Theatre
tradition you will be investigating: Ancient Greek Theater (Tragedy)
Conventions/elements
specific to this tradition:
-
Chorus
- Choragus
- No women actors allowed
- Fatalism
- Tragic ending
- Some divine element
- Masks
- Traditionally three
actors
-
Traditional structure:
· Prologue
· Parados (Strophe /
Antistrophe)
· First Episode
· First Stasimon (Strophe /
Antistrophe)
· Second Episode
· Second Stasimon (Strophe /
Antistrophe)
· Third Episode
· Third Stasimon (Strophe /
Antistrophe)
· Fourth Episode
· Forth Stasimon (Strophe /
Antistrophe)
·
Exodus
Play
text you’ll be using from this tradition:
Title: Trojan
Women
Author: Euripides
Brief synopsis of the play:
“Euripides' play follows the fates of the women of Troy after their city
has been sacked, their husbands killed, and as their remaining families are
about to be taken away as slaves. The Greek herald
Talthybius arrives to tell the dethroned queen Hecabe what will befall her and
her children. Hecabe will be taken away with the Greek general Odysseus, and
her daughter Cassandra is slated to become the conquering general Agamemnon's
concubine. Cassandra, who has been driven partially mad due to a curse by which
she can see the future but will never be believed when she warns others, is
morbidly delighted by this news: she sees that when they arrive in Argos, her
new master's embittered wife Clytemnestra will kill both her and her new
master. However, because of the curse, no one understands this response, and
Cassandra is carried off.
The widowed princess Andromache arrives, and Hecabe learns from her that
her youngest daughter, Polyxena, has been killed as a sacrifice at the tomb of
the Greek warrior Achilles.
Andromache's lot is to be the concubine of Achilles' son Neoptolemus, but
the worst news yet for the royal family is that her young son, Astyanax, has
been condemned to die. The Greek leaders are afraid that the boy will grow up
to avenge his father Hector, and rather than take this chance, they plan to
throw him off the walls of Troy to his death.
Helen, though not one of the Trojan women, is supposed to suffer greatly as
well: Menelaus arrives to take her back to Greece with him where a death
sentence awaits her. Helen begs her husband to spare her life and he remains
resolved, at least through their departure, but the audience is led to believe
that in the end, the woman's legendary beauty will win her a reprieve.
In the end, Talthybius returns, carrying
with him the body of little Astyanax on Hector's shield. Andromache's wish
had been to bury her child herself, performing the proper rituals according to
Trojan ways, but her ship had already departed. Talthybius, taking some pity on
the Trojan women, prepares the body for burial himself and helps them to inter
him before Hecabe is finally taken off with Odysseus.”
Aspects of the play for possible study:
-
Acting (style, etc.)
-
Staging (lights, props, set, etc.)
-
Costumes
-
Relevance to modern times?
-
Symbolism
Aspect you will focus on:
-
The acting (style, etc.)
-
(During Andromache’s litany
when she says farewell to Astyanax, her only son, the child who is going to be
thrown off a cliff – and
there is nothing she can do)
Research necessary:
« Euripides' play The Trojan Women, is not
so much a tragic story as a portrayal of a tragic situation whereby Euripides
dramatizes the post war conditions of these women of Troy, the spoils of war.
The play
was produced in 415 BCE shortly after the capture of Melos by the Athenians. We may wonder at Euripides' purpose
for writing this play. One might speculate on how such a play might be received
by Athenian audiences in the wake of the brutal colonization of Melos. Paul
Roche, in the Signet Classic Euripides: Ten Plays suggests that
Euripides "wrote The Trojan Women as a prophecy of tragedy to shock
Athens to her senses" (359). A brief look at the playwright may give us a
clue about Euripides' intentions. »
« Themes:
The Horror of War: The central theme of the play is the horror of
war. Troy is in ruins. Corpses lie about the battlefield. Trojan women young
and old huddle together as they lament the loss of husbands and children and
shudder at the thought of becoming slaves in a land across the sea. Hecuba,
once a great queen, is to become a lowly servant in the house of the Greek
warrior Odysseus. The rape victim Cassandra, a prophetess of Apollo, is to
become the property of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek armies.
One of the most
painful moments in the play is the death of Little Astyanax—the son of the dead
Trojan leader, Hector, and his wife, Andromache. The Greeks throw him from the
walls of Troy in the belief that he would have sought vengeance as an adult.
Dread:
The captive Trojan women dread the future. All they know for certain is that
ships will carry them across the sea to a strange country, a different culture,
unfamiliar faces, and a degrading way of life. There will be no family members
to comfort them, no pay for the work they do.
Hope: Andromache says she
would be better off dead. But Hecuba says that where there is life there is
hope for a better tomorrow. Having lived long enough to know that situations
change, she says, “Fortune, like a madman in her moods, springs towards this
man, then towards that; and none ever experiences the same unchanging luck.”
Revenge:
Athena turns against the Greeks after Aias the Less rapes Cassandra in Athena's
temple. To gain revenge, Athena persuades Poseidon to help her sabotage the Greek
ships. Cassandra herself later speaks of retribution when she says, "I
will slay [Agamemnon] and lay waste his home to avenge my father's and my
bretheren's death." Meanwhile, the Greek king Menelaus plans to kill
Helen, his wife, for having run off before the war with Paris, a prince of
Troy. "My purpose is . . . to carry her to Hellas in my seaborne ship, and
then surrender her to death, a recompense to all whose friends were slain in
Ilium." The Trojan women agree with his decision to kill her, for they
regard her as the source of all their troubles. »
“Greek Theater: Structure
Definition
and Background
The Greek theater was an open-air stone structure with
tiered seating, a stage, and a ground-level orchestra. It was an outgrowth of
festivals honoring the god Dionysus. In these festivals, called Dionysia,
the Greeks danced and sang hymns called dithyrambs that sometimes told stories.
One day, Thespis, a choral director in Athens, used spoken words, or dialogue,
to accompany the singing and dancing in imitation of poets who had done so
before. Soon, the dialogues of Thespis became plays, and he began staging them
in a theater.
"A contest of plays in 535 [B.C.] arose when
Pisistratus, the ‘tyrant' whom the common people of Athens invested with power,
brought a rustic festival into the city [Athens]," drama critic John
Gassner writes in Masters of Drama. Such contests became regular features of the
festivals, and the theaters in which they were held were specially built to
accommodate them.
·
Major Sections of the Theater (1) A tiered, horshoe-shaped seating area called a
theatron.
The theatron faced the east to allow the audience to view plays—usually staged
later in the day—without squinting.
·
(2) A stage called a proscenium. The staged faced the west to
allow the midday sun to illuminate the faces of the actors.
·
(3) An orchestra in front of the proscenium to
accommodate the chorus.
Other
Theater Sections:
·
Skene: Building behind the stage.
First used as a dressing area for actors (and sometimes an entrance or exit
area for actors), the skene eventually became a background showing appropriate
scenery.
·
Paraskenia: Extensions or annexes on the
sides of the skene.
·
Parados: Passage on the left or right
through which the chorus entered the orchestra.
·
Thymele: Altar in the center of the
orchestra used to make sacrifices to Dionysus.
·
Machine: Armlike device on the skene
that could lower a "god" onto the stage from the heavens. »
“Setting:
The action takes place before the walls of Troy, an
ancient city near the western coast of present-day Turkey. The play begins at
dawn on a day after Greek armies won the Trojan War. Troy is in ruins. Corpses
lie unburied on the battlefield in front of the city. Trojan women—including
Hecuba, the queen of Troy—congregate outside the walls of the city in deep
despair. They are to become slaves of the victorious Greeks.
Mythological Background:
In the ancient Mediterranean world of the second
millennium BC, feminine beauty reaches its zenith in Helen, wife of Menelaus,
the king of the Grecian state of Sparta. Her wondrous face and body are without
flaw. She is perfect. Even the goddess of love, Aphrodite, admires her. One
day, Aphrodite competes with other goddesses in a beauty contest in which the
winner is to receive a golden apple. The judge is a young Trojan named Paris.
Aphrodite tells him that if he selects her she will award him the most
ravishing woman in the world. After Paris chooses Aphrodite, she tells him
about Helen, who lives in Greece with her husband, Menelaus, the king of
Sparta. Forthwith, Paris goes to Greece, woos Helen, and absconds with her to
Troy, a walled city in Asia Minor (in present-day Turkey).
The elopement of Helen and Paris is an affront to all
the Greeks. How dare an upstart Trojan invade their land! How dare he steal the
wife of one of their kings! Which Greek family would be next to fall victim to
a Trojan machination? Infuriated, King Menelaus and his brother, Agamemnon,
king of the state of Mycenae, assemble a mighty army of brother Greeks who
include the finest warriors in the land. Together, they cross the sea in one
thousand ships to make war against Troy and win back their pride—and Helen.
After years of fighting, one of the Greek leaders—Odysseus,
the king of Ithaca—devises a plan to end the war. He suggests that the Greeks
construct a great wooden horse as a weapon of war. A Greek named Epeus
supervises its construction. Afterward, a Greek with a persuasive tongue
deceives the Trojans into believing that their foes have wearied of the war and
that the giant horse, which stands at the gates of Troy, is a parting gift.
Seeing no Greeks on the battlefield, the Trojans move the horse into the city.
At night, Greek soldiers hiding inside the belly of the horse drop down and
open the gates of the city for Greek armies hiding outside. The Greeks pour
into the city and overwhelm the Trojans, wreaking slaughter and destruction and
taking women as captives. Euripides tells the story of these captives as he
imagines it.
Historical Background:
Euripides wrote The Trojan Women a short time
after an army from Athens, Greece, attacked Melos, an island in the Aegean Sea,
to force its inhabitants to become members of an alliance against the Greek
city state of Sparta. The Athenians also demanded tribute. After the island
residents refused to yield to the Athenian demands, the Athenians overran the
city, killing male defenders who stood their ground and capturing women and
children to serve as slaves. It is possible that Euripides wrote The Trojan
Women to protest the incursion against Melos.”
-
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides9/TrojanWomen.html
« The Trojan Women in Modern
Times
Ø
Greek director Michael Cacoyannis used Euripides' script as
the basis for his 1971 film The Trojan Women. The movie starred American
actress Katharine
Hepburn as Hecuba, British actors Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Blessed as
Andromache and Tathybius, French-Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold as
Cassandra, Greek actress Irene Papas as Helen, and Patrick Magee, an actor born
in Northern Ireland as Menelaus.
Ø
Another movie based on the Euripides play came out in
2004. The film was directed by Brad Mays.
Ø
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a version that remains largely
faithful to the original text. It adds veiled references to European
imperialism in Asia and minor emphasis on common existentialist themes.”
Bibliography
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment