The blog is up

Ok. Its up now. I guess if this is supposed to be a record of the workshops and rehearsals, then we've got a little catching up to do. As a starting point, here are some points about the sort of work done thus far.

For this production we have taken some serious liberties with the original text. For example, the play's protagonist, Hecuba, has been replaced by a male figure, her husband, Priam. The motivating idea being that it is the king who has been left behind by the Greeks, after his wife, daughters and sons have been slaughtered before him. It is his punishment, that he should be left alone ammongst the burning ruins of his once great city. This may seem an odd decision to make, so i shall explain further. In ancient Greek social ritual it was the role of women to express grief on behalf of the community. Men, for the most part, did not participate. But what if there are no women left to enact the sacred rites? How is a king to grapple with the potentially self destructive excesses of grief? This question inspired the idea that Priam, in his traumatised delirium, dresses as Hecuba and assumes the role of the grieving mother. In order to give voice to his own painful losses, he channels his dead wife and summons the spirits of his fallen daughters.