Tuesday, October 03, 2006
The Birds
I had an idea for the basic structure of our presentation:
*I'll cover the plot synopsis,
*Jeb covers a little background on the play, Greek theater in general, and the Greeks themselves,
*and Jessica covers the theme(s), especially the idea of birds realizing how much power they can weild when they band together.
If you guys already had plans for what you were going to talk about, that's cool.
I have a small amount of background knowledge on Greek theater that I can sort of remember from middle school.
*Greek and Roman plays are known as the 'classics,'
*Greek theater started out as a means of worshoping the god Dionysus
*In order to worship him, the Greeks would sacrafice a goat
*'The Chorus' started as part of this ceremony
*Thespius was important. I think he was the first 'actor.' i.e. he was the first to break away from the chorus
*Some other guy, whose name I can't recall (it might have even been Aristophanes! Somebody check!) was the first to introduce two or more actors
*The use of masks was common (mainly because in an amphlitheater the audience would not otherwise be able to see facial expressions)
*"The Birds" was written in 414 B.C.E by Aristophanes
*'the machine' referenced in this play (IRIS is carried off by it when she leaves) was known to the Greeks as the 'deus ex machina.' It was basically like a cherry picker. Actors were raised into the air by it to show they were gods and thus 'flying' away
*There's probably more that was hammered into my brain. I just remember a couple really long, cruel tests, one of which I even had to stay after school to finish
*I'll cover the plot synopsis,
*Jeb covers a little background on the play, Greek theater in general, and the Greeks themselves,
*and Jessica covers the theme(s), especially the idea of birds realizing how much power they can weild when they band together.
If you guys already had plans for what you were going to talk about, that's cool.
I have a small amount of background knowledge on Greek theater that I can sort of remember from middle school.
*Greek and Roman plays are known as the 'classics,'
*Greek theater started out as a means of worshoping the god Dionysus
*In order to worship him, the Greeks would sacrafice a goat
*'The Chorus' started as part of this ceremony
*Thespius was important. I think he was the first 'actor.' i.e. he was the first to break away from the chorus
*Some other guy, whose name I can't recall (it might have even been Aristophanes! Somebody check!) was the first to introduce two or more actors
*The use of masks was common (mainly because in an amphlitheater the audience would not otherwise be able to see facial expressions)
*"The Birds" was written in 414 B.C.E by Aristophanes
*'the machine' referenced in this play (IRIS is carried off by it when she leaves) was known to the Greeks as the 'deus ex machina.' It was basically like a cherry picker. Actors were raised into the air by it to show they were gods and thus 'flying' away
*There's probably more that was hammered into my brain. I just remember a couple really long, cruel tests, one of which I even had to stay after school to finish
# posted by Brian Tang @ 7:53 PM 
