Greek Historical Context Essay By Joseph Foster
Euripides’s the famous Greek Play-Writer wrote ‘Medea’ and this is what our Historical Context has been based around. Wrote roughly around the Year 431/432 BC the modern adaptation by Tom Paulin was made in 2010 and is the one we have been studying this term, which uses the power to make the audience question their emotions and morals. The Festival of Dionysus was a great Competition were thousands of People would come to watch New Plays and Writers would gain acknowledgment for their work and more importantly they would honour Dionysus as he was the God of Fertility, Wine and Theatre. When Euripides's …show more content…
The Plays shows the extremity that men went to like Jason to gain power even if it meant he had to leave his wife and two children 'you bring destruction to your children and you bring agony to your bride' (Tom Paulin 2010), he even tells Medea that he isn't doing it because he loves Glauce he does it because he thinks it will be better for everyone and could even take Medea on as his Mistress; again this shows the way men were superior to women as they could get what they wanted and expected Women to grovel at their feet and go along with it. Any other women would go along with this which is why Medea is such a unique character because she feels that this is extremely unfair and that he is breaking the Laws of Marriage which is true but this clearly doesn't apply to Men. This would have been very shocking for an audience member to watch as the way in which Medea acts is a complete opposite to how the Women of Corinth were expected to Act, especially those in a Middle Class Society. For Medea to then do the things that she does to Jason like killing his new wife and The King, then to kill there're children would have been appalling for Men when they …show more content…
As Medea was originally performed in an Amphitheatre in Rehearsals for our Assessment, in order to get an idea of what it was like in Ancient Greece we performed ours from the courtyard from our classroom as this was roughly round about the same length the audience would be from the stage.
This meant that performances had to be done in the day as there was no electricity so they had to use natural light from the sun. In order to create an effective show the Actors who were all played by Men (even the women roles as it wasn't acceptable for women to play a part in Theatre), had to emphasise the way they did things so the expressions had to be times by 100 for them to fully understand what was going on even on the very top row, we learnt that this is called 'Hightened Gesture'. The Actors would also use their voices to their full potential as this was another way to get the point of the story across, while the female roles were played by men they didn't have to change the tone of their voice so would often use heightened gesture, female embodiments and characteristics to put across that they were playing a women; as it would lose the effect if the audience had to work out whose playing who and saying what. This shows how much times have changed
Euripides’s the famous Greek Play-Writer wrote ‘Medea’ and this is what our Historical Context has been based around. Wrote roughly around the Year 431/432 BC the modern adaptation by Tom Paulin was made in 2010 and is the one we have been studying this term, which uses the power to make the audience question their emotions and morals. The Festival of Dionysus was a great Competition were thousands of People would come to watch New Plays and Writers would gain acknowledgment for their work and more importantly they would honour Dionysus as he was the God of Fertility, Wine and Theatre. When Euripides's …show more content…
The Plays shows the extremity that men went to like Jason to gain power even if it meant he had to leave his wife and two children 'you bring destruction to your children and you bring agony to your bride' (Tom Paulin 2010), he even tells Medea that he isn't doing it because he loves Glauce he does it because he thinks it will be better for everyone and could even take Medea on as his Mistress; again this shows the way men were superior to women as they could get what they wanted and expected Women to grovel at their feet and go along with it. Any other women would go along with this which is why Medea is such a unique character because she feels that this is extremely unfair and that he is breaking the Laws of Marriage which is true but this clearly doesn't apply to Men. This would have been very shocking for an audience member to watch as the way in which Medea acts is a complete opposite to how the Women of Corinth were expected to Act, especially those in a Middle Class Society. For Medea to then do the things that she does to Jason like killing his new wife and The King, then to kill there're children would have been appalling for Men when they …show more content…
As Medea was originally performed in an Amphitheatre in Rehearsals for our Assessment, in order to get an idea of what it was like in Ancient Greece we performed ours from the courtyard from our classroom as this was roughly round about the same length the audience would be from the stage.
This meant that performances had to be done in the day as there was no electricity so they had to use natural light from the sun. In order to create an effective show the Actors who were all played by Men (even the women roles as it wasn't acceptable for women to play a part in Theatre), had to emphasise the way they did things so the expressions had to be times by 100 for them to fully understand what was going on even on the very top row, we learnt that this is called 'Hightened Gesture'. The Actors would also use their voices to their full potential as this was another way to get the point of the story across, while the female roles were played by men they didn't have to change the tone of their voice so would often use heightened gesture, female embodiments and characteristics to put across that they were playing a women; as it would lose the effect if the audience had to work out whose playing who and saying what. This shows how much times have changed