Greek Theatre performance evaluation

Our Greek Theatre piece 'Antigone' was performed today and my partner Jess and I felt we had an overall positive experience. We kept good focus throughout the duologue by staying in character and to achieve this, before stepping on stage, we did a short improvisation of our relationship as sisters before the moment of our piece. Moreover, we listened to each others lines to react naturally with our facial expressions, body language and movement. Our projection and vocal volume filled the back of the room as we used the morning session to do a physical warm up including breathing techniques from the diaphragm and tongue twisters which allowed us to confidently and clearly say our lines.

We used the whole stage space and moved from centre stage to stage left during an argument to highlight important moments and to strengthen our lines. For example, when I say the line "It's madness. madness" I walk from stage centre to stage left to emphasise my annoyance, anger and anxiety to the audience. Furthermore, I used the audience by saying my line "Remember we are women, we're not born to contend with men", looking straight ahead to highlight the sexism and dominance of men over women in Greek Theatre. To portray my objective of stopping Antigone from burying our brother, I showed a lot of worry and sadness by being affectionate and caring, touching Antigone's arm and Antigone portrayed anger and frustration by playing opposing actions such as walking away from me and the use of folded arms.

Watching the other pieces, I learnt that the stronger pieces kept focus and stayed in character through out. Staying in focus and character was done by listening to each others lines and reacting accordingly. Staying within the piece by keeping concentration and keeping the connection between characters resulted in positive experiences and performances. The use of props to show the power difference between men and women in Greek Theatre, made this clear to the audience, by having the women sitting whilst the men stood behind them.

When we first received our script we began by reading the lines to each other neutrally then discussed our objectives in the play and agreed that Antigone's objective was to bury our brother and my objective was to stop Antigone burying our brother. Our rehearsals developed as we added in the use of a variety of different vocal tones to express different emotions such as speaking quieter to portray secrecy and speaking louder to portray anger.  We used the Uta Hagen technique by acting truthfully to create lifelike characters through our thoughts and feelings and achieve a believable performance. We researched and developed our character traits to find a sense of identity to bring out a realistic character. To do this, I wrote down all of my characters emotions before, during and after my piece. I also wrote a short biography on my character and listed all the differences and similarities between my character Ismene and my sister Antigone. To prepare myself for the performance and during rehearsals I did a simple exercise of asking myself (as Ismene) 'What did I just do?', 'What am I doing right now?' and 'What's the first thing I want?'. This helped me to keep my objectives in mind and create a powerful start to the piece to carry this on throughout the whole duologue.

Research supported the development of our performance, as we looked into each character in the play and learnt the relationship roles between each character. Also, looking into the history of Greek theatre helped to set a basic knowledge of what was going on during this era and give me background knowledge of this time period and the norms.

After half term, I would like to work on using The Stanislavsky Method by using the 'Magic If' technique; asking myself "What would I do if I were in this situation?" This is a good way to consider natural reactions to the events in the story.
Moreover, I would like to work on bringing true emotion to my next project by actually feeling the emotion, so if a scene called for extreme grief, I would put myself in the mind set of the character's situation so that they genuinely experience the feelings of intense sadness. To achieve this I would reach into my own personal memories and draw upon a comparable life experience.

Video of performance of 'Antigone':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrdz1fiE3Fo&feature=youtu.be

Antigone

The play I am performing is Antigone and I have chosen the part of Ismene. Antigone is a story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, however her sister Ismene whom is more sceptical and doesn't want to disobey her Uncle Creon disagrees with Antigone's plan.

My objective in the scene I am performing is to make Antigone aware of all the reasons why she should not bury their brother Polynices and I am very worried about the consequences that will be put in place if she goes ahead with her plan. Although Ismene loved her brother, her fear drives her to follow the wishes of Creon and not have a burial for Polynices. Ismene's words and actions make clear that she loves her sister greatly, but differs from her greatly, too. Unlike Antigone, Ismene seems paralyzed by her cultural identity as a woman. Ismene is emotional rather than passionate, more likely to plead for mercy than demand justice.

Rehersals and Performing Antigone

For my piece I am playing the part of Ismene whose objective in the play is to persuade and stop her sister Antigone from burying their brother against their uncle Creon's demand. I enjoy playing the part of Ismene as I find her very powerful, however in a non aggressive manner.

My partner and I went through our script and practised our lines, trying different approaches such as writing on our script the emotion linked to each line to help us portray this in our piece. We both struggled with knowing how to react when we were not speaking, and found it difficult to stand still as we felt as we should be constantly reacting with our facial expressions. We then asked for some advice from Rob who went through the Uta Hagen technique of acting truthfully. I learnt that the emotion status starts in the head and the mind and then shows in your body and actions as a secondary response. Also, I learnt to avoid showing exaggerated emotion on my face as this is not realistic.

My partner (Jess) and I found each others energy levels were high and we could feed off of each other. As we learnt to stay still and listen to each others lines rather than worry about what to do with our facial expressions, the piece felt more natural and made the scene much more realistic.

We then performed to the second year Drama students and got feedback from them. The feedback I received was that I had good projection and played a good contrast to Antigone's overpowering, demanding character. I was also told to analyse the language into modern terms to react in a realistic way as I would in real life. I also got feedback from Rob which was that I had good listening skills whilst Antigone spoke and a good stillness which shows I was comfortable in the character and didn't over react. I was told to look for the subtleness in the my lines and play with the text, which links to what the second year Drama students said about analysing the language to gain more understanding of what I am saying. I was told to practise an exercise of playing my part and lines by picking an emotion out of a hat such as sad or excited and seeing how this can completely change the way the scene evolves.

My skills are being developed by memorising long pieces of speech and by learning to react in a way I would in real life. I am also learning that stillness whilst the other character is speaking is more powerful at times then moving around to feel 'in character', which can make the audience feel uncomfortable and I could appear less confident. Performing to a bigger audience also helped my projection as I had to be louder for the whole class to be able to gage what I was saying.

Greek Theatre

Ancient Greek theatre grew out of festivals honouring the gods and goddesses. Around 700 BC, at the same time ancient Athens rose to political and military power, it became the cultural centre of the festival of Dionsysis. In Athens, during this festival, men used to perform songs to welcome Dionysus. Plays were only presented at City Dionysia festival. Out of the Dionysia developed three dramatic genres: tragedy in the late 6th century BC, comedy in 486 BC and the satyr play. The theatres were built on hillsides in the open air and could often hold more than 18,000 spectators.

The theatres were open air and built in a semi-circular shape with rows of tiered stone seating around it. The shape of the theatres gave everyone in the audience excellent viewing and also meant they could hear the actors well too. In the centre of the theatre was a circular dancing floor (orchestra), with an altar for sacrifices dedicated to Dionysus.

The stage was a raised area within this circle. All the actors were men. They wore large masks that exaggerated facial features and emotions. The mouth hole was large to help amplify the voices. Greek plays were either comedies or tragedies. Tragedies were often about the past, whereas comedies tended to be about current and everyday life. Actors in comedies wore bright colours. Actors in tragedies wore dark colours.

More than set pieces, the Greek plays passed news about military and political business, politicians and, in the case of satyr plays, celebrated drunkenness, sexuality, pranks and props.

The main playwrights were Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophes. Sophocles wrote one of the most famous tragedies which are Oedipus and Antigone.  Aristophes was famous for being a comic playwright. Euripides was one of the greatest authors of Greek tragedy.