Medea Evaluation

 

 

In this post I am going to evaluate our performance of Medea.

 

We did 3 performances, one on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

 

I played 2 characters in the performance, a child and a messenger.

 

 

Character: Child

 

The children in the story belong to Jason and Medea. They are what causes disagreements between the couple and in the end are killed by the Medea. The story goes through Medea's life as she is struggling to decide what to do to the children. The 6 chorus cast members are the ones who try to convince her that killing them is a foolish thing to do. The children are very happy, easy going children.

 

As this was a Greek theatre performance it was decided that the idea of the children wearing masks would be very effective and would also work well with the fact we have kept the staging and layout very in the Greek period but the story and acting is sometimes very modern.

 

What I enjoyed most about playing a child was having the chance to wear a mask and learn and develop a totally new skill. Before Medea I had never worn a mask for a show so I had a lot to learn but have loved the experience. I have learnt all about the rules of wearing a mask and these were things I had no idea about before. For a career in the theatre and performing industry you need to have as many skills and experiences as possible and after wearing a mask in Medea I would love the chance to develop another character that wears a mask.

Me and Sarah worked very hard on making the character humerous. We worked on choosing specific sections of speech by other characters and working on how we can react. The section in which Medea is taking the children away from Jason we are positioned next to Jason with Medea infront with her back to us. Jason says 'your going to grow up into big men, like my brothers'. At this point Jason punches me in a joke way but not realising how hard he does it I stumble because of it. This is humerous for the audience to watch and also gives us a chance to get our character more across.

 

 

Character : Messenger  

 

 The messenger's in this story are the ones who deliver the news of the Princess and Creons death. They are quite excited by what they have seen and are loving telling this gory story. They dress smart, skirt, shirt and blazer.

 

What I enjoyed most about playing a messenger was the fact that while we spoke and explained the story the chorus acted it out. They were downstage nearer the audience and each took a character and acted exactly what we said. It made it humerous and also ensured the audience understood what we were saying.

 

 What I struggled with the most was making the story sound believable. I needed to make the audience think I had actually seen this massive moment and that im saying it from memory and picturing what I see. To help with doing this Sarah and I worked closely with the chorus and Adrian and did a task to make this better. We went through our speech and everytime the others didnt feel what we was saying was believeable they would say 'We dont believe you'. This made us annoyed and also more wanting to get into the character. It made us shout and really fight to get heard and so they would believe us. Another technique Adrian tried with us was the character we was trying to talk to, Medea, she would walk away while talking to her so we end up chasing her and having to force our story at her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women in Ancient Greece

"Ownership" of women - who owned them? Did they not own themselves?

Greek women had very little freedom anywhere outside there home. They had to have their husbands permission to go to events like weddings, funerals and even to attend religious events. They couldn't make any decisions them selves. Their father controlled them up until they were married, then the husband took over the role. They did not own themselves atall. This is very opposite to some other places, for example in ancient Egypt women had a large amount of freedom and life was very similar for male and females.

Could a woman inherit property? If not, why not?

Greek women were not aloud to own a property outright. If a females father dies she would not inherit his property. If she had any brothers then they would get the property. If he has no sons then he would adopt a male that would then inherit this property. Or if he only has a daughter then he would chose a male to adopt and this would be who his daughter has to marry. This was because there is an Athenian law which states women are not allowed to participate in a business transaction involving anything which value exceeds a sum of money equivalent to whats needed to feed a family for 5-6 days.

How does this information help you to understand Medea's behaviour in the play?

This information makes me understand








REFRENCE

http://greece.mrdonn.org/women.html

http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/women_and_property_in_athens.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/ancientchix/

Infanticide

Infanticide is the intentional killing of an infant

Case 1 - Baby Peter Connelley

He was born to Tracey Connelly on 1 March 2006 in London. Her new boyfriend, Steven Barker, moved in with her in November. A month later bruises were found on his face and chest by a GP. Due to this his mother was arrested. Peter got put into care of a family friend but was allowed back to his mothers care in January 2007. Within the next few months Peter got admitted to hospital suffering from injuries. She was then arrested again in May 2007.

Peter was seen at St. Ann's Hospital in North London by a locum paediatrician in August 2007. Broken back and ribs went undetected due to being pre dated to this examination, so a day later Tracey was told she will not be prosecuted.

The very next day an ambulance was called to find Peter in his cot wearing only a nappy and was blue and clad. He was pronounced dead at 12:20pm. The post mortem revealed he had swallowed a tooth after being punched. He also had a broken back and ribs, mutilated fingertips and missing fingernails.

A murder investigation was carried out and Tracey was arrested. Also her boyfriend Steven, his brother Jason and his girlfriend were all arrested who were hiding in a forest campsite.

This infanticide has been highly reported using media. Newspapers such as The Guardian, Sun, Daily Mail, BBC and many more have all followed the story but had very different opinions on who is to blame. Interestingly write ups hardly mention it as being the parents fault, even though they are the ones who physically committed the crimes. The blame is all on social workers and the company's who should of been able to help the situation.

Even to this day the Mothers life is being publicised, for example she wants the NHS to pay £7,000 for her to have a gastric band which will give her weight loss. This is because she wants to find a new male for her life.

The articles I have read on this story don't seem to favour either the Mother or her boyfriend but target a female social worker.

 Case 2 - French lady kills 8 children

In July 2010 two bodies were discovered in plastic bags while new house owners were working on the garden. The house was previously owned to Dominique Cottrez and her husband Pierre-Marie Cottrez. The police contacted the family about what had been found and immediately Dominique admitted that the bodies were two infants she had given birth too. She also then openly admitted to six more children's bodies that were in the garage. All eight bodies were born over an 17 year period.

This infanticide has been highly reported using media. By simply typing her name into Google hundreds of pages appear all with information on her crime and her life.

Interestingly the male is hardly mentioned in any reports. He was a carpenter and also was part of the village council. He was described as a  "decent, well-meaning type" by a mayor. He was arrested on suspicion of failing to report the crimes but was released very soon after without charge.




In both these cases the Mothers are clearly very confused and not right, very similar to Medea.  Medea is very open about killing her children, whereas the second case shows that the Mother kept it a secret for many years.

The way in which the second case Mother disposed of the bodies showed no remorse towards the children, very similary to Medea who left the bodies lying next to her while talking to Jason.



















http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide#Greece_and_Rome

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10803080

Medea - Mask

The mask workshop was extremely helpful for me as my character in Medea wears a mask.

To start with we learnt the rules of wearing a mask.

To put these rules into practise in groups we created a lazzi  

 

 

In our lazzi we had to perform a internal monologue.

 

 

 

I was in a group with 2 others. We each chose a mask. There was lots of different facial expressions to choose from and we chose ones which we felt could act out and interpret. Our story for our lazzi was we had a chair with a 'do not sit' sign on it. Wearing a grumpy mask I walked on and placed the sign on the chair and then walked off stage. Seconds later another character comes on wearing an 'o' shaped lips mask, they are running and out of breathe so sit down on the seat. I then enter again with my grumpy mask and tell her to move and we both exit the stage. Then a sad faced masked character enters the stage, acting tired they decided to take a nap on the 'do not sit' chair. Then both me, the grumpy faced character, and the out of breathe mask character enter and wake the tired character and angrily exit the stage together.

 

 

 

I found this exercise extremely helpful because of my character wearing a mask in the performance of Medea. I never knew about the rules of wearing a mask until today.

I learnt that you cannot touch your mask or another characters mask. I thought when trying to express something you could use your hand to interact with the mask to make it seem more human like.

 

By doing this task I also learnt how hard it is to keep facing front when wearing a mask. When walking on even though I was walking straight across the stage I had to keep my head facing the front, or the audience would only see the side of my mask. You have to be very aware of who is around and if there is any objects on stage, where they are.

One thing I will need to practise is breathing in the mask. It is so close and tight to your face that if you breathe heavily then it will create more heat and sweat under the mask. If on stage for a long amount of time I will need to ensure I aim my breathing downwards to the bottom of the mask. Plus laughing is not a good idea while wearing a mask as creates too much heat.


Todays lesson learning all about masks will directly impact on my character in Medea as I now know how to perform correctly while wearing a mask. I will be able to take the rules and tips I have learnt and use them on and off stage. Before I go on stage I will be able to do an exercise I learnt today which involves looking at the facial expression of the mask, resembling it using my face and body and then putting the mask on. This allows you to get your body into the mode of this mask but also gives you a few minutes alone to compose yourself.