Rehearsal last night...
Jun. 17th, 2004 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegee...went well. I'm starting to figure out some stuff with that monologue. Julie's direction has gotten better--she's asking some good questions, although I think her takes on characters can be a little simplistic. Menelaus and I have a good chemistry--I have tried openly appealing to him in some places, and at one point I knelt and took his hand and brushed it against my cheek. He took it from there and started playing with my hair as he listened to me. Later he was explaining it (maybe he thought I was annoyed), saying he wanted to show tenderness, and evoke the good times of their marriage, because we play it that even though Menelaus makes noise about killing Helen, it never happens (and of course all sources say Menelaus and Helen reconciled).
Interestingly, the introductory essay in the edition of The Trojan Women we're using (it's part of an anthology, including Andromache and Hecuba as well) talks about the Helen episode within the play, calling it "comedy within tragedy" and saying it doesn't work very well because it's a stylistic lapse. It is noticeably different from the rest of playing, which mostly consists of Hecuba and her entourage moaning about how everything sucks now that Troy has fallen, but I'm not sure I'd call it comic, except in a very classical sense.
Interestingly, the introductory essay in the edition of The Trojan Women we're using (it's part of an anthology, including Andromache and Hecuba as well) talks about the Helen episode within the play, calling it "comedy within tragedy" and saying it doesn't work very well because it's a stylistic lapse. It is noticeably different from the rest of playing, which mostly consists of Hecuba and her entourage moaning about how everything sucks now that Troy has fallen, but I'm not sure I'd call it comic, except in a very classical sense.
