[dynamic string music]
- I'm Lucy Jackson, Assistant Professor
in Ancient Greek Literature.
- I'm Erin Lee, Head of Archive at the National Theatre.
- In this series of films, Erin and I will
be looking at some of the Greek tragedies that
have been staged at the National Theatre.
Using the records held in the theatre's archive as a
starting point, we'll look at the practicalities of staging an
ancient Greek play in a modern theatre building.
- The archive is home to thousands of items, from photographs
to prompt scripts, technical drawings to set models
dating all the way back to our opening night in 1963.
Every production has left behind some traces
of the multiple artistic choices and practical considerations
that go into making a performance.
- By exploring these plays as staged productions,
rather than as pieces of literature,
we begin to see these ancient works in a new light.
Going behind the scenes of the productions makes us ask
fresh questions about why these plays
and their myths are still relevant today.
- One of the most famous of the Greek plays,
Sophocles' ''Antigone'', was staged at the National Theatre in 2012,
directed by Polly Findlay and translated by Don Taylor.
- Simple yes or no.
Did you hear of my order forbidding the burial?
- Of course I heard it.
How could I not?
- And yet you dared to disobey the law.
- Yes, I did.
Because it's your law, not the law of God.
Natural justice, which is of all
times and places numinous, not material.
Equality of Zeus, not of kings, recognises no such law.
You are merely a man.
Mortal like me in the laws you enact
cannot overturn ancient moralities, or common human decency.
[mysterious music]
- How productions are staged and where they're set
is worked out by the director
in close collaboration with the designer.
The designer for ''Antigone'' was Soutra Gilmore.
- Something that audiences may have noticed as soon as
they entered the auditorium was how the set blended
with the architecture and style of the Olivier Theatre
and the National Theatre building itself.
Early on in the rehearsal process, the full cast and crew
are briefed on ideas for the production's design.
In this brief, we saw how there was a
clear aim to blur the boundary between the stage
and auditorium, using the same carpet for both
and having the same purple colour as the audience's seats
for a number of the onstage chairs.
The concrete effect used for the set blended
with the concrete of the Olivier walls.
Audiences may not have been consciously aware of
this mirroring of stage and auditorium, but the
subtle elements of the design bring the audience
right inside the action to play.
- At the very beginning of the play, the whole cast
gathers around a table and reacts to
a series of events shown on a screen.
Audiences were directed to compare this onstage tableau with
an image of the US President in 2011, Barack Obama
and several members of the US government reacting
to the military operation to assassinate Osama bin Laden.
The prompt script outlines the detailed direction given
to each actor in order to mirror this precise photo.
- While some elements of the staging were very contemporary,
there were other elements that located the action
of the play a little further back in history.
In an interview, Poly Findlay talks about wanting
to create a more indeterminate setting.
She says, ''Any immediately recognisable setting makes us
look at the play in close-up, when
we need to be able to see it in widescreen.''
- The production files hold numerous documents and images
which would have inspired the design team,
but also helped the cast too.
A series of shots from the film
''The Lives of Others'', set in 80's East Berlin,
were pinned up on the rehearsal room walls.
A document that gives us a list of questions for Soutra,
gives us a glimpse into the process
of building up this evocative, but non-specific setting.
The kind of newspapers the cast will use
on stage should be 70s, Russian or DDR.
That's the German Democratic Republic, but it's also specified
that there be no dates on the prop newspapers.
We even find some examples of these in the Props Bible.
- In creating this undefined setting on stage, this production
of ''Antigone'' recreates how it was
for an ancient Greek audience to be watching the play.
Myth for the ancient Greeks existed in
a kind of undefined past.
A world where different time periods were blurred together.
The open space of the ancient Greek theatre,
a model that was the inspiration for the Olivier Theatre itself,
also encouraged a blurring between the world of
the play and the world of the audience.
We can see the same balance of
fluid setting and the blurring between audience and actors
in this production of ''Antigone''.
- Costume was of great importance in ancient Greek theatre
and although none of these costumes have survived,
the resources of the National Theatre Archive
allow us to examine contemporary decisions about costume,
helping us to understand a play like Sophocles' ''Antigone''
on its feet and in technicolour.
- In this production of ''Antigone'', all of the costumes fit
the 20th and 21st-century setting,
with those worn by women, more obviously in line with
a Cold War, Central European look.
The dress worn by the actor Jodie Whittaker,
paired with ankle socks and lace-up shoes,
highlights the youth of the character of Antigone.
It's very feminine, girly even.
It is not, perhaps, what we
might expect a rebel to wear.
A second version of the dress - a broken down version,
was worn after Antigone has buried her brother.
It may not have been visible to most of the audience,
but the scenes have been stressed
and the front and sleeves are covered in dirt.
The change in costume gives us
a sense of what has happened offstage.
She has had to bury her brother on her own,
and the dress shows how physically demanding,
how hard and grubby the task has been.
She's a different person now.
- In a number of the production stills
we see Antigone in a different dress,
and the rehearsal notes referred to this as a wedding outfit.
This links back to an important motif of marriage in Sophocles' play.
Antigone was meant to be marrying Haemon.
She was meant to be looking forward
to a happy future as his wife.
But now, that life is being cut short,
Wearing a wedding dress for her execution creates
a grimly, ironic association between marriage and death.
By the time the production was filmed, however,
it seems like this particular costume was swapped out
for the baggy cloth dress we see her in here.
There aren't any indications as to why the wedding outfit
didn't end up being used in the production.
Did the baggy dress create more
sympathy for the character of Antigone?
We're left to think about why such a decision was made.
[disturbing echoes and growls ]
- The entrance of Tiresias - a blind, truth-telling prophet
and the boy that leads him is
a strange and striking moment in this production.
In looking at the records held by the archive,
we see how the team focused on
creating a particular vision of these two characters.
Early on in the rehearsals, the creative team
were researching the kind of injury that might
have occurred in a 20th century conflict.
These wounds and injuries all had to be workshopped.
They eventually decided on creating the effect
of an acid burn for Tiresias.
The team had to go to
considerable lengths to create the impression
Tiresias' companion had either lost their hair
or had had their head shaved.
Bald caps had to be fitted to each actor.
One of the children had had
allergic reactions to glue in the past
and so, with the permission of his parents,
ended up shaving his head for the production.
Without these notes, we might never
have appreciated the practical and ethical
challenges involved in staging this scene.
Along with the acid burn and the shaved heads, these
braces for a leg and an arm worn by the boy
add to the impression that the people of Thebes
have suffered catastrophically in the recent conflict.
When Tiresias and the boy come on stage,
we are confronted with the results of
a horrific conflict in the outside world.
Such a stark image reminds us of the recent war
and gives some license to Creon
in his harsh punishment of Antigone.
One of the unique features of ancient Greek drama
and something that always presents a bit of a challenge,
or an opportunity for modern
theatre-makers and theatre-goers, is the chorus.
- In many ways this production presents us with a
very classic Greek chorus, but at the same time
does something quite modern and different with it.
In ancient Greek drama, the chorus was
made up of 12 to 15 male performers
with a single collective identity.
They would have moved, spoken and sung in unison,
at least for some of the time.
In the large theatre spaces of ancient Greece,
it would have been very difficult to distinguish
between individual members of the chorus,
not least because they would have been wearing masks.
In this production of Antigone, the chorus are all male
and are all working in the same space and towards
the same goal, maintaining the government of Thebes
in the wake of the Civil War, but in a way that is
very different to ancient Greek theatre practice.
Each member of this chorus is an individual
with their own character title, their own backstory, and they
move independently in accordance with their different jobs.
This was an approach to staging the chorus
that the director, Polly Findlay,
had already worked out ahead of rehearsals,
as we can see from this email sent to the chorus.
The rehearsal notes held by the archive
show that the actors in the chorus took the
development of their individual characters very seriously.
The actor Jason Cheater requests some real-life electrical equipment
that he, as janitor, can be tinkering with, while
Michael Grady Hall as office boy, requests a water dispenser
or water bottles so that he can perform
one of his tasks keeping people hydrated.
One member of the chorus, Stavros Demotraki, even
developed his own filing system in line with
his role as archivist. In the Props Bible,
there are some of the archivist labels too.
Watching the production, it's possible we may not
even notice how much is going on.
Here Stavros examining some photo negatives ready for filing,
while Kobna Holdbrook-Smith performs
one of his coral odds.
In a way, the archive reveals aspects
that we might not have realised
just watching the production, we can see all
this extremely realistic detail and action with each
member of the chorus developing their own office space
and their own internal world.
- There's a phrase coined by the philosopher Hannah Arendt,
'the banality of evil', that just keeping your head down and
doing your job without thinking about the consequences
is how a lot of evil is achieved in the world.
The tragedy of this play is that the deaths
of Antigone, Haemon and Eurydice could have been prevented.
Thebes could have had a just and fair ruler.
And while Creon bears the ultimate responsibility,
he has been supported and helped throughout
by this chorus of office workers as they stamp their files,
collect their samples and gather intelligence on
unsuspecting members of the public.
Every member of this group contributes
towards the play's horrific end.
The naturalistic approach to the chorus is more
than just busy work or a way for
each actor to feel connected to their character.
The relatability of office work means that we,
as the audience, question the moral dilemma of the play.
What are we helping?
What are we bearing witness to?
Would we have done any different in their place?
The question of how an ensemble is different
to a chorus is always tricky to define.
There is a lot of overlap in
how different theatre practitioners use these terms.
In this production, we see that the chorus are
all men and have the coral lines divided up amongst them.
However, the boundaries are blurred.
Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is listed as messenger,
not as chorus, even though he acts as part
of the chorus of men throughout the production
and also speaks some of the Chorus' lines.
Two female actors, Emily Glenister and
Joe Dockery, are listed under ensemble.
Similar to the members of the chorus, they have
their individual job titles and sets of activities.
In this production, there weren't any clear
lines between cast, ensemble and chorus.
This was probably the result of needing to
have actors on standby in case some speaking
characters fell ill during the run.
Jo and Emily, for example, were
understudies for the three other female roles
of Ismene, Eurydice and Antigone.
It's interesting to think about how these
sorts of distinctions are worked out
or maybe ignored in the rehearsal room.
Does it matter if you're in the
company, the chorus or the ensemble?
Creating an effective ensemble requires the cast to have a
bond with one another and the archived materials show us
that this was built up on research trips to places
like the Churchill War Rooms and to the secret nuclear
bunker at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex.
In the rehearsal diaries, we also glimpse some of
the exercises the whole cast took part in.
There's a lovely detail here about Christopher Eccleston, who
played the main role of Creon, taking part in these
improvisation exercises, exploring the role of someone
in charge of pest control in the bunker.
This seems to be an important part of
thinking about ensemble, breaking down the usual hierarchies
of who's playing the main roles.
- The time spent on exercises and trips to
build a sense of ensemble becomes visible in
the smooth but meticulously choreographed way that the
actors all move around each other,
in what Polly Findlay describes as
a kind of 'office ballet'.
Achieving this smoothness meant that the right kinds
of props had to be available in rehearsals
to assist with creating and practicing this choreography.
We even find requests for chairs, drawers and other furniture units
to be put on wheels to help with this.
The mocked up set in rehearsal allows the cast to hone
the complex choreography of the piece, reminding us that a
play is more than just its main characters.
The ensemble activity in this production
provides a significant counterbalance to the
central conflict between Creon and Antigone.
The National Theatre Archive really is
a unique resource that allows you to get
up close to all these incredible productions
and explore new interpretations of classic texts.
- If you want to come down and see
any of this content for yourself, then feel
free to contact us via our website.