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.