Hamlet 2.0

Alas, poor Yorick. Life really sucks right now. Insert melancholy Emoji here.

My daddy issues are piling up, and my uncle is not helping this situation at all. He can be such a jerk-face. I just started a blog called “Mom, How Could You?” and it already has 200 hits. I don’t intentionally spread my unhappiness, but the attention really helps.

Sigh, poor Yorick. Oh, sigh.

To be, or not to be? That is the question. Who the hell cares at this point? I can barely get Broadband in this spot, and this ghost guy keeps texting me. I’m tired of questions, and I have the ACT next week. It’s so unfair.

I am really starting to think about revenge, but it can be such hard work. Would I have to get up for that? I really like sleeping in, and a full-scale revenge plot sounds like it could take A LOT of planning. Even more strategy than my Angry 

Birds app.

Sigh. What would Rick from The Walking Dead do? He would go for revenge. I just can’t decide. Plus, who knows? It might end badly.

But at least I’m not the only depressed teen around here. This Ophelia girl is the most emo girl in town. It’s simultaneously boring and hot. 

Should I suffer the slings and arrows of getting a haircut? Everybody expects me to get a job and do something important, but all I want to do is find myself. What is a sling anyway? Is that a new app?

I think I’ll just curl up in the castle and post something on Instagram.

---

JD DeHart

Theater Musings

Cassandra, in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon

A character study for directors and actors

by

Gary Beck

312 East 30^th Street, #5E

New York, NY 10016

212 481-8220

garycbeck@yahoo.com

www.garycbeck.com

www.facebook.com/AuthorGaryBeck

©  2016

Cassandra is a minor, but vital character in Aeschylus’ drama, Agamemnon. She informs the audience of the forthcoming death of Agamemnon, as well as herself, precipitating the action to come. Presumably the audience knows what’s coming, since it is a tragedy. The challenge to the director is to make the prophecy of imminent death theatrically dramatic to an audience visually saturated by the incredibly sophisticated imagery of film and tv.

In order to construct the emotional involvement of the audience in a scene that is critically important, Cassandra must compel a range of feelings. This can be facilitated by the chorus, who can express qualities of scorn, derision, mockery, pity, for the possessed woman. The actor, by creating tension before, during and after prophecy, completes the stage requirements for furthering the action.

The source of developing the depth of character necessary for Cassandra to evoke tragic awareness is in the pre-history of the Iliad and the myth of the House of Atreus. The director and actor should presuppose that the audience may be familiar with the tale of Troy, and possibly even the play itself. They should assume the audience will not know the myth of Apollo and Cassandra, which could be the key to initiating the foundation of constructing the character. Cassandra, a young royal princess (12-14?) of the house of Priam of Troy, is desired by the god Apollo. She agrees to have sex with him, if he’ll give her the gift of Prophecy. He does. Then she mocks him and refuses to keep her part of the bargain. He can’t take back his gift, so he curses her with not being believed.

This is where the actor’s work begins. This once privileged personage is now an embarrassment, a demented creature, possessed of madness, yet still a beloved member of the royal house. All these qualities must be examined and included in the character. The curse began before the Trojan War, which lasted for ten years, followed by the capture and destruction of the city. Then Cassandra was awarded as a slave to Agamemnon and presumably was his bedmate during their return to Argos. By building the character’s emotional life for at least ten years before she comes on stage, the actor may arrive with a three dimensional persona that will stir the audience’s emotion.

The exploration of pre-character should not be a day to day diary, or a chronicle. There should be some invented salient facts or experiences that will lead to the tormented emotional state of a character alienated from the world around her. It is vital to understand that Cassandra has been disbelieved many times. She has probably been treated as a privileged, demented member of the royal household, yet was considered harmless.

Cassandra surely prophesized the fall of Troy, which largely had to have been laughed at. The inner torment at being mocked and pitied would be a constant. It is useful to be aware that prophecy is a ‘divine’ gift, not an act of reason, therefore, the prophet will be possessed/transformed, while in a state of inspiration.

A physical transformation when in the state of prophecy must be carefully created so as not to be contrived, grotesque, silly, etc. Any implausible quality that might make the character unbelievable to the audience must be eliminated. The complication for the director is how to get the chorus, whatever format to use them is selected, to sustain disbelief in the prophecy, despite the fact that the audience knows it’s true. Since the curse of disbelief is on Cassandra, she must be convincing, or the scene will be contrived and the audience involvement with the play will deflate.

Of course very few actors will have the opportunity to play Cassandra, at least in a serious theater setting. Yet the same general outline of character development can be applicable to other roles. Create who you are, then you will be, of course pre-supposing you have the talent and skills to be.

Call a Priest, My Father Said

My father never talked much about religion but he went to Mass every Sunday, the 6:30 Mass where few people would be and he wouldn’t have to deal with friends and neighbors. His contribution envelope was always filled out the night before, sealed and propped against the salt shaker on the kitchen table. It was gone with him when I as a child rose in the morning. 

My sister and I would go to the children’s Mass later and my mother to the Mass at noon. We weren’t, spiritually speaking, a close family. Truth be known, we weren’t a close family. But that’s another story sometimes hard to write or explain.

I remember, though, when I was very small, not yet in kindergarten, walking by my parents’ bedroom going to the bathroom before going to bed and I would see my father on his knees saying what I assumed were his prayers. Yet I don’t recall him ever saying a word to me about God or religion. His life was hard work Monday through Friday and all the overtime he could get. 

He earned enough money climbing high voltage poles and towers in alleys in Chicago to put me through parochial grammar school, high school and college. He didn’t drink or smoke and he put his money in passbooks at a local savings and loan. 

His weakness was five spoons of sugar in each of four cups of strong tea early every morning before work.

I doubt that with overtime in the Forties despite being skilled he ever made more than $9,000 a year, yet he was a top “troubleshooter” for Commonwealth Edison Company, called out myriad times in the middle of the night and on weekends when the power had gone out in Chicago and other places in Illinois. 

In his 37th year he was up on a pole one bright summer day training a rookie and the rookie made the wrong move and was about to touch a hot wire and my father tried to stop him. In the process, he took the 12,000 volts instead. 

His story ended up on the front page of The Chicago Tribune. By then I was married with kids of my own so I came to the hospital not knowing how badly he had been hurt. Gathered outside his room were fellow workers who I would talk with after I had gone in to see him.

He was lying in bed in decent spirits and showed me the hole in his thigh, not bandaged, and it looked like a small volcano after an eruption. Then he showed me the bandaged missing part of his forearm. A big indentation almost from elbow to wrist. 

I don’t know why his arm was bandaged and his thigh was not. He didn’t say what had happened, just something about a rookie. 

We talked a bit more than we normally might have. After a while I left the room quite shook up and was met by a trinity of co-workers waiting to find out more about my father’s condition.

I recognized the name of one them, Charlie, who my father had trained decades before. Despite their difference in ages and background, they were very close friends. Charlie had been born in Chicago, my father in Ireland.

Charlie was quick to tell me that my father taking that much voltage should have died, something the newspaper article the next day seemed to confirm. 

The other workers told me he was one of the top five linemen with Edison Company, maybe the best. He should have been a foreman long ago but did not want to boss people. Preferred doing the work.

Finally Charlie told me what had happened after they brought my father down from the pole bleeding and burnt. They laid him in the alley and the workers were shouting “Call a doctor! Call a doctor!”

Still conscious, my father looked up and said, “Fuck the doctor! Call a priest.”

Apparently a church was nearby because a priest was there before the ambulance arrived. My father received the last rites in the alley before they took him to the hospital.

He never mentioned that to me over the years but I wasn’t surprised to hear what happened. He was a man who always had his priorities straight.

Donal Mahoney

---