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Rehearsing in the soil

Rehearsing in soil - Creon scene grab soil and stage combat being thrown to floor bc crash mats, chair bits, dynamic stick movement spacing

Rehearsing props - water, Ismene pick up cup and chair, machete placement, paper bit when chorus, nurse tray keep it horizontal

Dress runs - volume, energy

On Saturday was the first time we had rehearsed on the set we will be performing on which is effectively a huge sand pit full of three tonnes of soil. We have been aware of this set for the majority of the rehearsal process therefore all the staging incorporates the soil, there are many moments in which we interact with the soil,Antigone rubs her feet in the soil and lays down in it in the nurse scene, rubs her clothes in it in defiance in the Ismene scene and then in the whole of the second act it is a huge part of the play as the Act begins with the audience able to visibly see Antigone burying the body of her brother and the rest of the play takes place with his uncovered body on the stage. So to do all the staging with the soil really brought it to life and it began to improve drastically from that point forward, using the soil instead of miming it. We found that the visual effect was very effective the darkness of the soil juxtaposed with the white robe like costumes of the princesses  and the royal white sheets hanging at the back of the stage. Those sheets nicely symbolise the clean appearance of royalty to the outside world and the dirt can be seen to show the reality of that system and the corruption within it.

There were a few technical elements we had to go through before we did full run throughs such as the times when Creon throws Antigone to the floor in the long Creon scene, underneath the stage at the  centre front are two crash mats so it was important for our safety that we controlled the position for those moments. Overall, we found the stage combat moves much more comfortable on the soil than on the wooden floor we had been rehearsing on previously. We also had to go through all the physical  movements, especially those with lifts to see if the soil effected the stability of people basing the lifts.   But we found that the more we worked on the soil the more compact it became so it wasn't very different at all to when we had done it on the floor and because the soil is a safer place to land than hard wooden floor, we were actually able to do the movements with more energy and confidence so the performance quality was really enhanced by it. Finally we figured out the logistics of the chair, there is a moment in the Ismene scene where Antigone stands on the chair and it would really detract from the scene if the chair was at all unstable so we made sure that the soil at front left stage was only a few inches thick so the chair being put in at force would go through the soil and onto the solid floor.

Because the play is about burial and the protagonist Antigone's life revolves around nature, her physical closeness and comfort with nature can be seen in a very pure and physical so the audience can see that both in her words and her movements that her character and personality revolves around the earth. Being able to see her physically burying her brother and the intimacy of it, she is in her own world completely, she feels this is the meaning to her life and she utters the adlibbed lines to herself  'I condemn you to the earth, I bind you with the earth, I bury you in the earth'. Because the audience will be coming back in after the interval at this point I think they will feel as though they are intruding on a very intimate important moment for Antigone, and I aim to bring extreme intensity and impulse to these lines by saying them in a rhythm and in a low tone that the audience will not have yet heard from Antigone so that they will be immediately drawn to and intruiged by this moment, which is integral after the break of the interval.

Also in terms of metatheatre, it's very interesting the way that the stage that the actors will be performing on is a completely different element to the outside, in colour and texture and feel, it shows the difference between the outside world and the world of theatre. It implies that theatre is something dark and different, that leaves marks on you as the actors would begin the play as lively clean people and transform into exhausted characters covered in dirt. It shows how the lines blur and the reality of the theatre can effect the actors lives and mark them in the real world.






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