Greek Project (Week 2)

This week's main focus was on the chorus and how we could develop scenes that the chorus were in, during our Theatre Context class we looked out how we could take our idea of having the chorus as journalists and how we could take some of the scenes in "Oresteia" and how we could make them more contempry through our chorus. So what we did was use some recent news stories and show them in a different way (other than a news program,) me and Bradley chose the forest fire that had happened in Australia we found it difficult at first, showing it in a different way was hard, but we came up with the idea of how some journalists make up stories in order to get more views, so what we did was used the idea of a news program and how you would have a journalist have been onsite, now the idea of us making up the story went well, as we treated the audience like a chorus, they all worked as one to make decisions, and so when we interviewed them about whether this was true or not they decided as a collective that this was a lie, we got a lot of laughs out of it and so we played on the audience's reactions.

We also looked at the character of Electra and how she is a god, then after we decided on what modern day gods are and we thought about celebrities, once we had done this we looked at what celebrity we though Electra was like we came up with the three we liked and one of them was my celebrity, Miley Cyrus, now I said this because she has been on the news very recently and is now quite a stuck up person which suits the character of Electra.

In our movement lesson, we carried on the scene of the death of Agamemnon, mainly this was a look at the chorus and how journalists would react to watching this, we also looked at the words from the piece and looked at how we could emphasise them by acting them out in the chorus, this worked well as the chorus members worked individually but in a collective of them, they all did different moves but all moved as one.

Wednesday we looked at words that the chorus say and how we could emphasise these words just like in movement. We tried different ways of saying them and different movements we preformed the words we had to the class in small groups, we would say the words together in a different way, whether it was singing them, whispering them, saying it fast or slow ect. and then we looked at the movements for instants, we used rip and pretended to tear a pieces of fabric in the air, this workshop helped us a lot to understand how to use the chorus effectively.

We later looked at different types of staging and where we could put the audience:

To the left you will see a Proscenium Arch, this is a very simple actors on the stage and the audience in front watching what's happening, this is also know as end on staging, where your audience is lower than the stage.







To the right you will see an In The Round style of staging, this is where your audience sit all around you and the acting is centred in the middle, this creates more of an intimate feeling for your audience.











Left of this is a style called Traverses Staging, your audience sit either side of what looks like a cat walk, and they will not
only watch you, but they can see the other audience members reaction.








After we looked at staging we mixed the lines that we were saying as the chorus earlier, in with the different ways we could stage it. And we also looked at the In The Round stage and we treated it as if we were on a circle that was balancing on the point in the middle, so when another person jumps in you would have to move to balance out the circle.

On Thursday we looked at the beginning scene, where Orestes and Electra are mourning for their father, but do not know that they are there, my character Orestes has just come home after a long exile, which his mum had ordered and so when ever the chorus or Electra were on I had to hide away. After my lines I kneel down mourning at the grave, which is represented by the bath Agamemnon dies in, I then hear the mourners coming and on three beats I have to look up, stand up and turn around and then on five beats I had to hide, this helped me with the blocking as I wasn't concentrating on how long I had to get to different points. After this I worked on my monologue, I was told to deliver the lines and walk to where I felt I had to, which made it easier for me on the blocking again as I didn't feel restricted.