The Evaluation - Oedipus

For our evaluation we were asked four questions which pertained to what we thought of our pieces and others' pieces. 

• What do you think was particularly strong in your piece?

Within my piece playing as Oedipus I can say that both Kaede and Emily's characters had a very strong presence on the stage (Of course not stronger than King Oedipus') this was brought to fruition via having a understanding on who and what our characters were about. There were many powerful moments in the play which alerted the audience, i.e when the news of Lord Polybus' death hit Oedipus there was a sense of confusion and hurt in his reaction when speaking to the Corinthian. Another strong moment was when Jocasta & Oedipus were having an argument regarding the finding of the shepherd and discovery of Oedipus' past. The argument was very fast paced and intense, this showed throughout up until the point Jocasta was on her knees begging Oedipus not to continue with what she called "gossip" he blasted her with two words "That's enough!" This echoed through the theatre surprising each and every audience member.
Our voices as a whole were pretty good as there was clear diction in all of our words and no one stumbled up on anything which I thought was superb, this also linked to our movement as for example when Kaede moved down stage she lowered her voice as she was closer to the audience and when Emily went up stage she raised her voice so those at the back could hear her more clearly.

• What do you think was weak and needed further work?

Even though we had included movement in our piece there were times where we would stick in one area and not branch out which became slightly boring for the audience, I needed to work on my voice in the sense that my projection wasn't where it needed to be as some points in the play I would quiet down but quickly picked it back up.

Hands. In short we didn't know what to do with our hands here and there for example when Oedipus shouted at Jocasta the second time his hands were by his side, this might've looked better if his hands were placed in her direction or clutched midway 

• Upon reading Oedipus the King what were your thoughts? And how did you take this into rehearsals?

When I first sat down with my partners and we read through the script it was foreign to me in the sense that I had never done a play on greek theatre before in my life nor did I fully understand it in the time I read it. A king who sleeps with his mother to then kill his father? That was strange to say the least. Moving on. We discussed how it would feel if it was us in that situation and what WE would do. I said that I personally wouldn't know what to do as this would be mass confusion on my brain I'd probably break down. Taking this into rehearsals we used two major techniques, one of which belonged to Meisner on his "Acting is behaving truthfully in imagined circumstances" quote this helped us as again relating back to the whole "What would you do?" question, also Uta Hagen's six steps were what we used: 

• Who am I?
• What are the circumstances?
• What are my relationships?
• What do I want?
• What is my obstacle?
• What do I do to get what I want?

Below is a video of the play we performed: