Antigone Evaluation

 I found the devising process of this piece extremely challenging and difficult, yet I was proud of what came out of it. I thought that our piece included the majority of aspects and view points on the issue that we wanted to present as well as communicating all the right things. I was happy in that Antigone was shown as a women who held a lot of power and fight, I think it can sometimes become very easier to portray them as people who are quite weak at the mercy of oppression but still try anyway. I don't agree with this portrayal or feel it lives up to the message of the play, Antigone is someone who fought all the way until she died without any help or advice, she did it single mindedly no matter what anyone else said. I thought it was also important to highlight the issues around Creon and the pressures that went on him too do with gender roles as well. I thought the way in which we present this was clear and interesting, as these ideas were vocalised through Creon's throne it made me think of the connotations off the thing that gives him power is also the thing that is his greatest blind spot and weakness. In terms of its effect on the audience, one of the comments on the post it notes was 'Think about women and Independence', what this person has written is evidence that our piece had a lasting impact on at lest one audience member. Therefore if it could get through to that one person then I see no other reason why others wouldn't have been effected by it. The comment also stated that they would think about 'women and INDEPENDENCE', it would have been very possible for the audience to just think that our piece was about women and that was it but the fact that this person has identified the topic of women independence out of our piece I think shows that we communicated the message we were intending too.

To make our work brechtian we used a number of devises. such as multi-rolling, a non-linear structure and sound scape. The multi rolling was used in the characters of Creon and Antigone where Eric played Antigone before switching to Creon where I then became Antigone. The multi-rolling was also enhanced by Eric playing a women as this made the character even more disconnected with reality because we presented a piece about the rise of women, where the rising women was played by a man to begin with. The sound scape was another devise that we used. A sound scape is not something that's in common use within everyday life, therefore it effectively allows there to be distance between the piece and its connection to our real world. A sound scape is also a very common devise in theatre, therefore it enables us to remind the audience that this is not a slice of life but a theatre show that is not trying to be anything else in any way, shape or form. It lets them know that we as the actors know it isn't real and that were not trying to present a reality, so they can then enjoy the show without becoming too emotionally involved. Another brechtian technique we used successfully was creating objects out of our bodies. There were too cases in which we did this, when we creating Creon's throne and when Frankie and Joanna became Eric's gavel for the court set up. This technique was used sparingly on only two occasions, and so it had a larger impact of feeling out of place in reality as the audience didn't have a chance to get used to these features in the piece. However, as it was a political piece I think its important for the distancing of the audience to not hinder the political message or how they carry that on into their own lives. That's why I thought it was vital to include the section at the end where we speak directly to the audience about activists and cases that directly relate to our political message, these cases being real, factual account enables to bring the concepts and ideas presented in our piece in reality but not the theatrical experience its self and so still keeping the emotional distance the brechtian techniques have created.

In terms of our actual performance on the night, I thought for the majority it was a success. The piece flowed from one section to the other continuously, without the plot line getting lost too much thanks to Eric's summary at the start. There was also a huge response afterwards about how Eric's character of Creon was on that the audience either felt scared by or hated, we considered this an achievement as the purpose of that character was not to be pleasing to an audience but to be harsh and cold with the ways in which they see it and the issues around the character, the character of Creon almost possessed a shock factor. However, the one thing our piece lacked was the use of any gestus. Although we used a lot of brechtian techiques our piece didn't live up to a brechtian style in the sense that it wasn't satirical in its use of humour or characters. Brecht's plays were always very satirical in mocking the government or upper class in how they were portrayed or their involvement in the story as well as how they were played by the actors, there was none of this in our piece. If we were to too it again I would suggest looking into how we could alter our characters, specifically Creon, so they are portrayed in a much more exaggerated way to criticise and expose their actions in the context of womens rights. By doing this our piece may have had more off an effect as the characters would have become more engrained in the audiences minds as they would be full of really heightened emotions that represent their characters. Another thing I thought we could have improved on was just pushing ourselves more in terms of our devising. Our piece was the shortest out of all the pieces, mainly because we just couldn't find the time or headspace to carry on devising material as a lot of our work came together very last minute. Although I was proud of the work we created I think that if we had pushed ourselves to produce just a bit more material our piece would have been that much more effective in the political ideas and also in the audiences understanding of what we were trying to communicate.

Overall I have enjoyed working on political theatre because your able to unlock a lot of that passion you

have about all these issues and put that into your work, enabling you to engage to a much larger extent with the work your creating. However, problems do arise when working in a group as you will all have equally as passionate ideas and responses to the topic yet not all of them with match up completely, therefore you have to be able to sit down and talk about the different takes in the issue you want to present. I also felt that with political theatre there is a much larger danger zone, even if you may have the right ideas and opinions about something ti can be hard to show that in your work with possibly the work message coming out of that despite your original intentions.

Further Development, Antigone #4

In our next rehearsal we looked at devising more material for our piece and on developing what we

had already. The main comments we got given on what we already had was that we could push the Creon says scene so much further, starting off with something quite innocent and then it slowly tipping into a more darker area. Taking this feedback on we made it so that we begin by the four off us running around laughing and playing it, as Eric introduces it as a game of Creon says almost like you were in a circus. We then go through a series of lighthearted things, such as run around or clap your hands. Its starts to tip slightly when the game becomes to run around like a chicken and then even more so when it becomes to wash the floor. We also added in the idea of the things that Creon doesn't say being things like 'Be independent' or 'Stand up for your rights', because its said out loud it brings awareness to that but because Creon didn't say it, we can't do it. It then becomes even more dark and twisted when we are told to strangle each other.

After this we then felt it was important to bring the actual scene that we were devising from into our piece. This was a court scene from Antigone where she stands up for her right to bury her brother. To begin with we thought about taking some of our original ideas about creating a trial scene within a mafia organisation, with the guards creating some sort of comic dumb an dumber relationship. However, after trying it out we came to realize that this idea was never going to work. In my opinion the scene just had nothing to offer, this was partly due to that fact we had discarded the script and hadn't written down any lines off our own, and therefore all the dialogue was improvised. This didn't create a successful scene as it meant it had no structure (and so no beginning or end), or any sense or drama or climax, the whole scene seemed to juts float in between things with nothing of any real concrete work or pace. The best way to make sure the scene had structure was to take lines from the script. The line we picked out was 'Your makeshift laws are not equal to those of the gods', this was to be said by Antigone. From this we devised a sort of soundscape out of the lines and each characters intentions. Ismene was to repeat the phrase 'I obey the law' over and over again while holding Antigone back because this was what her character represented, she would rather conform than get into trouble. The two guards were then to alternate between 'Law, law law' and 'and order'. The whole soundscape was to build up until Creon gave a sign by slamming down a chair, in which Antigone manages to break from her sister grip and rise to stand on the block where she then repeats her line. At this point the scene needed to come to a conclusion, and so we took the end result of the play where Antigone hangs herself. For this we decided it would tie in nicely to bring back the idea of Creon says, ie 'Creon says hang yourself'. As the person playing Antigone, I found that scene effected me emotional to quite a large extent, therefore I feel it must have had a large effect on the audience as well. To watch someone commit suicide by force of what Creon says I found quite harrowing and suspenseful as there was a lot of resisting and will to play out in the spaces between the hanging and being told to hang.

The piece was then ended with a lit bit of information about the issues of women and how that relates into today, this was t provoke the audience to take what they have seen in their own lives. We talked about how in 440 bc it was Antigone, in 2012 we had Malala and how recently a women was fired for refusing to wear high heels to work, ending with 'Whos next'. 

Development, Antigone #3

After moving on from our original ideas, we decided to start fresh looking into more artistic and
representation ways of taking the script and its political message and then putting it into a piece. I think what made it difficult for us was that we didn't broaden our thinking in how we could use the script, instead we thought we had to have the piece as the court scene and take the majority of lines. Once we all decided that we could create something completely new from the script our piece started to move in a better direction. We all agreed that our piece was lacking the political themes and therefore we needed to hone into a theme we could explore in our piece. This theme we decided was going to be the strength of women, and how they fight high powers like Creon.

Through discussion and brainstorming we decided to begin our piece with Antigone talking about what she was standing for and why she believed in it, ie the burying of her brother against the kings will. We felt that it was necessary to outline the actual plot of Antigone at the beginning so we then have the freedom to move through some more abstract and representative ideas without the audience becoming confused or lost. To then establish the ideas that the characters had on what Antigone stood for, we had the rest of us standing around 'Antigone', slowly moving in and laughing. When we all got close enough we grabbed her to stop her speech and took her down off the block she was standing on, saying the line 'You want to bury your brother. Your a women, you stupid girl'. We then wanted to talk a little bit about the themes surrounding Creon. For the majority of the play a lot of the harsh decisions Creon makes are only because he feels can't go back on his word as then he would be taken for a weak leader, even though he knows that what he is doing is wrong. We decided to do this by creating a throne for Eric to sit on with our bodies, with the throne voicing the thought/s that are telling Creon that hes weak and need to be more of a man. To make that transition smooth we decided for Eric, the only boy in the group, to be both Antigone and Creon. This was so we could then carry him off the block and then place him down onto Joanna's back, where he then became Creon. Although it was done for a smooth transition I kind of liked the connotations of it, the irony within 4 girls saying 'Your a women' to the only boy there I found interesting and playful to present on stage as the dynamics where turned on there heads.

After this we went back to focus on the idea of the rise of women, where we stumbled upon the idea of using Simon Says as a platform but turning it into Creon says instead. This worked really well as we were taking a very light and fun game for children and turning into something quite dark, with Eric saying things like 'Creon says, wash the floor', 'Creon says, strangle each other to death'. It was very effective, partly because the way Eric played Creon was so scary, but also because it demonstrated the politics of our piece extremely well. A moment in that piece that I thought was the most effective was when while we were washing the floor, Eric uses out backs to walk across as if we were stepping stones. The physicalization of the concepts around women being treated like dirt and given no credit or value was powerful in that moment, especial the visual side of it.

Devising of Antigone #2

To begin with we played with the idea of setting our scene in the mafia, having Creon as the mafia

boss instead of the king. We thought this would be a good way to incorporate comedy, involving the two stereotypical characters of the dumb and dumber sidekicks to the boss. These two characters would great a lot of physical comedy as well as comedy through speech, most of it stemming from the characters need and fight to please Creon. We decided to run with this idea for a little while, building on how Ismene could enter in pretending to be a male lawyer in defense of Antigone, before revealing herself to be Antigone's sister and taking the blame. The comedy and slapstick we created would have enabled us to distance the audience emotionally from the piece as these devices are a lot less hard hitting and therefore don't invoke as big as an emotional response or involvement from the audience. We also looked at multi-rolling, but at this point the comedy element was all we hard.  Although these ideas may have worked to produce something good, we weren't managing to get anywhere with them. The comedic ideas took the focus so we weren't actually thinking about the politics of the scene or the dynamics between characters, as well as how we could take the basis of the scene and create something entirely new and abstract that was a representation of these themes. Therefore, as we started to fall behind in the development of our ideas, we moved on.

Exploring Political Plays

In today's lesson we looked at exploring various political plays by Brecht. The first was Mother Courage, from which we got a scene to devise a piece out of. The first brechtian devise we used was placards, these were different for each other us but said things like 'I may be a solider but I can still have compassion'. This structure of 'I may be..but I can still' was present in each placard. We also decided to incorporate the two songs from the scene, the first was to be said normally by Emily and then the second one we turned into a small tune that was to be sung in the background. Our piece started off with the daughter banging on 'pots' and things to alert the town as she then precedes to get shot down by two guards, all the while the tune of the song we devised is being sung underneath without the words. The guards voice the fact that they are actually quite distraught about having shot a child and so freeze in the corner as the sing their song quietly until the end of the piece. As they sing the next part of the scene is played. I thought the use of singing and music would have been very effective if it wasn't for the fact that we lost the melody at the start and so therefore it didn't quite work. What I liked about this little piece was that we tried to show the different sides to the characters in the play, this was done both with the placards and also the verbal dialogue. For example the solider placard was trying to demonstrate that even though they are 'soldiers' they don't have to always live up to that stereotype and maybe they do feel remorse and compassion for the acts they commit just as the two soldiers did in our piece.

Next we looked at The Caucasian Chalk Circle and the gestus of the characters in that scene. The two main stereotypical characters were the characters of the high status, powerful governess and the low status, poor servants in the palace. Gestus is where you build your character from the inside out, starting with the physical aspects and finishing with the emotional ones. The gestus of the poorer servants had lower levels and their physicality caved in more so they looked weaker and more frail, where as the governess's physicality went out demonstrating a power over the others, she took large strides that were strong and firm as she had the upper hand. The servants, however moved slowly as if they were in fear of the governess and of putting a foot out of line. As well as gestus we also looked at 'not...but'. Not but is a similar device to a freeze frame, its used to tell the audience what the character is not, before preceding to expand on what they are instead. For example, the governess is NOT a bad mother, BUT she did put her wealth and money before the care of her child. Its a good device to use in order to allow the audience a deeper insight into that character and the conflicts within their character. 

Political Protests Evaluation

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I thought our political protest was extremely effective and had a significant impact on those who participated in or saw the protest. The fact that our protest was mainly audience participation meant that already it was going to have a direct effect on those people as they were in the midst of the action. The game of grandmothers footsteps immediately drew the audience in and thereby effected them emotional. In the protest I found that different people had very different responses to playing the game; some were very enthusiastic and eager to reach grandmother, others were more nervous and anxious as to what might happen, and a small percentage just refused to play at all. Either why by directly asking them if they wanted to play it forced them to have an emotional response and engage with the possibility of playing grandmothers footsteps with these paint covered people who have 'patients' written on their faces. By having an emotional engagement right from the start, it means that the effect of the restraining will be furthered because your playing with their current emotional response and conceptions as to what the protest is about.

However, the game of grandmothers footsteps came with both pros and cons. Aside from the fact it was a great layer to our protest, it caused problems with the controlling of the audience and getting them to go where you want to. Each time we played grandmothers footsteps there was always one person who ran forward at an immense speed at an attempt to win they game. Although this was great as it meant they were getting into it, it caused a serious problem for us as our protest can only happen via the three patients getting to grandmothers first. This couldn't happen if someone else got there first. We also needed a certain amount of space around the doctors so they would be able to put us down into a restraint, this became repeatedly difficult when audience members got to close to the three doctors. As a group we had actually thought about the issue of accidentally restraining a random person or them getting in the way of our performance and we had devised what we thought was a suitable method of preventing this. This, however, proved to be useless and brought the quality of the protest down. The plan was that we would draw an end line just behind the doctors and tell the audience to 'wait there', we would then precede to move towards the doctors and get restrained. The first problem we encountered was that we were too quick in moving towards the doctors, this meant that we had got too far by the time we were supposed to tell them to wait and therefore we couldn't do it in the time frame. It also disrupted the flow of the game and meant that the audience was now aware that something was going to happening, resulting in the restraining having less of an impact. As the protest went on we started to work out a system where those who got to far forward would be 'out' and have to go back to the start, even if they weren't technically out. This system was a lot more efficient and enabled us to regain control over our audiences, however it only came into our piece half way through. Therefore we should have tested out our original method so we had control over the audience right from the start of the protest.


The painting of the inappropriate restraints tally chart was also something that I thought was extremely successful. It was effective for two reasons. Firstly, it outlined what our protest was about and the take we had on it. After each restraint the doctors would go over to dip their hands into the bucket of black paint, using this to draw a line on the tally chart. It made it clear that it was about restraint and that that was what the doctors were doing, as it would be very easy to misinterpret our physicalization of the face-down restraint. It also showed that as a collect we felt that the use of this was unnecessary and it was not the promotion of any of these practices, this was outlined by the word 'inappropriate'. The second way it was effective was in a visual sense. The image of these three people in white lab coats, dipping their hands into this black paint only to use it to smudge another count onto the tally chart, I feel was very powerful. The contrast that came between the white of the lab coats and the black of the paint was strong and eye-catching. The paint was seemingly representational of how messy and blurred the practice of face-down restraint can be, as it is also a contrast to the environment off a medical building where everything is pristine, sterilized, orderly and neat (unlike the scrawling of the tally chart). Therefore demonstrating how face-down restraint goes against what a hospital should be like.

Further Development and Refinement, Political Protests #5

The next time we met we looked at how we were going to make the piece more physically interesting and dynamic.We started by agreeing that we had to devise a more abstract and artistic way of going into the restraint, this would make it more effective visually and therefore have more of an impact. The devising of this short sequence came out of simple trial and error. We would play around with various movements until we found one that worked. We ended up with a short sequence where the patients would place a hand on the doctors shoulders as the end of grandmothers footsteps, the doctors then proceed to grab that hand and pull it forward, whilst moving their other arm around the patients back so they can turn round and both the doctor and patient lean back before going straight down into a restraint. It was fluid and fast, allowing it to have the maximum impact as it happens very quickly out of nowhere. After that came the problem of how the patients were coming to move when playing grandmothers footsteps, as at that moment we were just walking forward. We moved through several ideas, looking at choreographing a piece of physical theatre that all three of us would use to move or having a body part that we led with. These ideas were good but it still wasn't quite at the place to needed to be. Until Roseby came up with the idea that we incorporate the audience into the game, ie we ask them to play grandmothers footsteps. This was a brilliant idea as it meant the restraining would be even more effective as it would happen in the midst of all these people who think were just playing a simple game. We also agreed that to outline the themes and ideas of the protest we would write 'patient' on our faces, the ones who were the patients, and then 'The Mental Health System' on the back of the doctors coats the doctors are going to be wearing. 'The mental health system' was chosen specifically so it was clear that it could be any mental health hospitals, not just the nhs in this country, it is a flaw within all practices.  

To make it more hard hitting we agreed the patients would saying things like 'Stop', 'No' and 'I cant breathe'. These phrases were good as they didn't hint towards them having any kind of fit, thus rising to the stereotype of people being 'mad' in these hospitals. After they yelled 'I cant let go of you until you calm down' we knew there had to be some outlining or facts about what it was about. We discussed a few possibilities and came up with the phrase 'FACE DOWN RESTRAINT IS A DANGEROUS PRACTICE' said by the patients after they have sat up and turned to face the doctors, with the reply of 'YOU WERE BEING A THREAT' or 'ITS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD' leading them to get up and return to the start line.