Evaluation of our play version of Antigone.

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Evaluation

Before we began rehearsing our scenes, we set our intentions from what we wanted each character to achieve on stage.  In our set text of “Antigone,” my first reaction to the character of Creon was to play him, as this death-obsessed, loud, brutal tyrant but this I felt, would’ve made the character seem two-dimensional.  To create this extra edge of intimidation and emotional impact on behalf of Antigone, I chose to use measured speak in low tones for most of the scene so when I did raise my voice it would have a greater dramatic impact.  If I’d played Creon as the harsh tyrant, a lot of physical violence would’ve been used but we made sure we only did this when exasperation was shown in Creon’s speech.  When his sly, evil tones were obviously having hardly any effect on Antigone, at one point we had my character marching across the stage towards Antigone and grabbing him by the hair which also had a dramatic effect as this was the first time physical brutality was used.  A good indication that this drama had an effect on the audience was the reaction they gave during this dramatic scene as girls in the front row were cringing at the harshness of Antigone being thrown to the floor. (APPENDIX 7)

        My character in the devised piece, Terrence, was a complete contrast to the character of Creon, which helped to increase my personal enjoyment in participating in these scenes.  For the part of Terrence, I had to use my voice in a different way to portray a stereotypical, eccentric farmer with a carefree attitude and a loyal trust of his “father’s words of wisdom.”  My intention was to use an accent that the audience could associate with this type of character and find over the top and it was from this I decided upon a South Country accent.  In the devised piece, I also had to use contrasting mannerisms involving extreme and slightly crude facial expressions.  It was through this that I felt a lot of my character’s humour was portrayed.  Humour in the piece was also created as we’d created a serious situation but created three unlikely characters to break up this serious nature.  From an idea that would usually be straight forward, these three characters threw a spanner in the works and created an element of disruption.  There was a strict pattern at the start of the play, which explored and exploited this idea of speed dating, but this pattern was broken in the final scene that was the only scene to be set outside the speed-dating building.  We did this in order to show a change in mood and this was where most of the “teaching” took place (APPENDIX 8).  The idea of the teaching element to this piece was that we wanted a play the audience would find humourous yet contain a moral about society which, in this case, we showed as corrupt.  The idea of speed dating shows desperation amongst society and by our final scene, we wanted to show that superficial methods to find love should not be used and good things came to those who wait.  Despite the scheme purposely set out to seek love, the two male characters found their chosen partners in a natural social environment afterwards.  

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        I believe that both plays were successful as you could tell from the audience’s reaction they were being taken to the full extent of their emotions, witnessing humour in the devised piece and shock horror in Antigone and this contrast helped to create the success of each.  In order to aid our desired reaction, we used a thrust stage.  I felt this was successful as I noticed how some members of the audience winced and cringed during moments of the play and the thrust stage helped hugely in trying to provoke this reaction, for example when I threw Antigone to ...

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