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The Odyssey - improvised
Jan. 19th, 2014 04:08 pmWe had a great evening's entertainment on Tuesday, when we travelled to Peckham to see a very interesting production of The Odyssey.
There were eight actors - four men and four women - and the only props they had in an open area were hoops and sticks - oh, and a hat and scarf donated by the audience to denote Odysseus (they all played him at one time or another).
The play was separated into the twenty-four books of the poem, the theme and/or structure of each determined by an audience member pulling a pottery shard from a bowl and reading out what was written on it. Themes included "three word speech" (where the actors could only speak in three words at a time - very funny), "sing the book" (where all the dialogue was spontaneously sung), one where they did the whole book in Ancient Greek, one where they spent the whole book connected together by their sticks, etc, etc.
They had obviously rehearsed possible interpretations of each shard instruction, but had no way of knowing what order they would come out in, and it was all very impressive. They interspersed the traditional story with personal anecdotes that related to what was going on - and quintus_marcius posited at the interval that this was the equivalent of Homer's "as when" similes in which he related the story to aspects of farming/city life that would be familiar to his audience.
The whole thing was fantastic, and entirely down to the talent and preparation of the cast and writers, since there was no stage or set, and they managed to tell the story very successfully and emotively.
There were eight actors - four men and four women - and the only props they had in an open area were hoops and sticks - oh, and a hat and scarf donated by the audience to denote Odysseus (they all played him at one time or another).
The play was separated into the twenty-four books of the poem, the theme and/or structure of each determined by an audience member pulling a pottery shard from a bowl and reading out what was written on it. Themes included "three word speech" (where the actors could only speak in three words at a time - very funny), "sing the book" (where all the dialogue was spontaneously sung), one where they did the whole book in Ancient Greek, one where they spent the whole book connected together by their sticks, etc, etc.
They had obviously rehearsed possible interpretations of each shard instruction, but had no way of knowing what order they would come out in, and it was all very impressive. They interspersed the traditional story with personal anecdotes that related to what was going on - and quintus_marcius posited at the interval that this was the equivalent of Homer's "as when" similes in which he related the story to aspects of farming/city life that would be familiar to his audience.
The whole thing was fantastic, and entirely down to the talent and preparation of the cast and writers, since there was no stage or set, and they managed to tell the story very successfully and emotively.
