Our initial process began with Rasa work, based on director, Ulla Neuerburg-Denzer’s PhD study of emotion. The exercise is founded on the Sanskrit belief that there are 9 basic emotions all human beings experience and that all other emotions grow from their roots. They are:

Shanta – Bliss, oneness
Karuna – Grief, compassion
Sringara – Love (brotherly, sexual, etc)
Raudra – Anger
Vira – Power
Adbhuta – Awe, wonder
Bibhasta – Disgust
Hasya – Laughter
Bahayanaka – Fear

Working from the ground up, the actors have found context in which their characters can experience and feel these emotions and furthermore start to discover the movements and physicality that best expresses their specific characters.

The excitement surrounding the City of Wine festival seems to be growing more and more each day as we move closer to the finish line. Looking forward to the shows! More posts soon!

Hayley Lewis

’til soon
Ned

-River of blood
-Plague
-disease
-media and how it makes us see truth
-dissecting truth from a scientific perspective
-trash
-media taking over the world

We also read through the Second Act and answered some pronunciation questions.

Tonight, I had another opportunity to attend the rehearsals (unfortunately without Brian) and got a preview of the costume design by Phil Kadawaki. Phil’s designs was inspired from a photo of a crying child in quarantine from a plague in Russia.

The costume designs are Roman and Greek inspired but very contemporary. Some of the wardrobe pieces are made from scratch but others are pulled from Concordia’s wardrobe and transformed by adding fabric with folds (reminiscent of Greek drapery). All the costumes are thick textured with the color palette of blue, red, brown and grey. The actors will be wearing coats (long and short) and shawls which will help them cover up and protect themselves
from the plague. The idea of this outer layer will also help with the transformations when the Unnamed will need to operate video or help with scene changes.

Ulla, the director, also started working on the beginning of Act 1 and for the most part, the actors were working off book. The actors started to improvise the crowd scenes and sculpt the image of the crowd while working the moments in the scene. It was incredible to see so many people on stage.

Q#3) From your point of view, how does blindness work in this play?

R#3) In Ned Dickens’ fifth and darkness play of City of Wine, blindness works on a multifaceted level as it describes many forms of blindness, metaphorical and otherwise. There is, of course, the obvious physical blindness of the seer Tiresias, Firewood, and Oedipus at the end of the play, but their affliction seems to bring them more insight and mental clarity. Tiresias, although blind, has the potent power of prophesy and can see all threads of time before him while remaining in perpetual darkness. For Firewood, one of the Unnamed, her blindness shields her from the gruesome sight of Thebes and forces her to rely on other senses; thus, at the opening scene when she is stealing firewood from Water’s dilapidated tavern, she chooses to stay with Water after she recognizes her kind voice, which she may have been deaf to if she still relied on her sight. The physical disadvantage of Firewood’s blindness is also reversed in the play, as her low, needy state binds her to Parent, who, after recently losing her children, finds purpose in helping the disabled Firewood. The third and most grim case of blindness in the play presents itself with Oepidus who tears out his eyes after realizing the horror of the fulfilled prophesy. Again, however, blindness seems to offer some form of solace or mental reawakening as if sight blocked the characters off from actually seeing the truth. After Oedipus loses his sight, he remarks in retrospect, “My life has been a flight away from this. One eye across my shoulder, watching for any sign that this approached, I stumbled and fell here” (55); thus, seeing for Oedipus worked inversely as it blinded him from the underlying evidence that was present all along. Blindness also manifests purely in a metaphorical sense other than Oedipus, as the remaining Thebans fight amongst themselves and lose their sense of humanity. One example of this is seen with the young prisoner that is brought forth to the king for justice. Before he receives a just trial, the youth is brutally murdered by the townsfolk in their bestial thirst for vengeance, whereupon Cloth realizes that the youth was innocent. Provoked by the severity of their destitution, the Thebans lost their true sense of justice and, in a sense, were blinded.

Q#4) How does ritual work in this play?

R#4) Given the rampant disease, destruction, and darkness of Thebes, rituals act as one of the sole forces binding the town together. Although the tavern is practically nonexistent, the remaining Unnamed emerge from the shadows to form a circle, a traditional sign of rituals, around the dwindling embers of the fire. Whenever wine is produced as well, whether from some secret stash or from the dead, the Unnamed all share the wine and even give a toast to Bacchus at one point. The sacrifice of the bulls too by Mantos and Creon’s visits to the Oracle of Delphi are also the rituals that persist during the dark time. The significance of the all these rituals is the sense of stability and continuity they provide for the citizens of the devastated town. After almost everything is lost, the Thebans can still rely on the traditional rituals to bind them together and offer a glimmer of hope in their splintered world.

Until today’s reading of Oedipus, I had always read for Bowl as our workshop made its way through the cycle of plays. For me, it has been easy to see that Bowl was an outspoken drunkard who is still capable of insights after a night of heavy drinking. I read the first four plays from Bowl’s perspective. Today I read for Blood. As disappointed as I was to not be reading for Bowl, I was able to see into the world of Thebes much better and without the same slant I had from the beginning. Observing the other unNamed from a new perspective allowed me to see that Blood is indeed an instigator of rowdiness and aggression. We see his short temper and mild insolence when he gets angry at the king for forfeiting his throne to the Old Man who insists to be seated before continuing his story. Perhaps I’ll have to read the plays as a different character to gain more insight into each of them.

How does blindness work in this play?

There are obviously a few different ways for blindness to have its go in Oedipus. The Old Man’s blindness allows for increased tension in the plot; if he cannot identify the right shepard, then Oedipus can never interrogate the right witness, and the mystery of Laius’ death will remain unsolved and unsolvable. Tiresias, who unlike Oedipus is physically blind and completely aware of the truth, is forced to impart some of his insights to Oedipus quite against his will. He is the blind (physically) leading the blind (in terms of awareness). Oedipus is blind to the truth, to his history, to the dangers of his overwhelming desire to make things right, and in the end, he blinds himself so he doesn’t have to bear witness to all of the results that his good-intentioned decisions incurred.

I agree with Mike that ritual is used as a crutch in Thebes. From the opening of the play, we see that it has become ingrained in the Theban culture, when the presence of a fire automatically suggests ritual “What fire is this? [...] Sacrifice or funeral?” Rituals are automatically called upon to find information (two trips to the oracle, and the bull sacrifice). At the first gathering at the public square, the people are eager to convict the youth found scrounging through the neighbour’s house, as a symbolic gesture to purify Thebes from foreign influence, the perceived cause of the plague. This suggests their reliance and tendency towards ritual as a means of expressing the needs of their society.

It is very obvious to me for the first time in Oedipus since we have been studying these plays in class that Parent is a Parent. We become aware at the beginning of the play that during the plaque Parent’s children have been taken away from her because they are ill and she wants to see them. This is directly made aware to us when Parent says at the beginning of Act I “My children, infants both, were taken away yesterday.” Parent is not herself ill but wants to see her children within the Theatre walls. She pleads with Oedipus to be granted permission to see them and says “I beg permission to go to the stage. To see my babies die. To hold them at the end and give them this. (a simple doll)” She feels compassion for her children as any parent would and it is demonstrated thru her actions and words that her children are the most important people to her. Her love for her children is admired and recognized by Oedipus and Jocasta when they grant her permission to see them and Oedipus says to her “I applaud you” and Jocasta replies “A parent’s love is tutor to a king”.

BLADE: Many of Blade’s first lines are questions, it soon becomes clear though that Blade is bloodthirsty and quick to judge. More than judge, he/she is quick to unsheathe her own blade, and willing to find any excuse to do so whether or not she truly cares for the cause. Blade is quick to insite violence, but once it turns on him/her he/she is quick to turn tail and flee.

BOWL: He still has the love of wine that we have come to expect, though little else seems to remain from our previous experiences with Bowl. In Oedipus Bowl is a morose character, rarely providing the humorous lines we have grown to anticipate from him. When we first meet him we are introduced to the fact that he wished to simply die because at least then he could rest, though when the first opportunity arises (when blade attacks him) he defends himself and gets help, obviously wanting to live more than he thought. He is quick to leap to the worst possible conclusion (“The king is gone? Fled. sick and dying, or already dead. The king is gone! All hope is gone! Thebes is no more!!”)

4. How does ritual work in this play?

Ok… why does Tiresias, as a seer, need to sacrifice a bull. Graunted I have done little research on the matter… but, one would think that, gifted with sight he would find little use in the second hand images of a dead bull. Seers, in my knowledge often partake in rituals (such as tossing bones), but it is because when they look at the bones they SEE something else entirely. I don’t understand what he could possibly get from a description of the entrails. I much preferred the other version of Oedipus’ Tiresias – The snarky one who knows more than he wants to. That is the Tiresias that strikes my fancy. So. In order to answer the question of how ritual works in this play.
Badly.
It was exceptionally gory, which I enjoyed, but seemed almost as an unnecessary interlude. It was just, → ‘oh, lets sacrifice something to find an answer! (why would that help?) → goregoregore (oh my…) → oh! The blood tells me we have to visit death! (whaa?) → Yay! Now lets confuse everyone with some poetic words about some strange ritual (ok… what just happened?) → and poof! We have possession!
Though we can glean that obviously the sacrifice was abnormal, the text gives no explination of the findings – Only another task. Then they have a barbecue.
And then I am confused again.

4)How does ritual work in this play?
One of the reoccurring rituals through the City of Wine plays is the ritual of drinking and raising cups to honour Bacchus (The Bacchanalia). Even though the town is practically out of wine and there is a drought so that even water is scarce, they drink to forget their present situation and as bottle says “All drink all that remains and hope to drown in memories.” (29). Through the ritualized drinking of wine, their hope is to escape the chaotic and desperate state that Thebes is in, and transport themselves to the earlier times that they remember, when Thebes was a great city.
Another ritual that we noticed in Oedipus is the ritual of sacrifice. When Tiresias comes to Oedipus and Jocasta to tell them the name of Laius’ killer, he says that a sacrifice must first be made. They slaughter a bull and a heifer: “We juggle shadows in the darkness yet. We have no substance to construct a name. We must perform a sacrifice. A noble bull, all white, and tall, as well a heifer never yoked.” (24). The bull is stabbed many times and yet does not die immediately but goes wild and restless, Oedipus and Manto (Tiresias daughter who happens to be a priestess) interpret this as a bad omen.

In “Oedipus” the unnamed do not serve nearly as large a role as they did in the previous plays. However, there are still many characteristics present that allow us to know that they are each their own distinct characters. I chose to look at “Water”. The character of Water is truly a kind soul. Throughout the entirety of the play Water continuously uses the word “friend”. He/She also invites everyone to join together and speak. Water even offers his/her last bit of water in the beginning of the play. Water is the kind of person who wishes no ill on anyone and only desires to someday have a town that is free from strife and where they can all live happily and healthy. He/she would willingly give all that he/she has to help others.