Tragedy: an
unavoidable disastrous ending for the tragic hero where nothing they can do
will change the course of fate.
We see tragedy in
Shakespearean plays such as King Lear where Lear's downfall begins with his act
of hubris which leads to him banishing his youngest daughter bringing on a
chain of events which ultimately lead to madness and death, and Macbeth where
his meeting with the witches begins his chain of events in pursuit for power
which also leads to his death. The classic genre of Tragedy comes from Athens
in ancient Greece where part of the festival of Dionysus (City Dionysia) was
for three playwrights to compete through each writing three tragedies and a
satyr (three other playwrights competed in the comedy section). The general
form is to have a tragic hero have a moment of hamartia due to their hubris
leading to a peripeteia as a series of events roll out which lead to the
unavoidable moment of anagnorisis and
eventually the protagonist's death.
In the middle of
Antigone, this idea of the tragic end being unavoidable is addressed by the
Prologue/Chorus who says, "Now the spring is wound. The tale will unfold
all of itself." this is the section that we explored in our lesson.
Indirectly, we produced a set of movement in groups which represented a machine
with one trying to get out, another trying to stop them and the others
representing the tragic ending waiting for one of them. We got to this stage
first by coming up with a series of actions meant to represent a profession. I
decided to portray a Physiotherapist helping someone regain use of their legs
through massaging and moving their legs gently up and down. These movements
then had to become more abstract and dynamic so I increased the size of the
movement and started to use the whole of my upper body within the motions.
With these movements
rehearsed, we had to coordinate our own movements with a partners and try and
make it blend together. This worked quite well with my partner as I was
kneeling and she was standing, and once she was behind me, our movements worked
in similar directions with her arms sweeping in the same direction as mine,
purely by coincidence. At the start, it was hard to get close and coordinate
without being able to speak, but after a while we had a good connection and
felt comfortable in moving together.
This had to be added
to another partners to create the motion of a machine working together, this
was extremely difficult to do though conveniently we had two kneeling and two
standing so the levels worked well. However, the two standing moving around the
two kneeling meant that we had to be continually conscious of where the others
in the group were and were you could do your movement without obstructing or
colliding with someone else's. This was made harder by the addition of sticks.
I think I hit each member of my group at least 5 times. The sticks created a
more powerful image and with more time I think it would have been extremely
effective, but it took a long time trying to get our heads around how to do our
own movements with sticks and then how to have others working around this
bigger movement also.
I think it went
quite well considering, but if I did it again I would try to work out how to
make the story more clear within the moves as well as make my own movement more
effective.
Here is the video of
our final piece:
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