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Staging Ismene scene 2

In this rehearsal I worked with both the actors playing Ismene and the other Antigone actors to work on the first Ismene scene because we felt we needed to add emphasis to important bits of speech and also build on the sibling relationship between the two sisters.

Because the first bit of dialogue has Ismene sat on a chair and Antigone sat at her feet, we wanted the chair to be nearer front centre stage so we had to stage a moving of the chair from the position it is in in the Nurse scene (back stage left) to the position it is in the nurse scene. So that we decided that after Nurse exits, Antigone would move the chair for Ismene to sit on and dust it over for her. We thought this would work as it would show the differences between the two sisters but also their close relationship and how well they know each other.

Halfway through the scene, Ismene is trying to persuade Antigone not to bury her brother and 'understand' Creon's point of view. To which Antigone refuses to do and has quite a long speech explaining her hatred for 'understanding', because that has always been the thing stopping her from being herself and being connected to nature. Like the majority of Antigone's longer speeches, this one comes from her heart, as she is filled with so much child like passion. She reminisces over the things she was forbidden to do as a child, either because of her age (go swimming just when she felt like it), her status (give all her money away to a beggar), or her gender (play with the earth because it dirtied her clothes). It shows how ever since she was a child, she has felt a hatred for the system as it stopped her from being herself and that now she has a chance to die, full of pride and freedom going against these rules she has always felt restricted by. She starts the speech with purpose, to show to Ismene the importance of not understanding and going against the system, but she looses herself in her past as she reminisces, getting carried away and forgets what she's trying to prove until the last line ' I don't want to understand, I can do that when I'm old... if I ever am' . I see this as her younger self speaking the first part of that line, then a moment of realisation and being brought back to the present in which her present self says 'if i ever am' because she knows she is going to die. Throughout the play, Antigone feels a strong connection and nostalgia linked with her childhood, in the end of the Creon scene in which she goes slightly mad she says how if life isn't 'as wonderful as it was when i was little' then she'd prefer to die. Because of this, we thought it was important to make this scene dynamic and more about Antigone than Ismene so we restaged it so that only the first line 'Understand! You've always been on at me about that!' is directed towards Ismene, and then afterwards she moves away from Ismene and into the corner where the water and fruit is, she picks up the water on the line 'I was supposed to understand I must play with water' and then she continues to play with the water, spinning around and pouring it on the floor showing her disregard for all these rules.

In response to Antigone's refusal to listen, Ismene describes in detail what will become of them if they try to bury their brother's body.  For this we are going to create a chorus movement with lifts and the use of the machetes to emphasise the enormous fears of Ismene's and also the magnitude of the criminal act Antigone is so eager to do.

In a similar way in which Antigone delivers the speech about understanding, later on she is questioned by Ismene if the reason she wants to go against Creon's orders is because she doesn't want to live. Antigone is sure that she wants to live, and lists a number of things she used to do as a child that showed how alive and in touch with nature she was. Again this a speech that comes from the heart and is much more towards herself than Ismene, she wanders away from her sister and towards the corner with the fruit and water, showing how she used to detach herself from people and be with nature instead.

Throughout the development of the whole scene we have been quite conscious of proxemics, creating moments where the sisters come together showing their familial love for one another and moments where space separates them showing their difference of opinion, age and behaviour. The final section however, where previously Antigone was sat on a chair stage left and Ismene stood on stage left, we felt this section should still remain sort of distant as Ismene feels defeated by Antigone's defiance but the dialogue is caring and intimate so we wanted to add another moment where they become a little bit closer before the end of the scene. We decided that this would be in the section where Antigone references Polynices because we also found an issue in that when we both looked out the window to see him it didn't look as though we were looking at the same place to the audience so it made more sense if Antigone stood so that she was at a similar line of sight to Ismene when delivering the line 'It's getting light - look - my dead brothers surrounded by guards now, just as if he'd managed to make himself king'  -which is a very powerful line and the singular possessive pronoun 'my' is very hurtful to Ismene, implying that because she is not willing to die for her brother, she should not be related to him. It may also seem to an audience member that Antigone came close to Ismene to deliver that line just to put her in her place and increase the pain of her words. For the final lines Antigone retreats back to her chair and Ismene stays where she is.

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