Orestes by Euripides: Work on a psychophysical score
EPIDAVROS, GREECE, 2011
What follows is one example of work on a text through the psychophysical process of training: During September, 2011, I conducted a two week master-class and workshop on a short section of Elekra’s monologue from Euripides’ Hippolytus. After an initial three day intensive workshop that focused solely on the training, we began to apply the principles of the training to one passage of this classical Greek text. I worked with six actresses (four from Greece, one from Italy, one from Ireland) on the first strophe and part of the antistrophe (lines 958-971). The question was how to develop a ‘poetry of the psychophysical body’ when delivering this heightened classical text in ancient Greek—a language that is a foreign language to anyone, including Greeks, who have not studied ancient Greek. Building an embodied texture/fabric of activating images with the actors.
Phillip Zarrilli leads preliminary breathing exercises in the ancient theatre at Epidavros, 2011.
Eleana Georgouli working on Medea in Epidavros.
Process:
- Preliminary psychophysical training daily, as well as the introduction of vocal warm-ups using principles from the training.
- Work on text in the ancient, classical Greek which most Greeks today do not understand unless they have studied classical Greek. Therefore, this is like working in a foreign language for all involved.
- Work on structured improvisations and especially with activating images. This included seated structures: down left, ahead up, straight ahead with strong sense of behind…interrupted actions…impulse to do stopped and reduced…Reaching out…disrupted…etc.
- We then worked on each actress developing and constructing her own psychophysical score drawing on her psychophysical response to the images offered by Elektra’s monologue.
- Once the text was memorised in Greek, we worked with fragments of text once mouthed, whispered, voiced in fragments.
- A threnody of actions: breathing, head hung down on the verge of tears, seated…you ARE the cheek where the pale nails are placed…the feeling of the touch on the face…the loop back inside.
[Photos by Kaite O'Reilly, 2011]
Maria-Olga Athinaiou work on Medea in Epicavros.
[Photos by Kaite O'Reilly, 2011]
The eleven day workshop concluded in the Theatre in Epidavros where we went through the initial breathing exercises, as well as the taiqiquan, and then began a semi-structured sharing of what we had worked in this extraordinary space that speaks back to the actor and her energy.
