Theatrical grumbles

[featherynscale]

I finally got to the point the other day at which I decided what it is that I don't like about Agamemnon (the text itself - there are a number of things I don't like about the production). The first thing is the chorus. In the first "act", the chorus serve as omniscient narrators, they do the objective exposition thing, and what they say about the story is generally reliable. In the second half though, they make a transition from narrators to characters - they lose that omniscience and reliability and become simply a collection of old men from Argos, who have no more wisdom or insight than anybody else. They blame Helen for the destruction of Troy, they hem and haw over the murder of Agamemnon, they mock Aegisthus but have no power to really defy him.
I will admit to not having read the play before I started, so this effect is as pronounced in me as it will be in our audience, who presumably are not terribly familiar with the story - I had expectations that all the chorus' lines would be "true" in the context of the story, but they're not.
And I don't know a whole lot about Greek theatre - this may be the way that things normally happen, maybe it's just that my expectations about point of view are not applicable to this form of drama.
The other thing I don't like about the show is that all of the back exposition, the story about the feud between Atreus and Thyestes, and the story of how Atreus killed Thyestes' children and then fed them to Thyestes, causing Thyestes to curse the house of Atreus, which eventually brings about the events of the play, all that story is given in the last 20 minutes of the play. I assume that in ancient Greece, everybody knew this story already, but if you don't know the story, you're kind of lost at the end - you understand that Agamemnon killed Clytemnestra's daughter, and then Clytemnestra killed him in revenge, and that makes sense - except then there's this Aegisthus guy that you haven't seen at all in the play thus far, and he comes out and talks about how this whole thing was orchestrated by him to pursue this whole Atreus/Thyestes thing. And then it's over. And you're going "What the hell was all that about?"
And Agamemnon is part of a trilogy, and I assume that the feud-backstory is advanced in the other two plays, but if I were writing it, I think I'd end Agamemnon with the idea that Clytemnestra murders her husband to avenge her daughter, and then not bring in the new character Aegisthus until the second play.
But maybe I'm just spoiled by the movies.

Comments

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

It's odd though - I don't find uncomfortable the bits where the chorus speaks as Agamemnon, or as soldiers, or as storytellers, but the transition in which they settle into the roles that they "are", when they're not performing that "step into a role, step out of a role" function and become just the old men hanging around the palace, that's the part I see as wierd. It's like they're in motion, and then suddenly they stop and settle in one role until the end of the play.

I've just never really worked with this form of theater before, and I'm having to adjust my sensibilities. In fact, the more I learn about the story and its place in the larger story-cycle, the more I like the play. I just wonder if the audience will have enough context to get anything out of it (Which is a question I often ask myself when planning ritual - will the people coming to participate know enough about this myth or this god or this whatever to be able to fully partake in this ritual, or does there need to be more exposition first?).

I'd perhaps like to see someone tell the backstory on stage before the show starts, but maybe other people are quicker on the uptake than I am and will get the fullness of it without that.

[rougewench.livejournal.com]

Sorry about deleting, I just realized that I had left out part of my point, so I deleted and reposted.


D.

[rougewench.livejournal.com]

It may just be a difference of how we take in experiences in today's world.


D.

[diermuid.livejournal.com]

That was something I didn't like about Greek plays. You had to know the storyline. But then again, if you don't know the storyline, many Ren Fest scenarios seem rather odd. Which is why the bigger commercialized fest has a lot of the generic "We need to save the princess" type storylines. It doesn't matter if Dean is Henry the VIII, or Louis XVI, he will seem like the same guy, with a different accent. The difference is that RenFaire is dumbed down for the paying crowd of 200,000 consumers, while Agememnon is kept pure for the non-paying crowd of (theoretically) Greek enthusiasts.

Of course the storyline would be a HELL of a lot easier to follow if you map the characters out to current folks... the play might be really cool if you did the same thing, but changed the names to Tony Blair, Colin Powell, Dan Quayle, etc.

[rougewench.livejournal.com]

Remember that Greek Theater was ritual worship of the god Dionysis. The relating of the entire story was the method by which these stories were taught. You are reenacting sacred oral history in performing the play...meaning, the audience is taught by the experience of watching the drama unfold. Also, this particular play is the first in a series, that has much to do with the manner of its expositional nature, however, the exposition is played in the manner one of the period would expect.

Also, it was the nature of the chorus to act as both a narrative body and to step into a "role" as necessary. This was not an uncommon device at all, but certainly different to the modern theatrical sensibility.


D.

[malvito.livejournal.com]

When you wrote that the first thing was the chorus, I was going to take it personally, until I read further (always a useful thing to do if one is going to get tetchy about something) and realized that you meant the roles, not the people. (Of course, it could be that you mean the people, also, but wish to be diplomatic about it, but that would be uncharacteristic of you.)

When I first elected to view one of these Gorilla Greek productions, I sat uncomfortably through the entire play trying not to fidget and not understanding a damned thing that was going on on the steps of the Nelson. Of course, it was all very artsy (OK, artsy-fartsy is more like it), but that didn't help. I've tried reading the shows via my Richard Lattimore translations in order to help, but I find that the key for me to understand what is going on is to be in the goddamned thing, thereby hearing the text enough to start getting the references and making the associations.

I hope our audiences are a bit better informed (or at least more patient), but I remain skeptical. OK, they show up at an undeityly time of the morning to eat a box breakfast and watch us thesp, but I do sometimes wonder how many audience members get something out of it and how many scratch their heads at the end and wonder what the hell they just saw. (Granted, I'm sure a lot do that with the Shakespeare Festival, but at least that one has the benefit of an intermission so they can leave before they end up fidgeting into the night.)

I don't know how many of our production staff are on LJ, but I'm curious about the aspects of the production you don't like, and hope that you get that one into a journal, also.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

No, no - anything I don't like about the people in the chorus, you get to hear about at rehearsal :). What I'm on about is the play itself.
And I'm with you - I often don't get the Greek plays the first time through, it's not until I've seen/heard/read through a few times that I really get anything out of it. This is partly due to the thing I'm talking about here, that the exposition often comes at the end, and partly due to the fact that any grounding I may have in Greek culture is in mythology and religion, not politics, history, or general culture. And I wonder too how much of the audience gets the whole story out of the play.
Though I assume that they must get something out of it, because attendence seems to always be good.
I will admit to not having been to any of Gorilla's Greek shows yet, but David Luby mentioned the other day that they have a small crowd of men in togas that come every year, sit at the front of the stage, drink wine and heckle the players, so I assume from that that at least some of the audience knows what the thing is about.