General Concept
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Director's Vision
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Story Analysis
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Contemporary Relevance
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Theatrical Style
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Staging
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Acting Style
Script Considerations
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Script Additions
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Script Alterations
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Translation Selection
Design Elements
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Lighting Design
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Costume Design
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Set Design
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Sound Design
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Multimedia Integration
Director's Vision Revisited
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Nick Tells All
Director's Vision
To create an environment with emphasis on concepts of family and Greek history, making words and meanings of Aeschylus accessible to a contemporary, visual-expectant twenty-first century audience.
Contemporary Relevance
Increasing pace of 1990's society and shift from family based socializations and relationships to community and idealogy-based socializations and relationships.
Recent censorship developments emphasizing government control of morals and XXX over parental guidance and XXX have XXX the need to re-explore and redefine the roles of the contemporary “American Family.”
Also relevant to this production is the importance of choosing a proper mate. The rising prevalence of divorces in this country, have brought to mind the importance of ensuring that a marriage be a balanced union between two people.
Theatrical Style
The general style of this production should be slanted toward providing a realistic view, to the point of being hyper realistic for a threatrical production. The goal in this production from a design should be to provide a near documentary experience, with the exception of the afformentioned time shift. It should seem to the audience that these events are actually happening on stage; they should exit the theatre looking for holes and water damage on the exterior of the battles and sea portrayed on stage.
Translation
Fundamentally important to the audiences understanding and appreciation of a play is their understanding of what the actors are saying. To this end an appropriate translation must be selected. After examining several translations, Ted Hughes's 1999 translation should be used for this production. This translation features clear direct language often in the active tense. In addition, this translation was prepared by Hughes for the stage upon commissioning by the Royal National Theatre of Great Britian.
Several other translations were examined and they were all found to be unsatisfactory. The common translation by Robert Fagles, suffers from a highly poetic construction that while beautiful, impedes an audience unable to examine the text at their own speed from a proper understanding of the story.
Script Alterations
There will be situations during the rehersal process where it may appear that the most effective way to address a pacing problem is to cut lines or scenes. This will not be done in this production. The problems of pacing are properly addressed within the translation selection, as the Hughes's translation provides an adequately paced production.
It will be necessary to address role and composition of the chorus. A traditional Greek chorus will not be used during this production. While a plausible solution, the traditional greek chorus is an alien concept to a modern audience as they expect it to be excusively reserved for musical numbers.
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