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Friday, 13 January 2017

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.

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