Greek Tragedy Week 5

This week we worked on developing Electra 2's monologue where Electra is asking the mourning women for help; the mourning women were the journalists in disguise. We had previously blocked it, so this time we just had to polish it and redo some movements. As the chorus we used newspaper to hide our faces at the beggining and added in more actions using the prop. For example on the line when Electra says "I cannot pour out the oil, the wine, the milk, the honey" we all throw the newspaper in the air and watch it flatter on the floor after each line that she said. Another example is the line; "As he poured out his blood", we dive outwards onto the floor with the newspaper in our hands, this looks really good because we use our bodies as if we are the blood that poured out of Agamemnon. Showing a visual as well as an audio of what Electra's saying.

I link arms with the rest of the chorus in a straight line which quickly turns into a tangled circle where Electa is standing in the middle- this mirrors how Electra is gullible thinking she has lots of support from the women but really they don't want to help her and she has no one to ask except the Gods. In the next section where Electra has dialogue with us (the chorus) she follows each person that speaks to show that Electra is desperate for advice and information. I had lines in this scene and one of my lines was, "Evil for evil is Justice." And this is a key moment as this is the point were the chorus finally convinces Electra to do their bidding - killing her mother.

We also went over the chorus section again when Helen and Electra first meet just to see if we needed to adapt the chorus movements in that section in anyway. Me, Alicia, Paige and Joe also started setting and experimenting with the chorus doing some sort of action or gestures whilst Electra (Shelby) is doing her first monologue to try and show Electra's story.

We looked at creating a character of being journalist so we did our journalist poses, and we also looked at if you were a journalist how would you hold yourself and walk around the room? I thought that my character would be higher status for a journalist so I walked around the room with my head looking across my right shoulder but my hand covering my mouth. Although doing this makes me seem lower status behind my hand is always a mischievous grin. Portraying that although I may seem to be on your side and plotting with you I’m actually against you.

Overall this week I feel like I developed my individual character and understood her more. E.g. why she does most of things she does and why she does it that way. Hopefully creating a character that the audience connects to and understands.