Week 9: Classwork

Monday

We used Mondays lesson to explore the scene between Antigone and Haemon, her fiance. We explored the ways that the moment of orientation could be shown. The start of the scene between the two is meant to be awkward as she tried to dress up as her sister, who she sees as the vision of beauty, to make Haemon have sex with her so that she could use that as a goodbye and also as a way of them being married without having to go through the legal process. Also she thinks that it is one of the last times that she will see him as she knows that she is going to go and bury her brother and knows that, if it goes the way she wants, she will get arrested and killed for her punishment. 

We looked at the best way to stage the scene and also how the two should react to each other. We tried many different ways and the one that we found that had a bigger effect on the audience and it also made the atmosphere that more awkward.

Wednesday

In Wednesdays lesson, all the Antigone's and Creon's split from the rest of the group to go through a specific scene between them both. The scene that we went through was towards the end of the play and it involved Creon trying to get Antigone to understand the consequences of her actions and also what her motives were behind her actions.

We decided to section the lines and title so that when we are learning them it is easier to see what way we should be saying them and also as we look at the progression of the titles, we can see the progression of the scene.

As we titled the scene we discussed what both Creon and Antigone would be thinking, so that we would be able to see the contrast between the two and compare them in the way that they are saying their lines. 

After going through the whole scene we found that we needed to change some of the lines as the play is translated from French so in English it didn't make sense. We discussed the fact that Creon might be old and tired but he is very good at his job and we could see that through his approach to Antigone. We found that Creon has many different approaches to Antigone and with each one he hits a wall with her where she won't tell him what has gone on and so he tries a different tactic to try and get her to tell him her motives. At one point he thinks that he has got an advantage on her but then he hits the blank wall and has to change his tactics once again. We see this done very subtly at times which reflects his intelligence and also Antigone is so wrapped up in wanting this scenario to be how she planned it that she doesn't notice the shift in Creon's tone.