Question A – What is the social, historical and cultural background to the text ?!?
The Social, Historical and Cultural background of the text stems from many different sources. One of them is the historical story from the Iliad of Homer, who was a poet. This is the skeleton for the play as it features the exact names (i.e Achilles,Brisies) and much much more of the story. However the playwright had wanted his story to be unique and had benefited from the corruption in Palestine as it is partly similar to Homers Iliad.
Brian Woolland had worked as a van driver and a wine merchant slash photographer, As a teacher in mainstream education and in a therapeutic community for maladjusted adolescents before becoming an Advisory Teacher for Drama. He had used ‘The Iliad’ as the skeleton of his story, It had previewed in Ramallah, Palestine on eighth of May 2014; and opened in Battersea, London, on nineteenth of May. The play was co-produced by London based Border Crossings and Ashtar Theatre of Ramallah, Palestine. The writer or playwright constructed this surrounding a genre of Love and corruption, a lot like Shakespeare etc.
As I have said The Iliad had been the back-bone of the story and had been written more than 2,700 years ago by a Greek Poet of the name Homer. It had been a story sung by travellers as a sort of nursery-rhyme fashion. Homer had latter written it down in his latter life between 750 BC and 650 BC. He may have done this as a way of preserving the story. It is said to had picked up on the last and tenth year of the Trojan war.
I have chosen my two selected scenes because the first scene, is not very physical as to showing different emotions on the characters faces. Whereas scene 10 is an assortment yet it has the most physicality in the play. These two scenes would possibly show my versatile attributes when acting. Such as I can be strong with my emotions as I am physical. The scenes also follow after each over so they become almost one scene.
The story focuses on the Greatest Greek warrior, Achilles. He was possibly a myth that was seemingly invincible because his mother had been a nymph and dipped Achilles when he was a child into a magical cauldron. making his skin impenetrable. However on his transition between immortality and mortality, his mother had left his ankles bare, resulting in that being his sole weakness, and what is today his “Achilles Heel”. However I believe that love is also one of his weaknesses as we can see with his relationship with Brisies and his ultimate demise.
The Trojan war is a myth, which means it could or could not have happened and because it is mostly fiction as there is no actual proof of its existence, there is a lot of space for trial and error. As the Iliad takes place during the end of the war, the Greeks are camped outside the walls of troy. Although it is not the end of the Palestinian conflict there is both a wall separating the two sides.
The Israel and Palestine conflict stems from After World War One in which Palestine had been administered by the United Kingdom under a Mandate received in 1922 from the League of Nations. A mandate is an order or even commission. to do something. The modern history of Palestine begins with the termination of the British Mandate, the Partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel, and the ensuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Since then Israel has been taking more and more Palestinian land, to the extent that Palestinians are fighting for their own country back. I believe or can even concur that the Trojans are the Israelis and the Greeks are the Palestinians.
My character Achilles, In the play is a troubled and miss Interpreted individual in which is faced with both physical and mental issues/problems. Although the”Greeks Hero” is said to be bullet-proof, he seamlessly dodges physical altercations and puts others in the line of fire. The symbolic item that I have chosen are 2 dice in which symbolize Achilles’ frustration with choices and how they are neither up to him or to Agamemnon but either Fate or Even above the heavens. This also symbolizes gambling which can mean that the choices he makes are always gambling the fate of others and of those around him. I had used some of the techniques induced by Stanislavsky’s “Method Acting and I had done this by watching movies with characters like him and imagining how he would feel and act in to certain situations.
Patroclus is a good example of this as he was killed in battle by Hector. The plan was that Achilles would dress Patroclus as himself and send him into battle so that he would not need to fight. And because Patroclus is now deceased and the result is that Achilles feels like he has failed his beloved friend as he was blind to see that in his fight against the fate of war and battle, his mortal friend had died pretending to be immortal. This clearly angers Ajax and those who had known of Patroclus’ lie, as we can see in the picture above. Gabriel who had played “Ajax” is seen emitting the body language for disgust towards Achilles’ actions.
One of the scenes that I had taken part in, was Scene 9 in which Ajax and Achilles meet up for a coffee to talk about current affairs and gossip etc. In the scene Achilles explains his plans to make a seemingly easy extraction of Helen in the amidst of Troy. Ajax, throughout, questions the veracity of his orders and Achilles is always quick to snap-back with a response. However he slips up by admitting his love for Brisies, and Ajax is soon to figure out that Achilles is head over heels (Pardon the pun) for Brisies and that he could also be the father of her unborn child. As Ajax interrogates Achilles on his new found information, he starts to tense up and feel uncomfortable. Then snap from a calm and collective individual to an angry adolescent man who’s feelings even he, himself cannot control. He professes her undoubted love for her and storms off in a fit off rage. Phoenix stops him in his midst by asking him a question. “You heard about Priam?”. and Achilles replies with a frosty “what”. At this moment his heart sinks and his blood pressure seems to increase. from the ears in which he hears the word “dead”. He remembers back when Priam had caught him dragging the corpse of Hector through the sandy gravel on his motorbike. Even thoe Priam had known what defile things Achilles had done, he still pleaded with him for the body of what used to be Hector, and Achilles agreed and also shook on a ceasefire, which obviously now had a few chinks in the chain as Agamemnon presumably attacked Priam’s headquarters none the less. So he stands there in a eerie silence. Thinking. His mind goes blank. Then all of a sudden it is as-if his mind knows what it wants and he marches onwards towards the next scene.
The second scene in which I also play Achilles is Act 2 Scene 10 (The Finale) in which Achilles arrives at his battle-worn apartment to witness the wife of his enemy sat right next to the mother of his child. At first he is confused as to why she is here but then thinks in his head that there wont be time for an argument or even a conversation as he is simply about to whisk his beloved Briseis to the airport, no questions asked. However while he was on his way to the apartment, Hecuba had been “poisoning” or changing Briseis’ opinion on whether she should leave troy, her home country or stay where she is apparently needed. At this point Achilles is fuelled with frustration and has a high-octane argument with Hecuba. He pushes her to the ground yet in the red wave of his anger is blind to see the puddle on the floor and twists his ankle. This is a key point in the play as when Achilles is originally shot in the ankle he dies and in the play it almost was foreshadowing what would happen next. Brisies decides that she would want to stay in Troy and this anger Achilles so much for the reason that Hecuba has ruined his entire plan and that it had not been easy and he put himself under a lot of stress to get her the things that she had needed to get out of here. He calms his voice and acts as-if everything will be ok and that it couldn’t get any worse than this. A few moments later the car explodes and he is obviously engulfed in the flames and killed instantly. If someone like the viewer does not know the original story then they will find it abrupt. His simple quick death shows how War cannot be stopped and no matter how hard Achilles tried, fate prevailed.
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