Fragments of a Play
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 22, 2002 9:00 p.m.
Photos by MARY HOLSCHER/Daily Bruin (Above) "Elektra Fragments,"
a production put together by theater students, runs now until May
25 at the Freud Playhouse.
By Nick Rabinowitsh
Daily Bruin Contributor
[email protected]
Togas, bloodshed, soldiers, fire and gigantic penises are coming
to UCLA.
Now playing at the Freud Playhouse is a new glimpse at a
classical Greek tragedy. “Elektra Fragments,” a play
directed and composed by theater professor Michael Hackett, will
run through Saturday.
The play is constructed using a traditional Greek chorus, a
format which has mostly been lost to the ages. In this form, the
play is acted primarily by a chorus of men and women, and then
individuals emerge from the chorus to perform specific roles.
“It’s an antithesis to the Romantic tradition in
acting that stresses the development of highly individualized
projections of character and personality traits,” Hackett
said.
This ancient method of storytelling changes the way the audience
perceives the characters. “The chorus is the
protagonist,” said Eric Whitehead, a second-year theater
student in the performance.
The piece is a mixture of song, chant, percussion, dance and
acting. There are no props, save two large wall-like structures
that serve as a gate. Hackett himself performs as a percussionist
on the right side of the stage, accompanying the spoken word-style
dialogue with a drumbeat. On the left side of the stage there is
another percussionist as well as a Russian-Armenian flutist. Also,
much of the choreography was based on Native American dances.
“It is a mixture of movement, dance, theater and
ritual,” Whitehead said. “It was definitely a
collaborative effort.”
The storyline, although secondary to the musical element, is
mostly based on Aeschylus’ “Orestia,”
particularly the story of Agamemnon. The story begins with an old
decrepit priest telling Agamemnon that if he sacrifices his
daughter, he will do well in battle. The performance then skips to
the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra (his wife), followed by her
murder by her son, Orestes.
(Left) Students rehearse for "Elektra Fragments," a performance
directed and composed by theater professor Michael Hackett. The
performance includes not only a story based on "Oresteia", but
percussion, a Russian-Armenian flutist and Native American-inspired
dances.
In contrast with the serious nature of the bulk of the
performance, the last scene delivers a dose of comic relief. In
this bizarre ending, a few satyrs adorned with colossal phalluses
(some of them at full salute) romp around the stage along with the
rest of the chorus. Satyrs traditionally are found in comedies, but
in this case they were adapted into Hackett’s interpretation
of the Greek tragedy.
The addition of the satyrs aside, there are other
nonconventional aspects of the play. Those familiar with the story
will notice that some of the events in the play are out of
sequence. Hackett intended for the plotline to be somewhat
scattered ““ he explains his reasoning in the opening words to
the performance.
“The performance should be seen as a beautiful Greek vase
that is broken,” he said. “We’ve tried to glue
the pieces back, but you can decide whether you want to take it as
a whole or in fragments.”
A goal of the performance is to be faithful to the period in
which Aeschylus wrote. Its bright costumes, face- paint that
enlarges and accentuates facial features, strong rhythms and set
design all harken back to the earliest days of theater. A Greek
exchange student even speaks some ancient Greek onstage.
The use of crescendo adds to the drama. Many of the scenes begin
softly, slowly rising in volume and in number of voices and
instruments until they become explosive with sound. Then a cymbal
crashes or a drum booms, bringing the escalation to an abrupt halt.
The effect is not seen much today, and it makes the performance
stand out.
Conversely, the play also contains a good deal of silence, which
adds to the drama when the stage becomes noisy. Much of the play
consists of the chorus silently drifting across the stage, but it
is very cyclical in terms of the level of intensity.
For the most part, the players, each with their own specialty,
found the task of combining all of these elements to be a real
challenge.
“It definitely has been the most intensive rehearsal
process I’ve ever done,” said Sean Hart, a third-year
theater student. “It wasn’t unusual for us to put in
11-hour days. Not many of us are professional singers or dancers,
but we were all pushed to be professionals in all
specialties.”
The rehearsal process was particularly difficult for the theater
students with little experience in music.
“(Hackett) approached it more as a musical piece than one
of theater,” Hart said.
While some of his actors may be new to musical theater, Hackett
emphasized that their liberal arts education, rather than a strict
theater education, has helped the performance even more. “I
feel like I’m directing the varsity team,” he said.
“Not only are the actors committed to theater, but they have
access to a great liberal arts education. It is exciting to teach
in a liberal arts setting ““ it just makes the imaginations of
the actors that much richer.”
