Staging Game

In my drama class today, we were discussing possible audience positioning for our upcoming performance of Antigone. For this, we can literally have them sitting wherever in the space, circles, squares, in the traditional staging of them on one side, anything we would like.

So anyway, we have decided to have it as a traverse stage. For those that don't know what this means, it means that the audience sits on two opposite sides of the stage, essentially looking at each other, whilst the actors are performing in the middle.

The issue I had this is was not the actual staging itself. No, I actually like the concept of having two separate audiences; it keeps us actors on our toes. No slacking off on the job. Yes, this may be difficult and need lots of rehearsing, but as I said, that part was not the issue; the issue was in the name itself.

Traverse. The word almost has a tri- at the beginning. And tri means three, right? But in this traverse stage, there are two sides of the audience. So shouldn't it be a diverse stage? Or a biverse stage? Di- and bi- both mean two? Not three? I do not know…English is weird. But I seriously had a ten-minute conversation with one of the girls in my class over this, and neither of us could really come to any kind of conclusion. Made me feel a little stupid but this is a serious issue! Someone should be taking about this!

When we actually got to the rehearsal point of the class, we had to figure out a way for these two characters to dramatically kill themselves, and interchanging between fast and slow motion. The amount of crazy slow motion falls to the ground we tried was absolutely ridiculous. We had people carrying them, a dramatic tango dip dance fall thing, a back to back fall which ended with one person lying on top of the other (it was so bizarre and creepy, we didn't really consider that one for too long). We eventually decided upon the trust fall.

We all know this one, that split second moment when you have a heart attack because you aren’t sure whether the person will catch you or not? Well, just after the actors stab themselves, they fall quickly backwards, as if they have been winded, to then be caught by some member of the chorus and in slow-motion, lowered to the ground. It looks a lot better, and really powerful when going between the fast and slow movement.

This took 45 minutes to come up with. But, I still think it was 45 minutes well spent. It looks amazing.

Yes, you may think that my thought process here is wacky, or crazy, strange or weird. But let my tell you, weird is my defining character trait. You cannot have a proper conversation with me, without describing me so.

Bye bye for now.

P.S. In the play we are rehearsing at the moment (Antigone), there is a line in it that makes me giggle every time.

“To think that thinking men should think so wrongly!”

Try saying that ten times fast!!!