Thursday, January 26, 2006
1/26/2006 02:41:00 PM - Links
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
1/25/2006 11:56:00 PM - A Close Encounter with...
Now that I had finish reading “Antigone” for the second time, I would like to share my first time. When I first flip the first few pages of the play “Antigone”, a thought past through my mind “Great, I’m going to have a hard time understanding this!!!” Indeed my first thoughts were not wrong. I m not saying that I couldn’t understand a single thing mentioned in the text, I just had difficulties. Some of the sentence structures were way to confusing for me and so are some of the words. Thank God I managed to finish reading the whole play without dozing off.(It was a miracle!!..=P) I had read another Greek play prior to reading “Antigone”. It was Oedipus and one thing I noticed in both plays is that the Chorus tends to have very long utterances.long winded! And most of the time, the language used is weird, and worst; sometimes I couldn’t even see the relationship with the rest of the play.(pity me...sob...sob) Anyone agree with me? One thing for sure, “Antigone” is an interesting play with issues worth discussing. Perhaps I’ll do just that in my next posting. Anyway, I m just sharing my experience while reading “Antigone” for the first time.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
1/15/2006 12:35:00 AM - Oedipus...
I had just finished reading my first Greek play, Oedipus the King. It is the prequel to the play Antigone but it was written after it. Kind of similar to Star Wars, don’t you think so? Was George Lucas a fan of Sophocles? Anyway, as I finished the play, I couldn’t help but notice that Sophocles seems to focus on the element of curse in this play. Even a king like Oedipus eventually bows down to his very own curse, which I think is quite sad because I strongly believe that one can still change the course of life although one might have been cursed. Of course, we cannot escape death. In the play, we read how Oedipus curses the murderer before discovering that he was the one. I thought that he would ignore the curse and get on with his life, but instead he did the unthinkable. He decided that he will accept the punishment he had said earlier. He blinded himself. Heartbreaking. To me, he could have just walk away from it but it didn’t happen. If the story of Oedipus really did happen, I would admire Oedipus for his courage and honesty but at the same time, I would say that he is rather foolish to end the good things that he had just because of a curse.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
1/10/2006 08:23:00 PM - Touching the surface....
In the first two weeks of lectures, I was introduced to the historical overview of drama. I would have to say that what I learnt was really an eye opener. It seems that Greek writers such as Aristotle has greatly influenced generations of playwrights after him including the Roman theatre which interestingly evolved into brutal and gory games. And the fact that the church tried to stop the growth of drama was interesting to me. Perhaps indeed theatre at one time was promoting immorality in the society. What do you think? Is that possible?Did theatre really had such a great impact on its audience? You decide. To sum it all, theatre has undergone changes through time. Playwrights like Sophocles and Shakespeare came and went, leaving us with their masterpieces. Although the facts may sound interesting, yet the truth is I dreaded reading through it. Remembering facts is certainly not my cup of tea, so the historical overview of drama and also theatre is no exception. But then again, if I do not at least store some of it, I would be dead if Dr. Edwin decides to question about it for the 1st test. Hopefully, as the semester goes on, I wouldn’t have to remember so many facts.
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