Greek Theatre
So as a class we were given a short couple of sections from the Greek Theatre play, Agamenmon. The script had already been divided into four short sections, in which would form our groups. After a quick briefing as to what the four different sections were telling us, we chose our groups. I decided to choose group four:
"A two headed monster of guilt -
But we must mourn them.
Our prince has put a crown of blood
On this terrible past
At his own cost
But at least he has given life to the hope of Argos.
Judgement was slow
To catch up with the thief that came fromTroy.
But in the end his city had to pay
His entire people paid.
Judgement was slow, also,
To disentangle Aegisthus
From the limbs of Clytemnestra -
Slow, but sure.
Shout for joy! Shout! -
The arms that wielded the treacherous sword
Have attracted the counterstroke
Of lightning from heaven.
And the two stricken corpses
Make a new monument of Justice.
Shout for joy! Shout!
Apollo, god of the deep cave
Beneath Parnassus
Spoke his riddle:
"Wrap my word of truth in an act of falsehood"
Justice
Justifies Apollo
The designs of heaven
Weave man into the pattern.
His agony must submit
To the omnipotent
In patience.
Shout for joy! Shout!
Time has come full term-
Justice newly delivered
As a full-grown prince,
Will step out through these doors,
Opening the palace to the light,
Cleansing the hearth of blood
Washing the curse
From the walls and floors and ceilings
Where it has thickened so long
All who speak of this house
Shall tell of its new blessings -
Fortunes own palace. "
Our task was to create this short piece into some sort of vocal performance! With a small group of four of us we read through this briefly. We understood the basics of what was happening in this section but actually didn't take too much notice of it. Our mission was to use just our voices to perform this piece of text. We were able to put it into a contemporary setting and use movements or instruments or any other materials for this, but it was all focussed on our voices. Our first idea was to set it under the ideas of 'social media'. I think the ideas behind this would be that we would add the word hashtag to any important words, for example 'hashtag treacherous sword'. But the deeper reasoning behind it was because we had discussed the ways in which the Greek chorus works. They act as one voice, but from an outside view, they could be seen as 12 people copying one another.(Copying becoming 'following'). We linked this to social media. There are two ways in which we 'follow' people on social media. To start with, we follow the trends that are happening on social media. For example, when gay marriage was approved worldwide, near everyone added a rainbow filter over their profile picture (rainbow being the gay pride colours.) In relation to the Greek chorus, they act as one, so therefore are following one another to show they move and think and talk as one. In another sense, to follow someone on social media is the way in which you can see what your friends post, so like 'being their friend' on facebook, or 'saving their email address' on things such as Twitter, you 'follow' their account to access the things they post.
Admittedly, I was the only one to be against this idea, because although it could've been this huge visual performance, us dressed as blue like all the social media icons, and really analysing what the script was saying and incorporating that into terms such as a 'status', 'tweet', an 'instagram image' or even a 5 second freeze frame to represent a 'snapchat.'.. But the issue was I couldn't see how we could work on this with just the use of our voices. Yes, we could've done it as though we were computerised, or as though like Siri (the computer voice in an iPhone.)
Instead, Joe suggested the idea of doing as though reading a children's story book. This way, our voices would be the priority in the chosen theme, and no actions of physical theatre needed to be added to it in any way. We had already covered work on reading childrens books, and so we felt confident enough to put this practise into a very different style of text- Greek Theatre.
So I began my research into the vocal points that are key for reading childrens books. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/hints-how-read-aloud-group The first one being pace. Children have a slower process of information, so reading slowly allows them to take in what is being said easier. I timed myself reading this entire piece of text, and in almost under 1minute, I had finished. This was clearly too fast. I was aware, however, that it wouldn't be my responsibility to read the entire piece of text; we were each going to read every other line. With that said, I wanted to run through a short excercise I have previously done before. This excercise is to calm the body, in order to slow down the pace. https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130429125935AA3ThL5 This link walked me through some positions in which help to re-allign your body, such as the Alexander Technique.
I got myself into the correct standing position, and took a while to concentrate on my breathing. After steadying my breath, I spoke my lines in this position. I found my that my voice felt clear and at ease (there were no strains etc.) I then got myself into the correct laying position, again, reciting my lines. I felt a lot calmer in this position, as it felt most natural out of them all. Calm is something I wanted to achieve in this excercise, so I made sure to carry this over into the correct seated position, which is the position in which we performed our Greek theatre. This position focused on the straightness of the spine and the alignment of the neck.After doing this, I felt more comfortable in the position I had set myself in. My shoulders were pinned back, so my chest was expanded, my neck slightly back, in line with my spine. Although I didn't notice the immediate effect on my voice, I felt more confident and it had dramatically slowed my breathing down which meant, when I timed my lines again, I was considerably slower.
Another key thing for reading childrens books is emphasis. You have to find different ways to entice them into the story, whether it be a whisper or a shout, or said quickly or really slowly:
"A two-headed monster of guilt"
A two headed monster is pretty extraordinary for children, and with this being my line, I really elongated the line. In phonetical terms, I said 'a twooooo headed monster'. Drawing out the word 'two' gave the fact that it had two heads much more exciting but scary.
"His entire people paid"
For this, I put on a more authoritive voice, like you would expect from the King. Putting on voices makes the story more fun for the children listeners, and its also something they can relate to from perhaps other books that have a King-like figure in etc. I lowered the tone of my voice, to sound more manly.
"Apollo, god of the deep cave"
I repeated the word 'deep' and again lowered the tone of my voice to represent the deepness of the cave. I made sure to say this line really slowly, to make the audience hang on each of my words. I put emphasis on the word 'god' and made the sound quite harsh, once again to capture their attention.
In order to add these types of emphasis' on my lines, I warmed up my voice. My favourite being the 'chew gum' exercise:
1. Simply chew imaginary gum, for a reasonable amount of time.
This, I find, really makes use of my tongue muscle, it warms it up as well as warms up my gums. When hugely over-exaggerated, it can help me stretch out my face muscles to free them up too. My other favourite exercise is running your tongue around your mouth, again quite consistently. I tend to dedicate a good five minutes to doing this, because then you can really feel the difference in the flexibility of your mouth. Both of these considerably helped with the emphasis I placed on my various lines.
To add to my research, I wanted to listen to recordings of childrens books, previously I had found an Australian author and reader called Mem Fox. When listening to her various audio clips, I fell in love with her voice, and actually found myself wanting to hear the rest of the story with thanks to the way in which she made it sound exciting. http://memfox.com/for-everyone-current-read-alouds/ I noticed how important her character voices were in this particular story, they allowed you to picture your own little character in your head. She spoke very slowly, at times I found it too slow, but it was probably a perfect speed for young children to intake. And also the emphasis she used was very over exaggerated, nearly everything she said had emphasis placed onto it, but as I said it made it quite intriguing, and even being at the age of 17, I was still quite drawn to the story.
In terms of previous vocal work, I tried to link my knowledge from performances such as Much Ado About Nothing and The Far Side Of The Moor.
Shakespeare is well known for the Iambic Pentameter. This was a system for the actors to understand where the emphasis should be placed. And although this wasn't the format in which our greek theatre piece was written in, it still taught me the importance of the use of emphasis. The research into childrens book for my solo audio work helped out with this too of course, however: during
Shakespeare it took me a lot of practise to get the hang of emphasising words. I studied a lot on the Iambic Pentameter, and spent an awful lot of time at home trying to master this, and then having to learn to say my lines less robotic once I had learnt it. With its similarities, the childrens book theme we've used for this project, was much easier but I felt as though I simply slipped into this pattern of emphasis, which helped me considerably during this short project.
I've also linked this greek work to the work I have recently done on 'The Far Side Of The Moor' which was our radio show. My character was extremely well spoken, but even more so, her diction had to be really quite perfect. I found this more of a challenge than I had expected, as I was so sure that I spoke well. But this is something that became just as important during this greek project. The text doesn't make an awful lot of sense, I have a brief knowledge as to what the text is about but not inside out; so I figured, if I don't know the audience will have even less of a chance of understanding. So clarity in what I say is so important, and especially because this project is aimed at the audience being children, being clear in what I was saying meant that they could at least hear clearly the words I say, whether or not they understand it.
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