Thoughts on Fragmentation

As I considered how to properly fragment Euripides' text of Medea, I kept coming back to the idea of how outsiders view another persons life. I can experience, for example, who my mother is by watching what she's doing when they're in front of me, looking through trinkets she has kept, paging through photo albums, asking other people who know her in a different way about her or watching old home movies. All of these things add up to a varied and large amount of information, but I still really only know a fragment of her. It appears the best you can hope for in knowing anyone is just a larger fragment than most of the population get to see.

In adaptations, it seems like the author picks the fragment that they are most interested in addressing and run with it, even if it is a very large fragment, some aspect of the original will still be lost or modified beyond what it was originally. In a lot of adaptations, someone sees a fragment of something - feminism, gay culture, a lyrical dialogue that would translate well by turning the piece into a musical - and they go from there.

More than deciding on a specific textual theme, I want to play with the idea of fragmentation. Although, arguably, fragmentation is a theme within the text as Medea's life falls apart. The piece also shows her in clear fragments - lover, wife, mother, murderer, deceiver, betrayed, etc. Showing these multiple fragments in different ways, like talking to my mother, looking through her jewelry box, listening to stories from my grandmother and watching home videos of her growing up, help make a clear, although incomplete, vision of a person. My project is a fragment of the woman who became a monster.

Thoughts on Film Noir

Evidently, I'm not the only one who thinks Medea and film noir have something in common...

Thoughts on Choreography & Blocking

Below is the initial breakdown for the performance:

 

To the left is what will be occurring during the live portion of the performance, along with an estimate of the length of time each action will occur. To the right, in quotes, are portions of Euripides text that will be projected through the holes of Jessop West 1st Floor.  

A more detailed, but still very rough, sketching of how each of the scenes should run for the 3 live actors. 

A breakdown of what will be seen through each of the four holes in the Jessop West 1st Floor (and a picture that was the result of a very confusing conversation with Frances while we tried to clear up a simple misunderstanding).

Thoughts About Medea (Initial Reading)

-Many mentions of the Gods, what are they up to?
-Soap Opera-ish
-Turn of the century melodrama (i.e. Medea tied to the tracks w/ Jason standing over her.)
-Infanticide
-What other famous stories are there of women killing their children? (Ino)
-Darling Violetta "I Want to Kill You." Film Noir? Dance. Tableaux.

Film Noir --> "dreamlike, strange, erotic, ambivalent & cruel" like Medea. German Expressionism??

Something off and dreamlike - like Dr. Caligari.