Blog 3

I think that the hardest thing for me up to this point is going to be attempting to contextualize the rape scenes. In rehearsal, when Francis just told us to attempt to visualize and create the rape scene on stage I definitely felt a little weird about it. It helps to be in the class so as to better understand the history in which this brutal act represents yet I feel that it is going to be continually hard for me to get to a point of comfortability during this scene, just as it was when we did the scene involving oral sex. However, by continually learning about the history surrounding these very graphic acts and how these acts serve not to necessarily degrade but to better contextualize this history for a more modern audience, to provide a message which might make the audience understand the brutality surrounding the history of this culture and the patriarchal attitude ingrained within it. These scenes in many ways attempt the same thing as the abortion scene which was performed during MEDEA this past fall semester. A modern audience, with our culture of graphic videos and games, is in many ways desensitized. In MEDEA, it would have been harder for an audience to really feel to pain felt by the characters by just killing children of a certain age. But when the abortion took place, in all its glory, on stage, right in front of the audience, ending with a blood soaked stage and an unborn fetus, the modern audience might better relate and feel sorry for the characters on stage. It was an act which provoked an actual response from the audience and left them thinking about what they had seen for days after. Because of my experience as Jason in MEDEA, the father who is deprived of all his children and his new wife by the brutal murders by Medea, I feel I can better understand the use of graphic content within the play. While it may be hard for me to contextualize the content now, I feel in the end the overall effect will be of greater meaning.