Our first exercise on Greek theatre was a very basic one: with the sound of an opera by Maria Callas, we had to, in two groups, design a still-image of what it reminded us of, of what it meant for us. My group, unexpectedly, thought of the story of Icarus.

Icarus' father, Daedalus, a talented craftsman, attempted to escape from his exile in Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned at the hands of King Minos, the king for whom he had built the Labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur. Daedalus, the master craftsman, was exiled because he gave Minos' daughter, Ariadne, a clew of string in order to help Theseus survive the Labyrinth.

Daedalus designed a pair of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos.

Well, my group thought the song resembled Icarus' death, therefore we decided to portray it in a tableu. One person stood up whilst the other two stayed behind this one person conveying the wings. When, later on, we were told to show movement, the wings flapped, but slowly desintegrated, like the feather once the wax had melted. In rder to do so, the two student who stood as wings gradually fell until the one person standing up, repreenting Icarus, fell to her knees, signalling his death.

It's hard for me to remember the other group's image: I'm almost sure it was that of a boat, like the one that takes the dead to hell. Remember that scene in Hercules, where two characters are going to see a devilish god and they have to travel on this boat through unclean waters in which there were people inside: souls stuck to that water....Remember? Well, I'm sure this boat has a name but I have no idea what it is. I just know the song resembled a barcarolle, which maybe reminded this other group of this boat that take people to their deaths. The point is, their bodies produced the image of a boat, and the movement was that of the sail. It was interesting because they produced this harmony, all of them together, to complement the image of the boat travelling to hell.

However, I'm not quite sure what this exercise had to do with Greek Theatre...maybe because we had to our body, a device of extreme importance in Greek plays.

This website is exceptionally good for a brief history of Greek Theatre:
http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110tech/Theater.html

Another discussion we had was regarding tragedies and comedies, greatly explained here.

You see, we then started reading Medea, a woman in Greek mythology

The Medea tells the story of the jealousy and revenge of a woman betrayed by her husband. She has left home and father for Jason's sake, and he, after she has borne him children, forsakes her, and betroths himself to Glauce, the daughter of Creon, ruler of Corinth. Creon orders her into banishment that her jealousy may not lead her to do her child some injury. In vain she begs not to be cast forth, and finally asks for but one day's delay. This Creon grants, to the undoing of him and his. Jason arrives and reproaches Medea with having provoked her sentence by her own violent temper. Had she had the sense to submit to sovereign power she would never have been thrust away by him. In reply she reminds her husband of what she had once done for him; how for him she had betrayed her father and her people; for his sake had caused Pelias, whom he feared, to be killed by his own daughters.

"I am the mother of your children. Whither can I fly, since all Greece hates the barbarian?"

"It is not you," answers Jason, "who once saved me, but love, and you have had from me more than you gave. I have brought you from a barbarous land to Greece, and in Greece you are esteemed for your wisdom. And without fame of what avail is treasure or even the gifts of the Muses? Moreover, it is not for love that I have promised to marry the princess, but to win wealth and power for myself and for my sons. Neither do I wish to send you away in need; take as ample a provision as you like, and I will recommend you to the care of my friends."

She refuses with scorn his base gifts, "Marry the maid if thou wilt; perchance full soon thou mayst rue thy nuptials."

Meantime, Aegeus, the ruler of Athens, arrives at Corinth from Delphi, Medea laments her fate to him and asks his aid; he swears that in Athens she shall find refuge. Now, reassured, she turns to vengeance. She has Jason summoned, and when he comes she begs for his forgiveness.

"Forgive what I said in anger! I will yield to the decree, and only beg one favor, that my children may stay. They shall take to the princess a costly robe and a golden crown, and pray for her protection."

The prayer is granted and the gifts accepted. But soon a messenger appears, announcing the result:

"Alas! The bride had died in horrible agony; for no sooner had she put on Medea's gifts than a devouring poison consumed her limbs as with fire, and in his endeavor to save his daughter the old father died too."

Nor is her vengeance by any means complete. She leads her two children to the house, and that no other may slay them in revenge, murders them herself. Very effective is this scene in which, after a soliloquy of agonizing doubt and hesitation, she resolves on this awful deed:

In vain, my children, have I brought you up,
Borne all the cares and pangs of motherhood,
And the sharp pains of childbirth undergone.
In you, alas, was treasured many a hope
Of loving sustentation in my age,
Of tender laying out when I was dead,
Such as all men might envy.
Those sweet thoughts are mine no more, for now bereft of you
I must wear out a drear and joyless life,
And you will nevermore your mother see,
Nor live as ye have done beneath her eye.
Alas, my sons, why do you gaze on me,
Why smile upon your mother that last smile?
Ah me! What shall I do? My purpose melts
Beneath the bright looks of my little ones.
I cannot do it. Farewell, my resolve,
I will bear off my children from this land.
Why should I seek to wring their father's heart,
When that same act will doubly wring my own?
I will not do it. Farewell, my resolve.
What has come o'er me? Shall I let my foes
Triumph, that I may let my friends go free?
I'll brace me to the deed. Base that I was
To let a thought of wickedness cross my soul.
Children, go home. Whoso accounts it wrong
To be attendant at my sacrifice,
Let him stand off; my purpose is unchanged.
Forego my resolutions, O my soul,
Force not the parent's hand to slay the child.
Their presence where we will go will gladden thee.
By the avengers that in Hades reign,
It never shall be said that I have left
My children for my foes to trample on.
It is decreed.

Jason, who has come to punish the murderess of his bride, hears that his children have perished too, and Medea herself appears to him in the chariot of the sun, bestowed by Helios, the sun-god, upon his descendants. She revels in the anguish of her faithless husband.

"I do not leave my children's bodies with thee; I take them with me that I may bury them in Hera's precinct. And for thee, who didst me all that evil, I prophesy an evil doom."

She flies to Aegeus at Athens, and the tragedy closes with the chorus:

Manifold are thy shapings, Providence!
Many a hopeless matter gods arrange.
What we expected never came to pass,
What we did not expect the gods brought to bear;
So have things gone, this whole experience through!"

This drama is a masterly presentment of passion in its secret folds and recesses. The suffering and sensitiveness of injured love are strongly drawn, and with the utmost nicety of observation, passing from one stage to another, until they culminate in the awful deed of vengeance. The mighty enchantress who is yet a weak woman is powerfully delineated. The touches of motherly tenderness are in the highest degree pathetic. The strife of emotions which passion engenders is admirably shown; and amid all the stress of their conflict, and amid all this sophistical and illusive commonplaces which work upon the soul, hate and vengeance win the day. Medea is criminal, but not without cause, and not without strength and dignity. Such an inner world of emotion is alien from the genius of the religious and soldier-like Aeschylus; Sophocles creates characters to act on one another, and endows them with qualities accordingly; Euripides opens a new world to art and gives us a nearer view of passionate emotion, both in its purest forms and in the wildest aberrations by which men are controlled, or troubled, or destroyed.

Well, we had to choose a scene from the play, and my group, made up of three girls, chose the one in which she kills her children. We decided to work only with her monologue, however, there were three of us. What we did was the following: we divided her speech into three parts: her good side, her bad side, and her side that found itself in doubt; this way we would have three parts: the good and bad conscious and Medea herself, torn apart. Once this was done, we had to play around with the entonations and body positions.. A good exercise was the one of the body levels: none of us could be at the same level whilst delivering our speeches, which meant that we had to, at all times, be aware of every single actor onstage, because if someone changed level (by the way, there were only three) we had to change too, for no two actors could be in the same level. It was very helpful in order to make the scene more interesting, otherwise it was just three girls delivering there lines.