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.