Nick's Place

Production Concept for Agamemnon

Nicholas Barnard

TH360: Theatre History

Matthew Benjamin

Directorial 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 ideology-based socialization's and relationships.

Recent censorship developments emphasizing government control of morals and ideas presented over parental guidance and adult discretion have illuminated 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 has brought to mind the importance of ensuring that a marriage be a balanced union between two people. This production should provide an underlying allegorical tale that should inform the audience of the necessity of commitment in a marriage relationship.

Story Analysis

The script of Agamemnon was chosen for its clarity and simple story line that is clearly accessible, but told with powerful moving poetry.

All of the characters, minor and major in the play are skillfully portrayed as full three-dimensional characters. Histories of all of the characters are contained within the script and associated literary analysis's. Each character should have a half to full page of history written that will inform the actors, and designers about the realisticness and the depth to all of the characters.

Special concern should be taken to the character of Clytemnestra. The actors and the designers should neither portray her as a purely good or purely bad character, this is for the audience to decide and discuss. All decisions regarding Clytemnestra should be made with the knowledge that Clytemnestra is neither guilty nor innocent of a horrible crime in the eyes of the production.

Theatrical Style

The general style of this production should be slanted toward providing a realistic view, to the point of being surrealistic for a theatrical production. The goal in this production from a design should be to provide a near documentary experience, with the exception of the fact that the action that takes place in the present should have a near future sleekness look, ala Gattaca. 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 Britain.

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 rehearsal 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 is 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 chorus's to be exclusively reserved for musical numbers.

The chorus parts should be divided to many different characters with specific note taken to which chorus characters are speaking which words. They are all still generic stock characters, but dividing the chorus parts up will make a more believable set of soliloquies that will hold the audience's attention span. As an example the first chorus should be split up as follows:

Script Additions

They only additions to be made to the script is the prepending of a historical background section. This section should show: the Quarreling of Atreus and Thyestes over Thyestes' seduction of Atreus's wife; Atreus's serving of Thyestes's children to him; and additional pieces of history that are not directly described in the script but in other Greek histories.

These sections should be played at the beginning of the scene, all at once with the lines intermeshed, but not spoken at once. The scenes should be written in the same style as the rest of Hughes's translation, it should seem as if these scenes were written by him.

Acting Style

The acting style of this production should be clear and direct, the actors should allow the words to carry their performances through the production, and should make liberal use of dramatic pauses within their speech to emphasize the loud portions and allow the audience to catch up with the action.

Many of the pieces are spoken directly to the audience, for the purposes of those monologues the actor should assume that their character is aware of the audience.

The actors should be chided against over dramatization, the audience needs to believe that these are real people sharing these events within their life, the choice to be more realistic vs. being overly theatrical should always lean toward the side of realism.

Set Design

The set for this production will have two standing pieces visible at all times to the audience.

On stage left, possibly straddling the proscenium arch and jutting toward audience, there will be a large mansion style house. This house should be a predominately neutral color, and be of a futuristic modernist style. It should have at least one main door and the front and a wrap around porch with separate doors for the porch. At least one wall should be configured with a fabric or other material that will allow backlighting for silhouetted action to be visible to the whole audience.

On stage right, possibly straddling the proscenium arch and jutting out toward the audience, there should be a mountain, which looks like solid volcanic rock. There should be some small reflective areas. There must be a method for an actor to climb the mountain safely without a safety harness; this route may be predetermined.

The center of the stage will be utilized for choral staging, and the full-scale reenactment of the histories told during the chorus retellings. These reenactments should portray authentic Greek settings.

The stage should also have translucent screens that will provide a frame for the center of the stage that will allow graphics to be projected clearly on the lower section of the stage. The goal is to of this is to turn the stage into a large television screen complete with graphics, but have the “image” of the television screen be actual on stage action. The screen should be blocked of in the proper aspect ratio. The screens that form the television screen should move and allow actors to walk through the space they once occupied. This is encouraged to be accomplished through the use of quiet water screens, or another method.

The top of the show historical additions will be portrayed simultaneously on several room unit sets placed at different elevations from the stage floor. Each of these unit sets should have a miniature version of the television screen system as described above for the whole stage.

Costume Design

The costumes for this production should have a varied look that distinguishes the royal family.

The members of Agamemnon's family; Agamemnon, Iphigenia, and Clytemnestra; as well as Aegisthus, and Cassandra should have a clean business suit look. The women should be wearing neutral or pastel toned business suits. The men should be wearing three piece well-tailored suits, which should be color keyed to their respective lovers.

The townspeople should be costumed in simple stylized costumes communicating their roles in society. Overly detailed costumes are not called for; simplified sleek looking costumes are is goal to executing the costume design. Special attention should be paid to the delicate balance between not communicating enough information about the character's role in society and overaccessorizing the costumes.

Sound Design

The sound design for this show must provide a continual ambiance that must be coordinated with the action on stage as well as the lighting. The goal is to provide a continual background noise to provide an underlying sense of reality. The average audience member should never be consciously aware of the fact that there is continually the underlying background noise, but it should enhance their experience. (A relevant antidote: Visitors to the Set of Star Trek: The Next Generation, complained about the set lacking something, which was the continual background humming they had come to expect because it was constantly mixed under the soundtrack of the show.)

The post show, preshow, and intermission music should all extol a sense of foreboding and expectancy. Pieces of music employing long flowing string instruments, especially low stringed instruments should be considered. In addition other music with a similar feel should be utilized.

Lighting Design

The lighting design of this show should be focused on first and foremost providing a realistic lighting plot of the production.

There should be special care taken to designing a proper back lighting for the house so the murder can be properly silhouetted.

Also very important for the production is the fantasy sequences should be lit with a quality of light that reads as an old sepia toned photograph.

Multimedia Integration

The multimedia elements of this show should not be immediately identifiable as such. The principal set of multimedia elements is the projection of television style graphics on the frame. These graphics should directly describe the action on stage. They should also have a clear identifiable animated logo that identifies the channel being “watched” as a historical drama channel.

Directorial Vision Revisited

All of the design and acting elements described herein expose the importance of realism in telling this story. While it is fundamentally important not to loose the necessity of realism, it is important within all decisions to portray a theatrical magically, which can only be provided for within a theatrical production. The audience should be totally able to accept the realism of the action on stage, but they should not be able to accept the fact that they are watching a stage, and not a movie, or their inner dreams. The surrealism and the clear attention to theatrical magic will make this production a clear eye holder, which is the second most important over all goal, behind realism.

Bibliography

Aeschylus, Tr. Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1953

Aeschylus, Tr. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1977

Aeschylus, Tr. Ted Hughes. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

Aeschylus, Tr. Michael Ewans. Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1995

Phillips, Brian, Jeremy Zorn, Julie Blattberg. Sparknotes on

Agamemnon. 2001, accessed Nov 22, 2001. <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/agamemnon/>