Day 1
We went to The Old Nick Theatre in Gainsborough to explore the different aspects of Antigone and loosely work with the themes of the play.
Here's a compilation of some of the pictures from the weekend.
Warm-up
One of the warm-up exercises that we explored was everyone stood linked arms and shoulder to shoulder and there was one person in the middle of the circle. The person in the middle's motivation was to escaped the human cage that they were in. We found that the key to getting out was to target the weaker areas of the circle. We thought that this was a physical representation of Antigone's motives and she targeted the weaker areas of the societal system, such as the love that Creon feels for his niece, and work her way out of the example that was set for her as a royal.
Exercises
We participated in an exercise that was where we had to choose three different places around the performing space that were as far away from each other as possible and label them; Fear, Happiness and Anger. Each place made us react in a certain way and you were always being drawn to happiness and trying to recoil against fear and anger but you had to continue the circuit of going between the three and so this exemplified your reactions and moods even more because you were trying to resist but couldn't. This links to Antigone because she feels as though she was going to life but not having any effect which juxtaposes with what we were going through on our own.
We were then paired up and show each other our routes and showing them how each place made us feel and you were there to support the other person in their journey and respect how they were feeling; We started to increase the desperation of us wanting to take each other to our different places which caused us to start trying to drag each other and it almost became a fight between the two to take the other to their happy place. This reflected the relationship between Creon and Antigone because Creon tries to control Antigone's actions so that she is a clear representation of what a Royal should act like.
We had to lay on the floor and think about how that partner was going to turn into a type of safety net and was the only person that you could trust in this world and you wanted to hold onto them and keep them close for as long as possible. We had to find our partner and get as close to them as possible and hold onto them as hard as you could because they were the only person and thing that you could truly rely on and trust and you definatly didn't want to share them with anyone else. This was like Creon as he didn't want anybody else taking Antigone away from him and his son, even if it was her dead brother, and so he fought to keep her under his control.
We were told that there was something in the room that could separate you and your partner and that it would stop at nothing to break you apart which caused us to become even closer with our partners because they were our safety net and they were the only ones in the room that we could put our hold trust into. So when Chipp tried to pull my partner off me, both me and my partner hung onto each other so tightly that he ended up pulling both of us across the floor and couldn't break us apart. Personally, I think this was another physical interpretation of Creon trying to hang onto Antigone and try and keep her sane and in the real world instead of her fantasy world where she wanted to perform the ritual that would bury her brother and send him onto the afterlife.
Once we were tightly bonded with our partner, we started to think about how we'd put all of our energy into this person and keeping them close but what if there was a seed of doubt that this person wasn't who they said they were and would we want to stay with them if they were a false. We allowed that seed of doubt to evolve and it eventually caused us to separate and go isolate ourselves to a point where no one but ourselves could hurt us.
We then had to condense the whole of the past exercises in a 20 second montage that showed all of the parts that we found interesting and were significant to the storyline of Antigone. Using proxemics was the best way for me to show my favourite parts as we used the whole of the space and so i moved from one side to the other to show to amount of moving that we did. Also the use of levels to show how extreme the emotions were, so when my emotions made me feel insecure or isolated I made sure that I was close to the ground, either laying down or knelt.
We then had to become a pair and fit each others movement in with each other and show that there was a connection between the two. Me and my partner decided to show this through eye contact rather than contact because we thought that it would show the separation between the two of us better. We then had to loop the movements so that there was a full sequence of the two movements interlocked.
https://youtu.be/d_xLCuJIzgl
Next we played around with the idea of a banquet and having a master who was being fed by two servants. The master had to act a certain way about the food they were being given and the servants had to give it to them in a certain way. For example, when i was a servant I had to give it to my master with a look of lust and she had disgust so the two reactions juxtaposed very well and also was
very funny trying to get people to eat disgusting food!
After refueling ourselves with food, we moved onto a shoulder and hand exercise. This entailed us to, in pairs, have either our hand or our shoulders touching and allow one of us to guide the other. It was hard at first because we weren't allowed to talk so we had to just respond to the pressure that was on our shoulders. We had to come up with a sequence that involved both hands touching and shoulders touching with turns and height involved. Our sequence had kneels and turns involved and also a clear indication that there was a power struggle.
We thought that this directly linked to the power struggle that is between Creon and Antigone as there is always a switching of who is in charge and control of the situation. We made this clear at certain points of our movement. For example, my partner became Creon and pushed me down to a kneeling position but then I stood up and pushed her down as Antigone because we decided that Creon was the hero of the story because he was always trying to do the right thing for Antigone and she just kept defying him.
On our own we had to come up with a word which represented the reason why she would defy Creon as she did. I decided that my word was going to be Spite because I thought that she would carry on ignoring the fact that Creon was trying to help her due to her wanting to get a reaction out of him and to show that his own family could break his trust and go against his own words.
We then had to write that word in the air constantly and once we were put into pairs and one person had to stop the other from writing their word. It was like a fight between Creon and Antigone, as Creon would want Antigone to stop her writing so that she would stop rebelling against him.
We were then put into groups and had to find a word that linked all of our words together and come up with a sequence of movements but all of the moves had to be what we had made throughout the day in the different exercises.
https://youtu.be/-zxP9iel2wM
We had to lay on the floor and think about how that partner was going to turn into a type of safety net and was the only person that you could trust in this world and you wanted to hold onto them and keep them close for as long as possible. We had to find our partner and get as close to them as possible and hold onto them as hard as you could because they were the only person and thing that you could truly rely on and trust and you definatly didn't want to share them with anyone else. This was like Creon as he didn't want anybody else taking Antigone away from him and his son, even if it was her dead brother, and so he fought to keep her under his control.
We were told that there was something in the room that could separate you and your partner and that it would stop at nothing to break you apart which caused us to become even closer with our partners because they were our safety net and they were the only ones in the room that we could put our hold trust into. So when Chipp tried to pull my partner off me, both me and my partner hung onto each other so tightly that he ended up pulling both of us across the floor and couldn't break us apart. Personally, I think this was another physical interpretation of Creon trying to hang onto Antigone and try and keep her sane and in the real world instead of her fantasy world where she wanted to perform the ritual that would bury her brother and send him onto the afterlife.
Once we were tightly bonded with our partner, we started to think about how we'd put all of our energy into this person and keeping them close but what if there was a seed of doubt that this person wasn't who they said they were and would we want to stay with them if they were a false. We allowed that seed of doubt to evolve and it eventually caused us to separate and go isolate ourselves to a point where no one but ourselves could hurt us.
We then had to condense the whole of the past exercises in a 20 second montage that showed all of the parts that we found interesting and were significant to the storyline of Antigone. Using proxemics was the best way for me to show my favourite parts as we used the whole of the space and so i moved from one side to the other to show to amount of moving that we did. Also the use of levels to show how extreme the emotions were, so when my emotions made me feel insecure or isolated I made sure that I was close to the ground, either laying down or knelt.
We then had to become a pair and fit each others movement in with each other and show that there was a connection between the two. Me and my partner decided to show this through eye contact rather than contact because we thought that it would show the separation between the two of us better. We then had to loop the movements so that there was a full sequence of the two movements interlocked.
https://youtu.be/d_xLCuJIzgl
Next we played around with the idea of a banquet and having a master who was being fed by two servants. The master had to act a certain way about the food they were being given and the servants had to give it to them in a certain way. For example, when i was a servant I had to give it to my master with a look of lust and she had disgust so the two reactions juxtaposed very well and also was
very funny trying to get people to eat disgusting food!
After refueling ourselves with food, we moved onto a shoulder and hand exercise. This entailed us to, in pairs, have either our hand or our shoulders touching and allow one of us to guide the other. It was hard at first because we weren't allowed to talk so we had to just respond to the pressure that was on our shoulders. We had to come up with a sequence that involved both hands touching and shoulders touching with turns and height involved. Our sequence had kneels and turns involved and also a clear indication that there was a power struggle.
We thought that this directly linked to the power struggle that is between Creon and Antigone as there is always a switching of who is in charge and control of the situation. We made this clear at certain points of our movement. For example, my partner became Creon and pushed me down to a kneeling position but then I stood up and pushed her down as Antigone because we decided that Creon was the hero of the story because he was always trying to do the right thing for Antigone and she just kept defying him.
On our own we had to come up with a word which represented the reason why she would defy Creon as she did. I decided that my word was going to be Spite because I thought that she would carry on ignoring the fact that Creon was trying to help her due to her wanting to get a reaction out of him and to show that his own family could break his trust and go against his own words.
We then had to write that word in the air constantly and once we were put into pairs and one person had to stop the other from writing their word. It was like a fight between Creon and Antigone, as Creon would want Antigone to stop her writing so that she would stop rebelling against him.
We were then put into groups and had to find a word that linked all of our words together and come up with a sequence of movements but all of the moves had to be what we had made throughout the day in the different exercises.
https://youtu.be/-zxP9iel2wM
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