Isabella Clark: Greek Theatre

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf9cDKqwhQw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_ancient_Greece