Creative Assignment 3 Please note that the rubric

Creative Assignment 3

Please note that the rubric and the formatting guide are on the last two pages.

Your task for this final assignment is to take the narrative of a myth and to fit it into the format of an Athenian tragedy. In particular, your tragedy will be about the mythical king Theseus. So, you will take some aspect of the myth of Theseus (by necessity that will mean selecting a narrow slice rather than trying to do everything) and show me what would need to be changed to shape this into an ancient tragedy and how you would do it. Keep in mind that this assignment will heavily reward creativity.

 

In your essay, you will be responsible for describing to me three major changes that you would need to make – this will mean providing snippets of dialogue, sketching out the requisite scenes, listing characters and conflicts –  providing an explanation of why those changes were the ones that you made, and comparing these changes to similar elements in plays that we have read. To do this assignment well, you might want to read ahead a bit and make sure that you have finished two of the plays you are assigned (either the Agamemnon, Medea, or Eumenides. The Bacchae is not assigned but you are welcome to read or use it as well).

Each paragraph will center on a particular set of changes (you don’t need to list all of the changes you would make but you should include at least 2 well-thought out changes for each or two well-thought out ways that you would communicate a single change):

1. Changes for theater (that is, what do you have to do to adapt this to the genre conventions, the physical production space of the Athenian theater, and to fit the dialogue and style of drama. Here would be a good place to discuss how you generated your list of roles, who makes up the chorus, choosing a tragic hero – Theseus may not be the main character in this play– , etc.)
2. Changes of plot/structure (that is, what do you need to do to make the ‘plot’ follow the typical organization of drama)
3. Changes of theme (Greek drama is always about lofty and heavy philosophical conflicts – what will your drama focus on and how do you make changes to the myth so that it communicates this theme. Here would be a good place to give some snippets of dialogue or really discuss the roles of different characters.)

So, your process should be this (along with a tentative rubric – total of five points):

1. Read the Life of Theseus and pick a myth of Theseus that you think will work
2. Paragraph one: Discuss why this particular myth is a good fit for Tragedy (.25 pts)
3. Paragraph one: Outline (at least) two features that you have changed to fit this part of the myth into tragedy, focusing specifically on the conventions of theater listed below. In addition to these two things, you should provide a quick character list. (.25 for each = .5 total)
4. Paragraph one: For each of those two points, compare and contrast it to a similar aspect in one of the plays that we have read (you cannot use the same play throughout the paper, so make sure you focus on two). This needs to go beyond simply saying ‘My chorus would be made up of exiled women because the Agamemnon has a chorus of exiled women.’ But instead you should think about why your play would have this particular chorus (or what benefit it provides or how it matches something present in the myth) and similarly, why the comparison play has that feature. There must be at least one citation from the play for each point. (.25 for each = .5 total)
5. Paragraph one: Display creativity (.25 pts)
6. Paragraph one: Display a thorough knowledge and consideration of Tragedy (.25pts)
7. Paragraph two: Describe the plot of your play. (.25 pts)
8. Paragraph two: Explain at least two major changes that needed to be made in order to fit into either my basic overview or Aristotle’s model (.25 for each = .5 total)
9. Paragraph two: For each change, discuss a similar plot feature within one of the plays that we read. There must be at least one citation for each plot point. (.25 for each = .5 total)
10. Paragraph two: Display creativity (.25 pts)
11. Paragraph two: Display a thorough knowledge and consideration of Tragedy (.25pts)
12. Paragraph three: Outline the theme which you have chosen and what ‘message’ you hope to communicate about that theme (it is alright to be conflicted, most drama is about the tension between two alternatives)
13. Paragraph three: Explain two ways that you are planning on carrying out the theme – this could be related to characters, plot points, the choral songs, or even the dialogue of one (or more characters). (.25 for each = .5 total)
14. Paragraph three: Compare and contrast the way that you carry out your theme with two similar moments from other plays we have read (even if they do not have the same theme, consider how they communicate their themes). There must be a citation for each. (.25 for each = .5 total)
15. Paragraph three: Display creativity (.25 pts)
16. Paragraph three: Display a thorough knowledge and consideration of Tragedy (.25pts)

 

But you probably need some more info – so I have compiled some thoughts to potentially help you – although feel free to use your own judgment as well.

 

On Theseus:

 

In order to tell some story of Theseus, you need to know who he is an select an appropriate story. Remember that this needs to be a story that can fit into the ‘rules’ and genre of Athenian Drama, so choose well. Hippolytus is off-limits since there is already a play of his life – if you use Hippolytus, that is an automatic failure. With that being said, you also have free reign to introduce new characters or change things to fit the needs of your play (the ending, especially may need this – although I would suggest keeping major events mostly the same, especially for your main character – don’t have Theseus die in the middle of his story!). Your book has a short version of his life back in chapter 10 but I also recommend reading up on him on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseus .

 

If you want more information or for an exhaustive version of the Theseus myth, I recommend reading one of the most important original sources for his mythology at  http://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html . My recommendation is first finding a story that you think might be suitable on Wikipedia and then looking up the ‘longer’ narrative here so that you have a bit more substance to work on.

 

Changes for Athenian Drama:

 

Here is a pretty good overview over much of what I will describe below (http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd130et/ancientgreek.htm):

 

On Theater:

Since your task is to translate myth or literature into theater, you first need to understand some fundamentals of Athenian theater. Here are some things that you might want to consider while making your own changes (many of these will be also covered and discussed in class but since this assignment is going up early, I wanted to give them too you as early as possible).

 

Almost always true:

• Presented in a trilogy with a Satyr play at the end (Although in this essay you will only really be talking about one play, you may very well want to consider the plays that would follow or would have preceded your play. Some trilogies were connected plots, with each sequel resolving events of the previous play but some trilogies were linked by similar themes or similar characters).
• Limited number of roles (Athenian drama rarely has more than 5-6 characters because…)
• Only three actors (Apart from the chorus and a chorus-leader, who don’t count, there are only ever three actors. One actor can play many parts but there can be no scene where more than three roles are on-stage at the same time)
• Chorus (Every Greek drama has a chorus, appropriate to the setting and characters of the play. The chorus frequently is aligned to the interests of the audience – that is, the chorus lets the audience know what the appropriate way to react to a scene is. The chorus can be helpful or give advice but it can never directly intervene or change the main events of the play. Thus, it needs to be a large group of people who don’t have much power – servants or old men/women frequently fill this need).
• Chorus-leader (One person in the chorus is allowed to interact with the actors and engage them in dialogue – but they too are bound to never directly intervene in the play.)
• Focus on speech and dialogue (Greek dramas are rarely action packed, they are instead mostly filled with deliberations and argument – at most, there is one central action or deed, generally of violence, towards the end. For big scenes of action or violence, they will not happen onstage but might be described onstage, afterwards, by a witness)
• Violence offstage (almost every Greek drama has a scene of death and violence, sometimes of main characters, sometimes of side characters… but, because of technical and religious limitations, this almost always happens off stage with characters on stage
• Tragic hero (Your book has more information about this but, generally speaking, Greek drama focuses on a character in a position of power, who is mostly admirable, but has some flaw that is the cause of his doom)
• Conflicting Positions (Most tragedy has two characters in it with equally valid but completely irreconcilable views on some issue of importance – freedom versus safety, family versus government, revenge versus law).
• Technical limitations (one backdrop, normally a castle or palace and one altar in the center of the stage than could be an altar or tomb or something else. One device to wheel in things from offstage (good for corpses or a large prop) and a crane to swing in divinities from normally at the beginning or ending of a play).

 

Generally True:

• Tragic ending (It is certainly not guaranteed but, normally something tragic – normally a death or a set of deaths – has happened at the end of a tragedy. Believe it or not, this is pretty malleable though and many tragedies end relatively happily).
• Religious (Most tragedies involve the gods in the background – or occasionally on stage — which is appropriate as they were produced at a religious festival. If a god appears though, except in very rare instance – see the Bacchae – he or she only appears at the beginning, to set up the play, or at the end, to resolve a conflict).
• Cult aitiology at the end (It is frequently the case that plays end by connecting the world of the tragedy to the world of Classical Athens – providing the explanation for a ‘modern day’ religious practice or building).
• Gender conflict (Many plays are about the conflict between men and women or between spheres of identity associated with men and women, such as the conflict between home and public governmental spaces. Sometimes, this conflict about gender is about specific characters not acting within the roles that Greek society allowed them, such as a women acting with the violence of a man or a woman refusing to get married and have babies or a man shying away from sex and violence).
• Deus Ex Machina (If the plot of the play cannot be resolved in an easy way, Greek playwrights would have a god literally swoop in on a crane and fix the problems of the play. This was used more rarely than people think though).

 

 

In addition to that information, you may also want to consider Aristotle’s theory on what made a good play: According to Aristotle, all tragedies share three ‘Unities’ and these are very prevalent in most  Greek drama  – in particular I suggest that you do not break unity of time or unity of place (from Wikipedia/Greek Tragedy):

 

• Unity of action: a play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few subplots (further defined in a moment).
• Unity of place: a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.
• Unity of time: the action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours.

 

Aristotle asserted that a play must be complete and whole, in other words, it must have unity, i.e. a beginning, a middle and an end. The philosopher also asserted that the action of epic poetry and tragedy differ in length, “because in tragedy every effort is made for it to take place in one revolution of the sun, while the epic is unlimited in time.”

 

Structure:

 

In general, all Greek tragedies are structured in the following ways:

 

The tragedy usually begins with a prologue, (from pro and logos, “preliminary speech”) in which one or more characters introduce the drama and explain the background of the ensuing story. Gods might appear in the prologue or at the end but, because of special effects restrictions and the nature of theater, never in the middle. The prologue is followed by the parodos, a song the chorus sings as they enter. The tragedy itself is normally divided into three or more episodes (ἐπεισόδια, epeisodia) where the main actors speak and the story develops. These tend to be scenes of dialogue – especially the middle episode which tends to be conducted in the form of a structured argument between two character, each of whom presents their perspective and moral viewpoint as if they were presenting a speech in front of a courtroom. In between each episode is a stasima (στάσιμoν, stasimon) a choral interlude explaining or commenting on the situation developing in the play. The chorus likes to tell other similar (but unrelated) myths during these stasima. The tragedy ends with the exodus (ἔξοδος), the final song sung as the chorus is leaving the theater, concluding the story. This is a useful organizational tool but not every play follows it perfectly – for instance, occasionally, the prologue is omitted.

 

To return to Aristotle’s Poetics and his idea of structure, he claimed that plays should have:

1) “unity of action”, a cause-and-effect chain in which each scene automatically and necessarily leads into the next scene (or at the very least it should be probable, if not automatic and necessary). The plot should be structurally self-contained, avoiding random coincidences, irrational events, or the deus ex machina trope (where a “god from the machine” comes down at the end of the play and resolves all problems in the story).
2) a “complex plot”. Aristotle says that plots can be simple or complex. A simple plot consists of a catastrophe “change of fortune” (where a character is elevated to wealth and power or, more regularly, a character starts powerful but falls from grace). A complex plot involves a catastrophe that hinges upon a peripeteia “reversal of intention” – when a character produces an effect opposite to what he intended, and an anagnorisis “recognition”, where a character undergoes a “change from ignorance to knowledge”.

 

Aristotle says that a spectator watching a tragedy undergoes a katharsis “purging, cleansing” involving the emotions of pity and fear. Tragedy arouses the emotions of pity and fear in order to expel them from our bodies (think of a horror movie, during which you feel scared but afterwards, you feel better).

 

You should look at the slides in lecture to get a slightly better idea of this, along with examples from Oedipus Rex.

 

Theme:

 

You should already have a number of thoughts on the weighty issues which bothered the Greeks – for instance the role of men and women, the dangerous violence of heroes, the problems of monarchies (versus a democracy), the nature of free will, the role of the gods in human life, etc. If you are absolutely stumped here and can’t come up with a weighty topic that interests you, this is an excellent reason to visit your TA or myself.

 

In that vein though, don’t forget that you could also discuss Nietzsche’s Apollo/Dionysus Divide (from Wikipedia/BirthofTragedy):

Nietzsche discusses the history of the tragic form and introduces an intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian (very loosely: reality as disordered and undifferentiated by forms versus reality as ordered and differentiated by forms). Nietzsche claims life always involves a struggle between these two elements, each battling for control over the existence of humanity. In Nietzsche’s words, “Wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian was checked and destroyed…. wherever the first Dionysian onslaught was successfully withstood, the authority and majesty of the Delphic god Apollo exhibited itself as more rigid and menacing than ever.” Yet neither side ever prevails due to each containing the other in an eternal, natural check, or balance.

 

Nietzsche argues that the tragedy of Ancient Greece was the highest form of art due to its mixture of both Apollonian and Dionysian elements into one seamless whole, allowing the spectator to experience the full spectrum of the human condition. The Dionysian element was to be found in the music of the chorus, while the Apollonian element was found in the dialogue which gave a concrete symbolism that balanced the Dionysiac revelry. Basically, the Apollonian spirit was able to give form to the abstract Dionysian.

 

Before the tragedy, there was an era of static, idealized plastic art in the form of sculpture that represented the Apollonian view of the world. The Dionysian element was to be found in the wild revelry of festivals and drunkenness, but, most importantly, in music. The combination of these elements in one art form gave birth to tragedy. He theorizes that the chorus was originally always satyrs, goat-men. (This is speculative, although the word “tragedy” τραγωδία is contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = “goat song” from tragos = “goat” and aeidein = “to sing”.) Thus, he argues, “the illusion of culture was wiped away by the primordial image of man” for the audience; they participated with and as the chorus empathetically, “so that they imagined themselves as restored natural geniuses, as satyrs.” But in this state, they have an Apollonian dream vision of themselves, of the energy they’re embodying. It’s a vision of the god, of Dionysus, who appears before the chorus on the stage. And the actors and the plot are the development of that dream vision, the essence of which is the ecstatic dismembering of the god and of the Bacchantes’ rituals, of the inseparable ecstasy and suffering of human existence.

 

After the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles, there was an age where tragedy died. Nietzsche ties this to the influence of writers like Euripides and the coming of rationality, represented by Socrates. Euripides reduced the use of the chorus and was more naturalistic in his representation of human drama, making it more reflective of the realities of daily life. Socrates emphasized reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human knowledge. In contrast to the typical Enlightenment view of ancient Greek culture as noble, simple, elegant and grandiose, Nietzsche believed the Greeks were grappling with pessimism. The universe in which we live is the product of great interacting forces; but we neither observe nor know these as such. What we put together as our conceptions of the world, Nietzsche thought, never actually addresses the underlying realities. It is human destiny to be controlled by the darkest universal realities and, at the same time, to live life in a human-dreamt world of illusions.

The issue, then, or so Nietzsche thought, is how to experience and understand the Dionysian side of life without destroying the obvious values of the Apollonian side. It is not healthy for an individual, or for a whole society, to become entirely absorbed in the rule of one or the other. The soundest (healthiest) foothold is in both. Nietzsche’s theory of Athenian tragic drama suggests exactly how, before Euripides and Socrates, the Dionysian and Apollonian elements of life were artistically woven together. The Greek spectator became healthy through direct experience of the Dionysian within the protective spirit-of-tragedy on the Apollonian stage.

Rubric

Formatting: all papers must adhere to the following formatting requirements or suffer severe point penalties (each of these is a full point deduction).

• Font size: 12-pt.
• Font style: Times New Roman.
• Margins: 1” margins.
• Length: approximately 2 full pages (no more than 2 and ½ page).
• Line height: 1.5-spacing.
• Header: include name and .# in header on a single line, otherwise start text on first line of the page.
• Starts with paragraph one and no additional introductory material
• Quotations: cite quotations with the following format (Homer’s Iliad 1-5).
• Saved in MS Word .doc format
• Does not have extra space between paragraphs (set space between paragraphs to 0)

 

Points (               / 5)

 

Changes for theater

• Adequately discusses why this particular myth is a good fit for Tragedy and provided character list (.25)
• Outlined one suitably broad feature which has been changed to fit an appropriate characteristic of Athenian drama (.25)
• Adequately compares/contrasts this feature with a similar feature in another play, considering how they both interact with the play as a whole. Citation included. (.25)
• Outlined a second suitably broad feature which has been changed to fit an appropriate characteristic of Athenian drama (.25)
• Adequately compares/contrasts this feature with a similar feature in another play considering how both interact with the play as a whole. Citation included. (.25)
• Was suitably creative in their approach (.25)
• Demonstrated a clear understanding of Athenian drama (.25)

 

Changes of plot/structure

• Provides a well thought-out plot summary of the hypothetical play. (.25)
• Thoughtfully displays how one element of that plot adheres to either the standard model of a play or Aristotle’s model of theater (.25)
• Adequately compares/contrast this plot point to a simlar plot point in another play, considering how both interact with the play as a whole. Citation included (.25)
• Thoughtfully displays how a second element of that plot adheres to either the standard model of a play or Aristotle’s model of theater (.25)
• Adequately compares/contrast this plot point to a simlar plot point in another play, considering how both interact with the play as a whole. Citation included (.25)
• Was suitably creative in their approach (.25)
• Demonstrated a clear understanding of Athenian drama (.25)

 

Changes of theme

• Explained the theme and described or displayed one way in which that theme would be communicated in the play. (.25)
• Compared and contrasted this method of communicating the theme with a similar theme/communication from another play. Citation included (.25)
• Explained the theme and described or displayed a second way in which that theme would be communicated in the play. (.25)
• Compared and contrasted this method of communicating the theme with a similar theme/communication from another play. Citation included (.25)
• Was suitably creative in their approach (.25)
• Demonstrated a clear understanding of Athenian drama (.25)