Gabriel's English Journal

My character is Ajax. Before the scene unravels, my character Ajax has just came back from a hard war. He is bruised, battered and angered with the death of a dear friend (Patroclus). Basically Ajax wants the best for Achilles as they are friends, however it becomes apparent Ajax is getting agitated from the fact that Achilles doesn’t straight away accept blame and responsibility for the death of Patroclus in the scene. Ajax tries his upmost best to reason with Achilles but in the end he loses control in the scene and shouts at Achilles. The scene starts with all three characters that are all back to back. The idea was good but the deliverance was poor as Achilles and Ajax were out of sync. To improve we should have practised more on timing. Also we used ‘The Last Post’ song when the scene started and when the scene ended. Again the idea was to set the scene of as a funeral type scene, to create a sad, melancholy mood. However in the final performance, the sound cut off too quickly which stopped the funeral type of mood. To improve we should work in more detail on the deliverance of sound.

The costume that I decided to wear was a black buttoned shirt, black trousers and black trainers. I also wore a black/gold watch. The reason behind this is to represent Ajax’s anger and dismay for the death of Patroclus. Underneath my shirt I had a red shirt which was seen after Ajax flipped out and removed his shirt. The semiotics behind this is to show that Ajax has had enough of Achilles moaning and shows his anger through the shirt. Ajax and Phoenix both had mobile phones and modern day watches, however Achilles’s costume is olden day and basic, he has no modern day item. This is to represent the mind sets of the characters. Ajax and Phoenix have both mourned over the death of Patroclus but have moved on and do not hold any grudges. However Achilles has hatred for the war and the person who killed Patroclus, which is Hector. Achilles states in the scene that he is planning to get revenge and kill Hector. Phoenix is tired. He is tired from the war and is tired of war. This could be seen when he was performing as his face was melancholy and tired throughout the performance. The fact that he was old, he is wiser and has experienced more, so therefore in the scene he tries his best to tell Achilles to walk away.

Me and my group decided to set up the stage with a black block near the back of the stage, a small white cross in the middle of the stage and used bags and blazer jackets to represent the dead body of Patroclus. The semiotic representation of the white cross is to show the purity and sacrifice of Patroclus. Patroclus was fighting for Achilles with good intentions and died with a pure heart. In the scene, Ajax and Phoenix both take of their shirts and throw it on Patroclus to represent anger and respect. The semiotics behind this is to represent that Ajax and Phoenix have moved on. But Achilles does not remove his shirt to represent that he has not moved on from the death and wants revenge. He needs to kill Hector for his conscious to be clear.

We were introduced to a man called Stanislavski. We were also introduced into a dramatic learning technique called ‘Magic IF’. This was when we put ourselves into our characters shoes and discuss how our characters would react to a situation. This helped me prepare by putting myself into Ajax shoes. I had to think about how Ajax would feel in the morning, the setting of the area that the scene was set in etc. This gave me more depth and emotion when playing Ajax.

I believe that have our scene was performed in the intentions of the playwright (Brian Woolland) as we represented the time frame in the scene and the semiotic representation of each character. The genre of the play is Greek tragedy and the performance style was naturalistic. So we used realistic semiotics to create a sadistic, tragic scene. This was important as if the performance style was non-naturalistic, it would stray away from tragedy and more to a comedic scene.