Zahid

Sana Zahid
Mr. Needles
ADA 3M1
October 23rd, 2015
Greek Theatre Journal
My scene for this assignment was the final scene in Medea. I was the director of this
scene, and the actors were Caitlyn M., Laura F., and Emma A. In this scene, Medea reveals to
Jason that she has murdered their children after Jason comes looking for her. This scene is
absolutely one of the most important scenes in this play. It represents the climax of the play,
when Jason sees his dead children, and the conclusion when Medea leaves Jason alone.
During this scene, we see so much development of Medeas character, with how far she was
going just to get revenge on Jason. We see a cruel and apathetic side of her, while we see
Jason reduced to nothing.
The main conflict in this scene is between Jason and Medea. Jason was played by Emma,
while Medea was played by Caitlyn. To emphasize this conflict, I wanted to make sure that it
was extremely easy to see who was in control of the situation. I tried to do this using
blocking and levels. I made Medea be standing tall on the steps, while Jason was on his
knees for a majority of the scene. Medea is also standing very still, while Jason is moving a
lot more than her. I think that really represents the scene, as Medea is winning and extremely
indifferent now that she has her revenge, while Jason is literally on the floor, left with
nothing.
An important moment in this scene is when Jason sees the bodies of his children for
himself. After he sees the children, he collapses downstage center with grief, and begins to

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panic and scream at Medea. Jason is loud, while Medea keeps her cool and calmly explains
to Jason that it was all for revenge. While Medea is standing tall, Jason is on the floor, again
emphasizing the power dynamics. Another extremely significant moment in this scene is the
stichomythia between Jason and Medea near the end. When the stichomythia starts, Jason
stands up (however Jason did not remember to do this during final performance) and the
volume begins to increase between the two, until Medea abruptly cuts him off and leaves.
Throughout this, Medea is still quieter than Jason, and much calmer. When she cuts him off
and walks away without even looking back, it shows how apathetic and cruel she is even
after killing her own children.
My major purpose while directing this scene was to learn about one of the fundamentals
of drama. Greek theatre is extremely important in the theatre history, and once you
understand it, you will be able to better understand theatre as a whole. With this assignment,
we took one of the most important scenes, from one of the most important plays, and tried to
perform it in a way that would still be engaging for modern audiences. To try and do this, I
did take out, edit, and add lines. Jason had many lines that were super repetitive, and to keep
the audience interested, I took a lot of them out. With the script originally in being Greek,
some things sounded strange due to translation, and needed to be reworded as well.
Since the actors dont move on stage, this assignment really highlights the importance of
how lines are delivered, and how much small changes in voice can affect the overall tone of
that line. The scene only began to really take off once memorization was taken care of. After
that, we were able to experiment with the lines, and start to see the characters emerge.
Memorization did happen fairly quickly for my group, but characterization what definitely a
weak point for us. With Medea, it was very difficult to try and understand how somebody in

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her position would have been feeling, and we tried out several different approaches to her
character.
There were a lot of obstacles while trying to get this performance together. The biggest
probably being one of the actors taking offense whenever I asked her to do anything. Since
she was one of the main characters, it just made everything extremely difficult. Despite her
attitude, I remained patient, but I regret it now. I think that if I was a bit more strict about
doing the homework and practicing the lines, maybe she would have put more effort into the
assignment. Although she was going through some personal things at home, there were so
many opportunities for her to come to me for help, and when I did offer my help to go
through her lines with her, she ended up throwing the script in my face. During our final
performance, and the look at, she didnt follow any of the blocking, and skipped many lines,
which in turned messed up the other characters. I do think that this was a major factor when
looking at how our performance could have been better. While some members were
extremely dedicated and worked on their character every night, I still do need to be more
assertive and make sure that everyone is doing what is expected of them.
I do think that I was somewhat successful with this scene. There were definitely many
hiccups, and several things, such characterization and memorization of blocking and lines
could have used a lot of work, however as a director, I can only control the scene to a certain
extent. I did do what I could to try and do justice to this great scene, but at the end of the day,
I know it could have been much better.