Medea – Session Two

Session Two

Friday's session began in University House (Starbucks is a blessing) with a trip to the Learning Grid. This was a great place to start as we were able to throw around some ideas about how we wanted to approach the task of presenting our interpretation of Medea.

Again we decided that we wanted to use the children as a main focus throughout our presentation and we decided to look at the issue of why Medea did what she did…the illogical logic of her actions. Frankie came up with the idea of getting the audience involved by using a courtroom situation, whereby the audience decided whether Medea's actions were justifiable at the end of the presentation, in order to see whether they sympathised with the character as we did. However, we decided this was perhaps a little cliched, although we kept in mind the idea of changing the audience's initial views and prejudices towards Medea's actions.

Jack had been working on a dada poem taken from the text which worked well and fitted in with the theme of the illogical that we were focusing on. We decided to perhaps make it more relevant by constructing dada poems based on certain key moments in the text or centered around specific emotions which swayed Medea in her actions e.g. betrayal and oppression. As a group, we came up with a list of words describing our thoughts on the text which we decided to use later on. These words were;

Socio-political sacrifice
Justified
Theatrical
Betrayed
Avenged
Desperate
Wronged
Over the top
Alone
Depressed
Financial gain
Helpless
Oppressed
Propaganda

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We then returned to the studio where Gethin and Julia presented a series of warm-up exercises which were all beneficial in terms of getting us ready to share ideas, although maybe next time we could start with some exercises which would enable us to focus a little more as a group like the glass exercise Hugh used near the end of the session. Therefore we could start the session with a group focus, rather than all having individual aims and thoughts, as pointed out by Hugh.

Hugh also informed us about our fantastic £175 budget!! With this money we can look into using sets, costumes, media, props, rostra and so much more! This exciting news provoked more ideas from the group…

SET IDEAS

• Boxes at the back of the stage were suggested by Charlotte, holding women / chorus members / the children – showing oppression or showing the children as a constant reminder of our focus


• Illogical set design – contrasting with subtle costumes


• Black and white chessboard ideas / black and white presenting the illogical / logical debate once more and also representing how the characters are used as pawns, especially the children


• Using the lighting catwalk in numerous ways

1. Having the children / representations of the children hung from the catwalk so the audience always feel their prescence and as a reminder of their death
2. Exploring the concept of all the characters being puppets controlled by the Gods, therefore having strings coming down from the catwalk to show this more explicitly and have movement choreographed to support this idea

PERFORMANCE IDEAS

• Dada inspired poems / songs – expanding on the theme of the illogical


• Working backwards from the killing of the children which occurs at the end of the text originally and then ending again with the killing of the children – therefore we can attempt to sway the audience's views on the event by showing them the key moments which led to Medea's decision and by showing them the killing twice, we can see if their view is altered when they see it the second time


• Greek ritual – Annisa led us through a Greek ritual / dance exercise which involved rhythmic movement, leading up to the killing of an individual and ending in a burial ceremony. I felt the movement, chanting and focus we obtained (in the end!) all worked very effectively and would be great addition to our performance. Not only because it has classical Greek connotations but also because it would be a highly stylised, choreographed way in which we could show the killing without trying to be naturalistic – I think it is far more powerful to show it in a representative way


• Use of song and contemporary music combined with choreography


• Alternative endings – e.g. jason killing the children, medea killing jason, the children killing their parents…would alternative endings provoke similar or different reactions from an audience? would they seem as illogical?


• Looking at the psychological aspects of Medea's actions

OTHER IDEAS

• Use of projection / media of some sort


• Back-lit screens used to create silhouettes

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We ended the session by deciding what to focus on until the next session. The decision was made to look at taking the text in reverse and deciding what should come after the killing of the children in the sequence. Some people, (myself included) wanted to look at key moments within the text that made Medea decide to kill her children, for example the moment where Jason betrays her, when she is told she is to be exiled and so on. Other people wanted to look at the key words we had written down earlier on and pick out parts of the text that supported these words and therefore show the emotions rather than the moments which swayed Medea. The groups were pretty evenly split so we decided to meet in these groups within the week and come up with some ideas for our next meeting on Thursday. I think that with some focus, our presentation will be successful and an interesting exploration into the deeper issues within Medea and how an audience is affected by these issues.

: 21 Feb 2005 21:21 |  Tags: Aspects Of Practise Medea |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem