Characterisation
We looked carefully through the text to see what we could find out about the characters of Jason and Medea: facts about them, what they say about themselves and what others say about them. There was a lot of information about Medea and Jason’s relationship prior to the action, including the vital fact that Medea saved Jason’s life – it would have been embarrassing for a man of the time to owe his life to a woman. We learnt that Medea also betrayed her family and sacrificed everything for Jason, which is what made him leaving even more devastating for her. I noticed that a lot of characters talk about Medea being clever, something she herself contradicts. However, from her detailed plan to kill the princess and her expert lying when she pretends to submit to Creon and then Jason, the audience can see that she is by far the cleverest character in the play. Jason, on the other hand, is not as clever as he thinks he is. He has an inflated sense of his own self-importance, boasting about how wise and brave he is, and belittling Medea, even calling her “an idiot” at one point.
Having looked at the characters, we performed scenes involving Jason and Medea. George and I chose to work on the scene where Jason tries to convince Medea that his marriage is the right thing for her and their children. I thought that Medea should be confident physically, making decisive, controlled movements. I also thought that in this scene in particular, Medea’s voice had to be strong to show her defiance. When we started rehearsing, Jason was angry, but as we went on he became more patronising. This had the unintended effect of making me as Medea more frustrated, losing the control of the scene and giving Jason the upper hand. Interestingly, when we thought about the characters’ objectives and found an action to go with that, we found they had similar aims, and our scene became more confrontational. When another pair performed the scene where Medea pretends to reconcile herself to Jason, they brought out different aspects of the characters. Medea was softer, and possibly more troubled, and Jason was more caring, seeming to genuinely look forward to his sons’ future. I thought this portrayal would make the audience more ambivalent about whether Medea is justified in her revenge.
Staging
We all developed our own design concept for Medea, and the range of different ideas showed how versatile the play is. I think this is because it would be difficult to stage it in the original Greek way because elements such as the masks are unfamiliar to a modern audience. Some common ideas were dressing Medea in red, to show her passion, and having other characters in duller colours so that she stood out. Many people also decided to use a plain, simple set, and also to set it in the round. This is close to the Greek tradition, which would give a sense of how the play would have originally been performed. However, I chose to completely remove the play from its original context.
I took the theme of passion, as I think that is what drives Medea, and based my design around that. I took the step of transporting the play to nineteenth century France, because I thought comparisons could be drawn between the treatment of women in Greek and Victorian societies. I would use a traditional proscenium arch stage, and make it look like the stage of a run-down theatre, cluttered with old props and set-pieces, giving a feeling of claustrophobia. Medea’s costume would be colourful and bohemian, showing how she is an outsider. This would contrast with Jason, dressed as a very proper gentleman to show how he is concerned with social status. The chorus would be a group of actors, Medea’s friends, as the chorus has to be identified with Medea. The lighting would be soft, to look like the gas-lighting used at the time. For sound, I would have instruments onstage with the other props, to be played by the chorus. I would keep recorded sound to a minimum, as I would want the play to feel as alive and in the moment as possible to convey the passion of Medea’s actions.
Dramatic Elements
The use of a chorus is a major dramatic element in the play. The chorus was a standard feature of Ancient Greek theatre, used to comment on and explain the action. Before we even looked at the play, we looked at how to perform as a chorus using a monologue from the naturalistic play Miss Julie. We found that we could achieve some interesting effects working altogether as a group. Some lines were said by everyone, some by only a few people and some by lone voices, varying the texture of the sound. Having the number of voices increasing within one line also added impact. Moving together also added emphasis and focus to certain points. We used all these techniques when we performed scenes with the chorus from the play, and when doing the scene described in the next section we found that the chorus repeating words illustrated how certain thoughts were going round and round in Medea’s head.
Interpretation of Meaning
Our class split into two groups to perform the scene where Medea kills her children. The most striking difference was the interpretation of Medea. I played Medea, and I portrayed her as being completely conflicted and confused, trying desperately to convince herself that she is doing the right thing. Our chorus was used as her conscience, shying away from her in horror at first and then berating her without any sympathy once she had killed the children. The other group interpreted the scene very differently, with Medea very cold and calculating, almost dehumanised, taking inspiration from the line “she’s made of stone.” This changed the whole feel of the scene – in our version, it was much easier to sympathise with Medea; the other version was potentially more unsettling as Medea was without remorse even though what she was doing was horrible.
Relevance to a Modern Audience
Although it was written in a very different society to ours, Medea still remains relevant. The trigger for the events of the play is Jason leaving Medea. We took this situation and put it into a modern context, improvising a scene where a man left his long-term girlfriend. We found that we repeated ourselves a lot, and it was difficult to think of what to say. By taking away the formal language and setting of the play, it made it easier to understand what the characters had gone through. It also showed how the essential themes of the play like relationships, passion and betrayal are universal and will always be relevant.
