Monday
We used Monday's lesson as an hour to work on any aspect of the play that we thought needed work or needed going through again,
We agreed that we should go through the machete fight sequence that we had previously created and we all decided that we need to change our body positions when Ismene says the line "..the streets of Thebes are full of them" because we needed to clearly distinguish the difference between us being our actor characters and our guard characters. I decided to switch from a cross-legged position to a position that had my body weight forwards so that I looked as though I was interested in the scene that was about to unfold in front of me.
We also used the last half an hour to independently work on a scene of our choice and I chose to do the Haemon scene as I knew that I needed to work on my reactions to him and also the growing agitation that Antigone feels during this scene, especially when she decides to admit to Haemon why she actually came to see him whilst wearing Ismene's dress, perfume and makeup. W ewanted to show the true feelings between the two so we put emphasis on the line "when you think how I'm going to be yours, do you feel a great void growing inside of you as if something is dying" because that is when Antigone verbally addresses the fact that everyone knows that Haemon is in love with Ismene not Antigone.
Wednesday
The first thing that we addressed in Wednesday's lesson was the Ismene scene that starts will Ismene walking in on Creon strangling Antigone. We worked on the reactions between Ismene and Antigone as we see that their relationship is completely the opposite of what we saw at the start. At this point, we see Antigone on the floor and Ismene stood in the corner of the room. At one point Ismene tries to reason with Antigone but Antigone moves herself as far away from her as possible which is juxtaposing to what happened in the first scene as they showed how close they were. One of Antigone's lines is "you've chosen life, and I've chosen death" and we wanted to have emphasis on the endings of life and death because we thought that these could be two very personal hits towards Ismene as Antigone is showing her that they are now two separate people who are now only connected by blood relation.
As a group we discussed the option of doing the play like the original because it was a continuous play which means that the audience wouldn't get a chance to process what was going on and so we decided to put in a interval at the end of the chorus' second speech which ends with the line "Now it's beginning. Little Antigone has been caught - and handcuffed. She can be herself at last" and at this point, Antigone is burying her brother and we thought that it would be a sensible position for an interval because when the audience walks back in for Act 2 then it would seem that she has been constantly burying while the interval has taken place.
We also had a discussion about meta theatre, which is theatre that address the fact that the actors know that they are performing. We wanted to add more elements of metatheatre to the performance like when the more comical characters are on stage, like the Nurse, the chorus around the sides of the stage would interact with her to show the audience that they are in their actor character and their not named.
During the end of the play, there is a long speech that is made by the Messenger and because of its length, we wanted to add in 3 images; the sealing of the cave of Hades (Antigone's death bed), the uncovering of Antigone and finding out that she dead and, the reaction of Haemon to her death. So we used the chorus as individual bricks so we had two pin lofts at the sides and then the rest of the chorus made up the bricks at the front of the cave. We had Creon dragging them away to show him removing the bricks of the cave and then when Haemon has realized that Antigone was truly gone then he would stand up and push the pin lifts down as though he was destroying the cave and stand in front of Creon.
We then continued to do a full run through of the entire piece to fix some little changes that needed to be made. We decided that when Nan says "virtuous" the chorus around the edge should snigger and laugh which would allow Antigone to react off of them and also it would mean that the play would start off with quite a relaxed atmosphere which would help increase the juxtaposition between the start which is light-hearted and then the true ending which is when she dies.
We also added in set lines for the chorus to say when they are taunting Antigone in the machete sequence. I decided that I would say "Careful love, that's a big pointy thing you've got there, you need to make sure you don't cut yourself, not that anyone would care.." I thought that it was quite degrading to Antigone because she's being this powerful character and going against the law and having these lower status characters throwing insults and vulgar things towards her would be very frustrating.
We also had a discussion about meta theatre, which is theatre that address the fact that the actors know that they are performing. We wanted to add more elements of metatheatre to the performance like when the more comical characters are on stage, like the Nurse, the chorus around the sides of the stage would interact with her to show the audience that they are in their actor character and their not named.
During the end of the play, there is a long speech that is made by the Messenger and because of its length, we wanted to add in 3 images; the sealing of the cave of Hades (Antigone's death bed), the uncovering of Antigone and finding out that she dead and, the reaction of Haemon to her death. So we used the chorus as individual bricks so we had two pin lofts at the sides and then the rest of the chorus made up the bricks at the front of the cave. We had Creon dragging them away to show him removing the bricks of the cave and then when Haemon has realized that Antigone was truly gone then he would stand up and push the pin lifts down as though he was destroying the cave and stand in front of Creon.
We then continued to do a full run through of the entire piece to fix some little changes that needed to be made. We decided that when Nan says "virtuous" the chorus around the edge should snigger and laugh which would allow Antigone to react off of them and also it would mean that the play would start off with quite a relaxed atmosphere which would help increase the juxtaposition between the start which is light-hearted and then the true ending which is when she dies.
We also added in set lines for the chorus to say when they are taunting Antigone in the machete sequence. I decided that I would say "Careful love, that's a big pointy thing you've got there, you need to make sure you don't cut yourself, not that anyone would care.." I thought that it was quite degrading to Antigone because she's being this powerful character and going against the law and having these lower status characters throwing insults and vulgar things towards her would be very frustrating.
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