One of my fifth years (junior) had his birthday. Usually a barely remarkable event, except that made him exactly as old as my brother. Weird.
The notable period of the day was John's sixth period sixth years (seniors). We discussed a little bit of Greek theatre on Thursday, but were going more in-depth today with a learning activity I borrowed from John Lane, my college theater director/professor. The main idea is that Greek theatre had to be performed certain ways because of the performance conditions (the connection between drama and performance space). For example, the acting style was big and over-dramatic, because the audience in the back had to see it. Subtle it is not. The lines also repeat themselves a lot because the audience might not have caught it the first time around. The boys, John, and I went to this outdoor amphitheatre in Blackrock Park near the school. (awesome pictures on Flickr soon.) I had two gracious volunteers read a scene of Oedipus Rex normally. No one could hear of course. Then they projected better, but only one side could hear any given actor. Then they projected facing forward, making it as good as it would get vocally. Then I asked them who was the king and who was the messenger. They weren't 100% sure, so we added masks (large print-outs) of a king and a normal man. At the end I asked what we lost by making our actors these large-headed broadly-gesticulating figures before us. Realism and subtlety mostly. We then did a similar activity with a single chorus member who became a large somewhat-in-sync mob. The discussion afterwards dealt with storytelling: what can theatre do that films/poetry/novels cannot? What can the other forms do better than theatre.
The boys seemed to enjoy it and learn from it. They gave good responses during the final questioning section. This also grounds their reading of Oedipus Rex not only in history, but performance needs. John was very complimentary of the lesson. He said they'd remember it for a very long time. I will.
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