt her. We wanted to show her power through semiotics which would enable us to show her status at this point.

On the "thousands arms" line, we thought that the best way to show this was to start grabbing on her legs and arms when she walked past us in an arch as it visually showed the invasion of hands that would carry them to their deaths if they proceeded to undergo their task.

We also decided that the "suffering" would be a smooth transition until some work with the machetes as they create tension as they carry a injury threat. We experimented with threatning actions with the machetes like running it up and down the arms and across the neck. We also found that running the blades along each other it made a metal scrapping sound which we used instead of imitating the cutting of her neck. 

Here is the video of our movement:

https://youtu.be/SBWXjS

If we were to do it again, I think that having the Ismene  react to the placing of the swords would be more affective as we would see and feel the uncomfortableness and how invasive the guards would be.

Week 16: Classwork

Wednesday

After the previous weeks of focusing on the Creon and Antigone scene, we decided to move onto the first scenes between Antigone and the nurse and also the following scene between Antigone and her sister, Ismene.

To open the scene with the nurse, we wanted to highlight the meta theatre elements so she was going to be the last person onstage and as she would be looking very confused as to why everybody had gone offstage and then she would realize what was going on and so would start to get into her character. I think that this is very affective towards the audience as it would add a funny element before the play begins and starts to take a serious edge.

We wanted the nurse scene to be quite light and playful so that there would be a bigger juxtaposition between this scene and the next one. We made sure that there was a light atmosphere by making the nurse and Antigone's interaction quite funny and having Antigone slightly mock the nurse as the nurse overreacts to the idea of antigone going out in the morning.

The staging of the scene with the nurse begins quite separate with each character on either side of the stage. This symbolizes the distance that Antigone has put between herself and the nurse by going out and not telling her what she was doing. But as the scene progresses, we see the nurse reminiscing about her past and trying to get Antigone to tell her where she's been which brings them closer in both their relationship and staging. Ending the scene, we see the nurse sat on the chair with Antigone knelt beside her saying her last line "...and I mustn't be little today."  Which shows the relationship between the two as the nurse has brought Antigone up from being little and she values her opinion because she is one of the people that she wants to have a last moment with before she completely immerses herself into burying her brother and having that as the only thing in her mind. I feel that Antigone, even though she is very stubborn, actually cares for certain people like Ismene and the nurse as they have been beside Antigone as she has grown as a person.

After exploring the Nurse scene we moved onto the Ismene scene. I was thinking about the type of relationship that these two sisters would have and I came to the conclusion that they would be very close as we find out that they had both been planning on burying their brother but Antigone, knowing her sister and what she would say, had gone out and already started as she would have expected ismene to rethink their decision and end up not wanting to participate.

Here is the scene that we came up with:

(Link)

During this scene we see the evolution of the sisters relationship through the proxemics as they begin close enough for Antigone to rest her head on Ismene's leg and as the scene quickly picks up, we see the teasing of Antigone being pushed aside by Ismenes need to deal with the matter at hand, burying their brother. This completely changes the scenes atmosphere at this point as the matter that is being discussed becomes more serious with more serious consequences. At the end of the scene they end up  in opposite positions on stage with Antigone sat in the chair, dismissing Ismene and Ismene standing towards the door.

In the first two scenes we already begin to witness Antigone slowing saying her goodbyes to her family and her beginning to create distance between herself and others so that when she dies, it may soften the blow slightly. I think that Antigone uses these scenes to remind herself of the times that she has had with these other characters and take them to her grave with her.

Week 15: Classwork

Wednesday

After blocking through half of the Creon and Antigone scene last week, we continued to work on the last section so that we would complete the scene this week. We worked through the staging of each section first. We wanted to show the power exchange that happens throughout this scene and so we started the second half of the scene with Creon kneeling in front of Antigone which shows that Antigone has the power at this point but then Creon stands and begins to regain his rightful position. He puts her in her position when he throws her to the floor.

This point is completing juxtaposing to the image that was created on stage moments before. Throughout the whole of the scene we see the power struggle between the two becoming more and more relevant and also visible to the audience and both characters are being to lose their temper with each other and they have both come to their last resort in trying to persuade the other in to doing what they want. 

At this junction in the scene we wanted to reiterate the elements of Metatheatre and remind the audience that we are actors on stage and so we got Antigone to get up and the actress character to be shown and so she would be feeling disgusted by the mud that she has just been thrown into and she will say her line out to the audience: "I don't want to do this. It's alright for you. But I'm not here to understand, I'm here to say no to you."  She points out her role to the audience; to say no to Creon. And then she returns back to her Antigone role and the scene continues. I feel like does this not only create tension between the audience and the actress as they are tense as to why she has come out of role and to why she has openly admitted that she doesn't want to play this role anymore but it also shows how severe the consequences of her actions are; this actress genuinely thinks that she is going to die because she has been cast as Antigone.

One of the most challenging things of this scene for me, is the build up of Antigone becoming crazy. We needed to show the build up of her anger and show that she has other emotions as well. In the last section of the scene, it is the part where Antigone has learnt the truth about her brothers and Creon has told her that "Happiness is just a word eh." This triggers Antigone as her happiness is completely juxtaposing with what Creon thinks happiness is. Antigone's happiness is her being killed over her fighting for her brothers whereas Creon's happiness is to keep Antigone safe and to keep Thebes from having any uprisings against him.

Week 14: Classwork

Monday

We decided to use Monday's lesson as an opportunity to recap and go over the fight sequence that we use at the start of the play as a warm-up in our actor characters. We wanted to make the pace quite quick so that it looked as though each person wanted to severely injure the other person. Even though we were attacking each other with sticks, we looked at the end of the other person's stick so that the audience would believe that it was dangerous and could in fact harm us.

We decided to add in harsh breath sounds and grunts so that we could emphasis the affect of the fighting and it would also created a bigger juxtaposition between the fighting scenes and the silent more intimate scenes that don't have every chorus member on stage. 

Wednesday

After working on making the fight scene more intense on Monday, we decided to use this to symbolize the two brothers fighting. One person from each pair was to stand on either side of the room and we were going to stare at each other with hatred because we were fighting for Polynices and they were fighting for Eteocles.

 After crossing over, we had to find a way so that one person out of each pair to be taken to the ground when we met in the middle. Me and my partner decided that I should look as though I was going to stab her in the thigh as it was the easiest transition for her to get across my shoulder. The reason why she needed to get on my shoulder was so that we added height to our movement because when Hannah was thrown on the floor it would have bigger impact on the audience and it would also show the extremes that the fight went to.

The prologue's speech moves on to speak of the deceased bodies that are left in the soil and are so disassembled that you can't tell the different between dirt and a body part. We wanted to go from the loud frantic movement so that there are many places for the audience to look and their eyes won't be able to focus on one specific thing, to a still juxtaposing image of deceased bodies all intertwined.

In the still image, we wanted to add height so that we could represent the hills of mud and body parts that there was after the fight between Eteocles and Polynices. We had one person in a shoulder sit, a pin lift and knee stand. This allowed us to have many different levels which was visually interesting for the audience to look at because the two opposing sides that were fighting against each other just moments ago are now just a mound of bodies, and the is the only point when the sides don't matter as they have all become connect by disagreeing with each other.

The speech then proceeds to talk about Creon declaring who was the rightful brother and which brother deserves to have a funeral and have the passage to the afterlife. We wanted Eteocles, the rightful brother, to have a grand gesture the would should he was the "winner" of the fight. We added in a lift so we physically showed that Eteocles was above Polynices, who was left to rot in the mud. We wanted two juxtaposing images, so we had Eteocles being lifted and described almost like a god, and Polynices melts into the floor and slithers offstage. Polynices becomes almost like water because his life is just another one among many others and he gets lost in the system as all the attention is focused on Eteocles.

Week 13: Classwork and N2C

Wednesday

On Wednesday, we started by experimenting with puppets. We were experimenting with a group of chorus members moving a suit jacket, a hat and also a pair of shoes. Using puppets was one of the ways that we could represent the brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, when they are fighting for the throne of Thebes once their father had died.

Initially to get used to the idea of the chorus being puppeteers, we started working on the body shape of the man. We wanted to make it look like the body was forming from the dirt , so we began with a step of each foot and the suit jacket forming up after. I was one of the people who was holding the torso, so I had one hand on the shoulder and one hand on the bottom of the arm. We found that this was the easiest way to move the torso as we could bend the arm and we also had full control over the shoulders which would be the key part to making the puppet look like it was breathing. We also experimented with a chorus member having their arm in the jacket at different points so it gave an illusion of there actually being an arm in the jacket. As the jacket was being risen up, I put the jacket on but with only one arm in it did a turn and then the person on the other side grabbed the sleeve and I continued to turn to grab the other sleeve.

After trying to make the puppet walk we found a variety of very difficult problems that were jeopardizing the effectiveness of the puppet:

• Keeping the same distance between the shoes, jacket and hat at all times so that the continuity of the puppet didn't break.
• Making sure that, if we turned, the shoulder's were in line with the feet.
• Making sure that the whole group was breathing at the same time and moving the body in time with the breathing.

The main thing that we found hard in our group was the effectiveness of us just holding the jacket so we decided to use a large plastic sheet to fill out the shape of the body and then fit all of the articles of clothing around the frame of the body. We use masking tape secure certain features of the puppet like its neck, wrists and knees.

Next, we focused on the section of the prologue's speech that introduced Creon and we used the extra chorus members as separate businesses that needed something signing by Creon or if they had important documents that he need to look at. We had to grab either single pieces of paper or a stack and walk in a path towards Creon. We had to walk all the way to the front of the stage and then turn along the right angles to get to Creon and he would look at the piece of paper and give it back. We could either react as though we were satisfied with the answer that we got or we had to react as though it was completely the opposite of what we were expecting.

N2C

We used the entire N2C time to work on the Creon and Antigone scene because it take up a third of the play and we wanted to block out as much as possible. There are 3 different people playing Antigone and 2 different people playing Creon so even though we have set casts we mixed up so that we got to work with everybody. 

We blocked out every scene with one pair and then broke off into separate pairs with one Antigone overlooking one of the pairs. We made notes on our scripts when we got given a set direction for all Antigone's.

We managed to get through half of the pages of the scene.