Agamemnon by Aeschylus

This was great, really cool. I never thought I could love Greek theater because I just assumed it was intellectual and sophisticated beyond my ability to understand it. And in a lot of ways it is too complex to enjoy just from reading, its more fun out loud, but the Penguin Classics version does a decent job of explaining the references to Greek Mythology, and pointing out the ironies and deeper meanings of what characters are saying and doing. I remember doing our shorter version of The Libation Bearers (Part 2 of Agamemnon) and those memories kept bringing me back to the atmosphere that these plays are meant to create. Which really helps to enjoy it because reading this play in short bursts doesn’t do much for the larger-than-life momentum and quality of the dialogue. I really liked playing my small role of Aegisthus and then the Servant. It felt daunting because it was a scene about murder in such a short time. So, I was alive and scared as the Bad King, and then I was terrified and talking about seeing my King’s corpse. All within 5 minutes, a fun quick change. It felt like what it would be like to audition for a horror movie. A scene emotionally charged and graphic. It was really cool. I liked the language a lot, and finding more and more ways to deliver it. I liked getting out of rehearsals and feeling this empty sadness. Part of me thought that was because we weren’t doing all that great in the play, we were burnt out. But another part of me felt like it was just natural because The Libation Bearers ends with the Hero possibly dying.

The whole play we have this gloomy Hero on his way to glory and it’s all serious and sad. He’s on to kill his mother for the death of his father. And in the end, he becomes blind to the Fury (Evil Revengeful Spirit) that consumes him and makes him as evil. There’s no laughs along the way, or action sequences, just long passages about honor, love for the gods, and responsibility. It’s a straight line. Or so I thought. Reading Agamemnon with much more background information showed me how much I was missing out by not seeing every reference. And references are tough in these plays because without mentioning names, characters are referencing classic Greek stories. Which gets confusing when you’re not sure if the language is meant to be poetic or literal. A description of an animal or plant may be in reference to a story about another Greek Mythological figure, and not a strict simile for the characters in the play. For example, a character described as a bird might be like a 2nd character in the Mythology, who was turned into a bird or became a bird, and so the two characters are alike in metaphor, but the first character is not strictly being compared to a bird. Or they are, but the audience would’ve understood it as a reference. you can’t understand the metaphor without the reference. The play was a couple of years ago and I think in fairness (we all knew this), but it was hard to do all the work to get it specific in our minds for each moment. I was so exhausted, I just researched my parts, lol. Bad actor moment. But its tough because even with supplemental info, you have to go back and dig to imagine how an audience were meant to perceive characters depending on how the effect. The most interesting parts in Agamemnon are when characters reference their mythology as their religion, and they become moral, but there is hypocrisy, irony, or double meaning. Or maybe a double meaning doubles the despair we were meant to feel for this character in their hopeless situation. Since there is little plot, only two main actions to the story, everything enjoyable comes from the characters lack of agency. They are stuck in their journeys controlled by Fate. Everything they say carries either a lack of foresight or a lack of control. Sometimes both.

I want to add that I saw The Odyssey dir. by Christopher Nolan and I loved it. I felt that it had the spirit of Greek tragedy because it was relentless in its messaging. That’s what I mean by the story having a straight line. It’s not that it does, really, but it’s that its messages are clear and consistent from the beginning. And certain phrases or images recur often in carrying these messages. Maybe The Odyssey by Homer has the twist about how Odysseus is changed, as it is revealed in the movie, but the central themes of Loyalty, Family, Courage, Persistence, and Faith are there from the start. The experience for me is that after 3 hours of these ideas, in a movie theater or regular theater, I’m crying. My apprehensive walls (of a possibly boring old story) are broken down by the same words describing death, destruction, and fear in scene after scene. In Agamemnon, people are so scared of the Gods that it feels like characters are literally praying and begging for mercy over and over. They do it so much that reality and story blend. These plays were performed as part of a religious festival held during a specific season every year. And I can’t help but to choke up as I imagine that more than 2,000 years ago, human beings were just as desperate to make sense of their chaos, and to be saved from it, as we are today. Characters in Agamemnon mourn their lost friends and rejoice in victorious war with conflicted feelings. Its really a marvel that we have stories about the problems with War from our earliest plays. Cruel violence is such an old characteristic of our humanity. Its up there with using tools and burying our dead. I think. (Blog blog blog blog). But, The Odyssey achieves this same effect.

A 3 hour movie about a man trying to come home, trying to be welcomed home, after 10 years of War and another 8 or 10 years of being lost. After the deaths of so many fellow soldiers and innocent women and children. The destruction of homes in bloodthirsty fervor. It’s all applicable to today. The movie was deep and so well done. The ship scenes were freaking amazing, just so scary and well shot, the lighting was perfect, it was so dark and almost claustrophobic. All the mythological characters were these realistic, but still horrifying designs. I watched the movie wanting to do it. Wanting to get so ripped like Matt Damon, wanting to be in the ship, wanting to live in this world, play these people. It was an amazing experience and one that inspires me to continue acting. If I can just get a part in this, if I can get the training to be able to deliver an incredible story like this—it would be a dream. It’s a dream to be awakened to my own feelings and then be able to do that for others. Like I’m more free. Because suddenly the gates are open for me on feelings I already have about war, but don’t know how to articulate. Thinking of Ukraine and Palestine. Because I felt like the story was saying, “Love/Family, Self Respect, Honoring those who’ve died, faith in the good, these are the values that make life most meaningful. If you don’t prioritize these things then you lose your sense of who you are, and your hope. And that is miserable. That is a life so dark that it is unbearable.” Agamemnon is a foil for Odysseus because Agamemnon’s inability to admit fault kills him. Odysseus’s humility saves him. It’s beautiful and it’s a story older than Jesus, and still powerful. It is fucking incredible, that as old as The Trojan War, people were there to help heal the pain it caused.

Rolling Ferro