Greek Theatre
 |
| Greek God Dionysus (Bacchus) Statue,
a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original -
Photo by Maicar Forlag |
Greek
Theatre originated in the city state of Athens, where it was first
institutionalised as a festival called the Great Dionysia. The Great Dionysia
was a religious festival made to honour the Greek god of wine, fertility and
theatre, Dionysus. It was an annual festival and thought to have lasted for
about five days, in an Athenian month called Elaphebolion (last half of March
and first half of April).
Most
Greek theatre was written and produced between 500 and 300 B.C, and the main
three playwrights were Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus.
Aristotle (384 – 322BC) was a Greek Philosopher whose views on physical science shaped scholars’ studies at the time and were held through the Renaissance until the introduction of Newtonian physics.
He taught Alexander the Great and was a student of Plato’s. He is believed to have composed most of his works from 335 – 323 BC and as well as writing on physics and metaphysics also wrote on ethics, politics and the arts.
Aristotle’s view was that Greek comedy developed from song, komodia coming from the words Komos and ode meaning “revel” and “song”. Comedy wasn’t taken seriously at first, compared to the tragedies which were well established.
Aristophanes (448 – 380BC) believed producing comedies was one of the most difficult things to do. His works include The Clouds (416BC), which Plato suggested contributed to the fate of philosopher, Socrates (trial and execution), and The Frogs (405BC), in which the God Dionysys (a god representing Man’s darker nature) features as a character ridiculously disguised as Hercules and who pokes fun at Phrynichus, a rival of Aristophanes. Aristophanes apparently recreated the life of ancient Athens convincingly and was feared by contemporaries. No figure was safe from ridicule whether they were political, religious etc.
 |
| Herodes Atticus Theatre |
The
plays were originally performed in theatre buildings called Theatrons, also
known as “seeing places”. Theatrons were huge, some of them so large that they
could seat around 14,000 people. They were semi-circular open air structures,
built into sloping hillsides.
The audience would sit in the terraced seating,
made up of stone benches which had been carved out of the hillside.
 |
Greek chorus in The Bacchai at the National Theatre.
Photograph: Tristram Kenton
|
Greek
plays were originally performed in a very different way to how we perform
theatre these days. There would be no more than three or four main actors,
including the protagonist and antagonist, and the rest of the cast were a
chorus.
The
chorus moved and spoke as a group, they were always deeply invested in the
story, the characters and what was happening in the play, and they often
interrupted the live action with song and dance. Every performer in the play
would wear a mask, and the facial expression on the mask depended on the genre
of the play itself.
In comedies the masks would be seen to be smiling and
joyous, but masks worn in tragedies would be representative of much more
negative emotions, they would have pained and mournful expressions on them.
Greek
theatre genres were comedy, satyr plays and tragedy. Most Greek tragedies are
based on mythology or history dealing with themes of pride, love, loss, abuse
of power and fate.
The
formula used in most Greek tragedy begins with a prologue. Then the chorus introduce the paradox and
introductions are made to the characters, to the mood and then the final scene
is the exodus.
The
themes and formula of Greek theatre are still relevant today as they dealt with
investigating the world and human character.
Some modern day writing, for example the writers (David Simons and Ed
Burns) of the recent television series The Wire, used Greek theatre
themes.
"Simon has acknowledged the influence
on the series of ancient tragedians such as Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus.
Like the Greek dramatists he shows humans enacting fates they cannot escape. As
Simon put it in a 2007 interview with Nick Hornby, he lifted his thematic
stance “wholesale” from the Greeks, aiming “to create doomed and fated
protagonists who confront a rigged game and their own mortality. The idea that…
we’re still fated by indifferent gods, feels to us antiquated and
superstitious… But instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in
which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces."
Medea
 |
| Medea by Anthony Frederick Augustus
Sandys (painted 1866-68) and rejected for
exhibition by the Royal Academy in 1868. |
The
script which I am working on for this assignment is an excerpt from the play
Medea.
Medea
was written and produced in 431 BC by the famous Greek playwright Euripides,
and it is based on the Greek myth of Jason and Medea.
Set
in the city state of Corinth, in front of the house of Jason and Medea, it
follows the story of Medea taking revenge on Jason when he betrays her.
Here
I have written a brief summary of the plot:
The
story begins with Medea hearing the terrible news of her husband Jason’s
betrayal.
He
has arranged to abandon Medea and their two children in order to marry King
Creon’s daughter, Princess Glauce, and Creon, fearing that Medea would seek
revenge on them, has decided to exile Medea and the children from Corinth.
Medea
is distraught and vows to be revenged upon them. She begs the king to allow her
one more day in Corinth, claiming that she needs to make plans for where to
take her children, and the king grants her wish; she is to have one final day
in Corinth.
Aegeus,
King of Athens, appears by chance in Corinth, and offers Medea sanctuary in his
home city, if she will inform him of a way he can cure his sterility. Medea
accepts his offer, and has now secured a safe haven for when she leaves
Corinth.
With
no further obstacles to prevent her from exacting revenge before she leaves,
Medea uses her final day to carry out her plan.
She
sends Princess Glauce a poisoned gown and coronet as a wedding gift.
The
princess is killed by the poison, and so is King Creon, when he cradles his
daughter’s dead body in grief.
As
a final act of revenge against Jason, offstage, Medea murders their two sons.
She
then appears in a chariot drawn by Chimeras, which was sent to her by the sun
god, Helios, her grandfather. With her are the bodies of her dead children.
Medea
then leaves Corinth in the chariot and heads for her promised sanctuary.
 |
| Fiona Shaw as Medea, Queen's Theatre, London 2001 - Photo by Tristram Kenton. |
Themes
This
tragedy is a play which carries many themes, and I have decided to write about
the ones which are, in my opinion, most relevant.
Betrayal and Revenge
These
are two of the most prominent themes in the play, as it is Jason betraying
Medea, and her feeling the need to exact revenge upon him that drives Medea to
do everything she does.
It
is so interesting to look at the acts of revenge on Medea’s part and compare
them to the act of betrayal on Jason’s part.
Although
Medea retaliates in such cruel ways and takes such drastic measures to be
avenged upon Jason, you can’t help but ask if the way she reacted, was, at
least in part, understandable.
Looking
at the background of Medea’s story, the events that happened to her prior to what
takes place in the play, you can sympathise with her more than you might otherwise.
In the past, Medea actually betrayed her own family in order to help Jason. She
killed her brother just to help Jason escape and then she ran away with him,
fleeing from her home in the east and heading for Greece. That is when she and
Jason settled in Corinth.
When
you consider that Medea sacrificed everything and abandoned her home and family
simply out of love for Jason, it makes what Jason does to her much more
unforgivable. Whereas she was willing to do anything for him, he was willing to
completely betray her for the sake of status. He arranges to marry Princess
Glauce in order to be a royal, even though Medea effectively sacrificed her own
royal standing for him.
So,
it’s clear that Medea is greatly wronged by Jason, and you can understand why
she feels the way that she does. She is betrayed, upset, abandoned, and afraid. We mustn’t forget that Medea is
frightened. She has nowhere to go and no one to turn to. That is until King
Aegeus shows up and offers her sanctuary, at least.
You
can see why she would seek revenge, as she is in this emotional state, and
doesn’t have much time left.
But
the way in which she exacts her revenge is, to say the least, questionable.
She
kills Glauce, who hasn’t done anything wrong, and who, due to the way that
women were treated and their social standing at the time, quite possibly didn’t
have much of a choice in the matter of marrying Jason. Glauce is, it would seem,
innocent, and is used by Medea to hurt Jason. Medea disregards her as a person
and uses her as a device, which is something that shows a great lack of empathy
for her.
Medea
also kills her children, and this is, I think the most horrific act on her
part. The children are innocent, and having already lost their father, are to
lose their mother too when she decides to kill them rather than protect them.
These
acts of revenge, although her motive for committing them may be understandable,
are unforgivable really.
In
order to have “justice”, she has warped the very meaning of being just by
murdering the innocent. Justice is another interesting theme in the play,
actually.
My
thoughts on it are below!
Justice
As
so many Greek tragedies did, Medea posed the question; what is right and wrong,
what is true justice?
“Justice”
is very subjective, and when put into the context of this play, it can be
greatly disputed. In my opinion, what Medea does, is not just.
Although
it may feel just to her because she has hurt Jason, as he hurt her, if you look
at the bigger picture, Medea’s actions can’t really be described as justified.
But
the great thing about it is that everyone who sees or reads Medea will be left
with questions and doubts in their mind. It gives you something to think about,
it makes a great impact in the sense that you can’t really come to one simple
conclusion about things like justice.
Medea
is a great example of the way that Greek playwrights like Euripides really made
their audience think.
Exile
 |
| An ancient vase painting of Medea escaping in
her chariot. The bodies of her children are in the
bottom right corner. |
Exile
is a strong theme within the play, also.
When
Medea ran away from her home in the past, she basically exiled herself.
In
a way, I find that almost foreshadowing of what happens to her in the play.
Earlier
in life she had a choice and made her own decision, she left her home; she
decided to exile herself from that place. But now, she finds herself exiled
without a choice in the matter. She is helpless and someone else has made that
decision for her. She’s being forced away, and it’s a very scary thing. The
fact that she has cut herself off from the other place where she might have
gone makes it even scarier to have to leave Corinth.
I
mentioned fear before, and it’s something which is really helping me to get
under the skin of the character.
I’m
playing with that idea of fear and the different things which are frightening Medea
in the play, I find that it’s helping me with my own portrayal of her, and I
try to keep in mind that deep down she is afraid when I’m playing her in our
scene.
Love and Loss
The
themes of love and loss are greatly featured in Medea.
Basically
everything that Medea does is as a result of losing what she loves,
after all.
As
I discussed before, she left and lost her family and home out of love for Jason.
It was love on which their lives in Corinth were built.
So
when he betrays her and she is to lose everything that she holds dear, it’s
terrifying and it renders her distraught.
People
can really relate to this because everyone has people who they love, and even
the thought of losing one of those people is awful.
I
find that I can really draw on the idea of losing people I love to help develop
my understanding of Medea’s character, and therefore portray her more aptly.
Because
it’s something I can relate to, it makes it easier for me to put myself in her character’s
shoes and really convey to the audience the emotions that she’s feeling.
Femininity and women
For me personally, the theme of femininity is one of
the most important.
The play looks at the way in which women were treated
and seen in the eyes of society at the time. Misogyny plays a large part in
this play, and the way Medea behaves and reacts must be partly owed to how
she’s been discriminated against.
In many ways Medea represents womanhood, and the issues
which her gender faced in those times and still face to this day.
Medea is living in a male dominated, patriarchal
society, and is punished throughout the play for being a woman. The society in
which she lives gives way for Jason and Creon to disregard and maltreat Medea.
The way Medea is treated throughout the play is very sexist.
Medea is a clever woman, but rather than her
intelligence being applauded or seen as positive, Creon and Jason actually see
it as a cause to fear her. They demonise her; they think that her cleverness is
dangerous. They don’t see it as a positive trait, as they would if she were a
man, they see it as frightening and malicious for a woman to be intellectually
equal, or superior to them.
An example of sexism in the play is when Medea is told
that her fate is down to the way she
behaved. She is told that, had she not been such a jealous, possessive woman,
she would have been allowed to stay in Corinth. This is just Creon and Jason using
the sexist notion of women being overly jealous and needy to their own
advantage. They oppress Medea by reinforcing negative stereotypes of women.
Medea,
being a woman, being so oppressed and limited by the world she lives in, is
forced to use things like cunning to fight back against those who have wronged
her.
The
ordeals she faces as a character are made much more challenging because she’s a
woman.
I
find the theme of femininity and the struggle against an oppressive society in
this play very compelling.
As
sexism is something which is still so prominent in the world, I find it easy to
relate to the sexism in the play. I use the anger, upset and frustration of
struggling against the oppression of women as motivation in my job of
portraying Medea’s character.
It’s
something I feel so strongly about that I can really draw on it to immerse
myself in the part. I can identify with Medea in terms of the struggles she
faces due to sexism and misogyny, and I keep in mind my own frustration about
those things when playing the part.
It really helps me get into character and
portray Medea more clearly.
 |
| Nina Kristofferson as Medea, Playhouse, Oxford,
2010. Photograph: Tristram Kenton |
Working on Medea
As
the story of Medea is so intense and mature, it has been quite a challenge to
step up to the task of acting in it for our first assignment. Jerome and I have
been doing a lot of research and analysis of the play, because it’s important
for us to understand the script we’ve been given, and also our characters.
Once we’d
learnt our lines, we spent some time thinking and talking about our characters’
objectives in the scene.
Medea’s
objective is to get one more day in Corinth so that she can carry out revenge.
Creon’s objective is to get rid of Medea. He wants to get her out of Corinth as
quickly as possible because he fears her and what she may do.
We also
looked at the thought processes of our characters in everything they said, and
explored the idea of writing their thought processes under each line in the
script. By doing this we would be able to concentrate more on each moment in
the scene, and work on listening and reacting, rather than just saying line
after line robotically.
The process
of learning and understanding our script has been one of discovery. There’s
always something new to work on, you can always develop your piece, and Jerome
and I have been really thinking about the different ways in which we can
improve our performance every time we’ve rehearsed.
Our job is
to portray our characters as clearly as possible, and to immerse our audience
in the situation in as little time as the few minutes our script allows.
Rehearsing again and again to try and perfect different aspects of our piece is
interesting, as it feels like every time we come back to work on it, there’s
something more we can do.
We spent
quite a while developing the physical elements of our performance.
Although a
lot of it came naturally once we knew our script, we also had to discuss the
different movements and actions we thought would be suitable in our piece, and
try them out.
It was a lot
of experimenting, and not everything we tried stuck.
For
instance, we had the idea that at one point in our scene, we could begin to
circle one another as we delivered our lines, making it like a stand off.
But
this idea didn't stay that simple, we added to it as we went along. We put a
prop in our scene, a stool, and decided that it was more striking for Jerome to
be sitting on the stool while I circled him. By doing this instead of having us
circle one another on equal footing, you got to see Creon being intimidated by
Medea.
The stool
was the only prop we used, but it ended up serving quite a few purposes.
I actually
saw it as a bit of a prop for power play. You see, when Creon first entered
the scene, I, Medea, was sitting on the stool, and Creon came up and leant on
it, being condescending and seemingly powerful, mocking me. He had the upper
hand, he was in the intimidating position, and it made him feel powerful.
But later
on, when I circled him, the power had flipped, as he was the one being mocked,
and you could see that change quite clearly I think. What could have been a
simple prop ended up representing some quite significant aspects of our
scene.
Over the
course of our rehearsal process, we were given different bits of feedback from
the group and from Rob.
Quite early
on, Rob told me to work on a few things; staying grounded and still when
delivering my monologue, engaging with the audience more and keeping my head
up, and also developing my facial expressions. These were things I started
working on right away to try and correct, and gradually, everything came
together.
Almost as
soon as we started working on our script, we were told by Rob and the other
students that our emotions were very clear in the scene, and that we listened
and reacted to one another nicely.
This was
very positive feedback to receive, as we did feel like those things came quite
naturally to us, and it was nice to hear that others thought so too.
The feedback
we were given by fellow students and Rob was always really helpful, it was
great to hear the opinions of others which could help us with our performance.
I found
working on this script to be an exciting opportunity, and although sometimes it
was a struggle to really fine tune our performance, I enjoyed every second of
it.
Below I have inserted two pictures of a sheet Rob gave us when we were
first given our assignments, which we had to fill out about Greek theatre and
Medea.
I also read the following chapter from “Psychoanalytic Theory
of Greek Tragedy” by C. Fred Alford, published by Yale University Press (1992),
and found it very interesting to read another insight into the character and
the themes.
“Consider
Medea. She is scared to death, a point
not always sufficiently appreciated. She
is frightened because she is isolated.
She has left her family in the east, and cannot return, having killed
her brother to help Jason, her fiancé, escape.
Weak and vulnerable in a strange land, an outsider, on the margins, and
thus especially dependent on her husband’s protection she fears the exile
imposed on her, the humiliation it brings, and the weakness it forces her to
confront. “You have a refuge,” she says
to Jason, “but I am helpless, faced with exile” (Medea 610). Isolation, weakness, vulnerability,
humiliation, exile – these are the terms she uses to characterize her
situation. All, of course, are death
equivalents. Through a horrible revenge
she seeks to restore a sense of her own vitality and control – life
equivalents. Or, as Medea puts it
immediately after confessing her plan to murder her children, “Nobody shall
despise me or think me weak or passive” (800).
Why
does she kill her children? This was not
her original plan, which was “to make corpses of three of my enemies, father
and daughter and my own husband” (373).
Following Philip Slater, one might argue that because of the Greek
system of weak and diluted marriage coupled with the subjection of women, she
overly identifies her sons with Jason, her husband. The primary reason she kills her children,
however, is that she determines that their murder will hurt Jason more than
would death itself, and Medea above all wishes to inflict the maximum pain, to
counterbalance her own. “How did they die?”
she asks about Jason’s bride-to-be and her father. “You would double my delight if they died in
agony” (1130). The question thus becomes
how to inflict this pain on Jason. To
kill his children is worse than death because it means that nothing of him can
continue after death. He may take longer
to die than if she had killed him herself, but he will be doubly dead. Killing his children robs Jason of the chance
to participate symbolically through them in the transcendent. This theme is reinforced by the appearance of
Aegeus, suffering over his childlessness, to whom Medea promises children if he
will provide her with a haven (see 650ff).
Jason, on the other hand, will become a living corpse, who will “die
without distinction” as Medea puts it (1386).
Medea need not kill Jason to destroy him. She need only destroy his house and legacy
(790).”
Sources
I have used for research:
http://www.litcharts.com/lit/medea
