BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO OLD STORIES

​Part of the joy of being a theatre maker on an archaeological dig is having the privilege of walking on the ground that you know artists from thousands of years ago also walked across.  This year I led sixteen intrepid archaeologists through a performance laboratory in order explore some of the stories related to the theatre and unlock their intuitive understanding of the space from the actor’s perspective.
 
After a full day digging and pot washing we did a gentle warm up

​and worked on some focus and breathing exercises

​This was also an opportunity for the participants to think about the ground they were lying on and how it was last used by actors in the 3rd Century AD.  Only 30 centimetres below where they were lying was the ground that actors of the Hellenistic era would have stood.  We don’t know what they were thinking or speaking but we certainly knew that they took the time to concentrate on their breath and speech.

​Exploring the language of the plays that were heard in the theatre was the next step in our process.  We looked at Seamus Heaney’s play Burial at Thebes which is a modern transposition of Sophocles Antigone.  At the time our theatre was in operation Antigone was already a classic, it was consistently performed in antiquity and later became a text that was studied by students in ancient Alexandria, which is how it has survived to us in the modern world.
 
As well as going through the given circumstances of the play, we used the language to explore the sounds, echoes and texture of the words in the space that hasn’t been used as a theatre for over 1700 years.

​To experience of speaking and hearing the heightened language of a family in crisis, a leader of state being challenge by a young woman, a sister in distress, and many other scenarios from the play was deeply thought provoking.

We were also lucky enough to receive insight from Fiona Press, an actor currently appearing in Sport for Jove’s Antigone.
http://www.sportforjove.com.au/theatre-play/antigone
​

We have just returned from a short but successful season in Canberra and next we will be performing in the Lennox Theatre at Riverside, Parramatta. The critical and audience response has been universally rapturous, which is a wonderful thing for an actor to experience, especially for a new Australian work. Adaptor and co-director Damien Ryan has taken the risk of creating a world for this Antigone that is both modern and ancient; our Thebes is a contemporary Greece but, at the same time, we refer to 'the gods’ and the ancient burial rituals. We use an Australian vernacular alongside more formal poetic constructions. Wonderfully, this has the effect of allowing a contemporary audience to feel their own world inside that of Sophocles. The set reminds us of Aleppo but our enemy is Argos. Unusually for a modern adaptation, it includes a chorus (I play the leader). Discovering how to conjure the right mix of distance and involvement with the action and of unified and individual responses has been challenging but really rewarding now that’s truly organic. It’s a thrilling thing to feel yourself breathe, speak, move and feel alongside nine other actors and know that you are utterly in tune with each other. Our gratitude and wonder belongs to Sophocles, the originator - those ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about being human that I think we have forgotten in the 2500 years since. It’s time we re-learnt from them. Leaders of democracies everywhere would do well to listen to the lesson of this play.

​Her thoughts resonated deeply, especially whilst sitting in a theatre only 700km from Aleppo (less than the distance between Sydney and Byron Bay).

​We then turned to a very famous play set in Cyprus that is the same age to audiences today as Antigone was to the audiences who attended performances in the theatre at Paphos – Shakespeare’s Othello.  Our team was brave and clear and extended themselves to speak and listen to blank verse as well as prose.

We were also incredibly fortunate to receive some thoughts from actor Ray Chong Nee who is currently playing the title role in Bell Shakespeare’s Othello at the Sydney Opera House
https://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/whats-on/othello-1/
​

Othello is complex...is it relevant? What does it have to say? Why should I as a coloured person want to perform a play about a coloured person written by a white man 400 years ago?
Myriad of answers flood to mind, and to be honest many more questions follow.
 
I think the point is, look around you (and I mean really look) and for every 'Othello' there are just as many 'Iago's'. Just as there are 'Desdemona', and 'Emilia', and 'Bianca'. 
 
We tell these stories as warnings and to create discussions that move humanity forward. That's part of my path in this production, as it is my calling in future productions of such tragedy. 

As Ray eloquently states, we do tell stories to create discussions that move humanity forward.  What was surprising about our laboratory was how old the stories and ideas were and yet how completely modern and relevant they felt.  Cyprus is on the other side of the globe to Australia an yet here we were, sharing ideas and stories that are playing out on the stage in Australia as well as having been played out on our theatre stage thousands of years ago.
 
 
People often tend to think of archaeological sites as ‘dead places’ – simply ruins detached from people.  But they are not.  An ancient theatre like this one in Paphos was full of life in antiquity – an excited audience and brave and nervous performers.  During the laboratory it was easy to imagine the hushed breaths and pearls of laughter from the audience echoing across the theatre space. Each participant got to experience being the performer as well as the spectator. A performance laboratory such as this gives an opportunity to experience the archaeological site of a theatre as it was intended to be used in antiquity – to tell stories that explore the very nature of what it means to be a human.

Fiona Hallenan-Barker
​theatre director and archaeoholic