My Mind Baby

This first couple weeks of rehearsal have been very informative for me. I learned more about Greek Theater than I have in any of the Greek Theater camps I have been in. Greek theater is such a complex thing because it all connects. The first week, we weren’t working on my scene, so I took that rehearsal time to read the first play in the series of three. ANTIGONE is just the third play in a trilogy. I was interested because, in this play, it talks a lot about characters and past experiences that aren’t in the play. I wondered who they were, so I read the first play, and I realized that a mass majority of these characters are all in one family. So, to help me understand who is who, I made a family tree. It looks similar to this one.

I was confused, because according to the play, I am engaged to my cousin. So, I took my question to Vivian, and she has done a lot more research than I will even begin to do. This is just a little bit that I did to understand it, because I am not on dramaturgy, but I feel everybody should understand how their characters connect and relate to one another. Anyway, Vivian told me, that for the greeks, it was not unusual for cousins to marry each other. I did some research and it told me that they did this because they wanted to keep the royal blood in the family, but cousins were as close as they went (accept for the case of Oedipus, but that’s a different story) and this was usually an arranged marriage by the guardians. Each city had their own laws about marriage.

I think this story adaptation relates to me a lot. I think it would relate to any high school or jr. high student. The adaptation that was written I think specifically for STC kids. It covers everything from homeschoolers, to grades, to not understanding a script, and pizza. These are all things that STC kids deal with. We have homeschooled kids, we all have had our troubles with scripts, we all like pizza. There are  many other similarities in this, but you have to come see the show to see it. I hope you enjoy the show.

Travis Cooper

Hameon / Eddie / Lead set designer