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eyond our studies This year, we have invited two students to give us their impressions of taking part in university drama and sport at the highest level. The Greek Play The 2010 production of the Cambridge Greek play, the Agamemnon by Aeschylus, was by all accounts one of the best of recent years. The tradition of performing a play in Greek every three years goes back to 1882 – this was the 40th in the series. We asked Phoebe Haines, who gave an outstanding performance as Cassandra, to write about her experience. Katherine Jack, a third year Education with English and Drama student, played Clytemenestra. Aeschylus tells us to ‘Overcome fear, and behold wonder’. The business of getting on a stage in any capacity involves a certain amount of fearquashing; to trounce these fears whilst performing in an ancient language is a veritable challenge. contours of a range of languages, from Italian to Catalan. The difficulty with languages such as Russian and Greek is the difference in alphabet. So the first interpretative step was to convert the Greek alphabet into phonetics which I could speak and understand. While much debate is meted out over the exact phonetic sounds of the Ancient Greek language, the commonly accepted versions contain quite a few sounds that aren’t found in many modern western European languages, such as the ‘kh’ sound (found in modern day Russian and Hebrew). Once I had negotiated my way around the twists and turns of this rich and flamboyantly textured language, I found that the process of characterisation followed with a greater sense of immediacy and intimacy than usual. Aeschylus uses language to characterize his dramatis personae in an almost incomprehensibly complex way. Like Shakespeare, a prescriptive style of blank verse is used, though Aeschylus’ poetic convention of choice (the dochmiac) is far more intricate than our iambic pentameter. Where Shakespeare’s I approached my commitment to the Greek Play with a certain degree of hesitancy. Having quelled a number of rumours involving our director’s alleged determination to retain total ‘faithfulness’ to the script (which would have involved compulsory head-shaving and nudity on my part), by the end of Easter Term 2010 I felt ready to begin tackling the task at hand: namely, to learn Ancient Greek in a matter of weeks. While I had had some brief and baffling encounters with Latin at prep school, I had no prior experience of Greek. The language, with its lyrical lines and strangely guttural consonants, sounded to me at first like some sort of bizarre and incomprehensible Welsh/ Elvish hybrid. After a few sessions with the wonderful Profs Diggle and Bowen, I fell truly and obsessively in love with this strange language. Rarely approached from the spoken angle, Ancient Greek is a language that evokes a totally fascinating and visceral soundworld. It’s also a joy to sing. Coming from an operatic background, I am used to learning at least the spoken 10 Homertonian
Left and opposite page Phoebe Haines as Cassandra principal tool in distinguishing between the social standing of two characters is the difference between elevated verse and the more phlegmatic prose, Aeschylus formulates and subverts the spoken rhythm with a type of sensitivity more akin to that of a musical composer. I began by learning Cassandra’s spoken text, and was relieved to find that the musical rhythms of our original score (by composer and former Classics student, Alex Silverman) mirrored the spoken word with astounding accuracy. The prescriptive rhythms inherent to the text meant that Alex had the delicate task of ascribing these rhythms accurately to the music of his original score. He used an octatonic mode throughout (as this is the closest musical scale we have to the modes of ancient Greece). As Cassandra is in a state of heightened emotion for her one, long scene in the play, she speaks in lyrical outpourings which lend themselves well to an operatic idiom. While there was musical underscoring used throughout the piece, the Cassandra scene was really the only example of solo singing in the piece. It was therefore essential that we acknowledged the expressive qualities of the sung passages, while ensuring that this scene didn’t jar stylistically with the rest of the piece. In both the rehearsal room, and onstage, this meant accruing a stamina that would allow me to act, sing, and move, while embodying and maintaining a sense of Cassandra’s hysterical despair. Helen Eastman’s direction combined the elements of the cerebral and visceral just as eloquently as Aeschylus’ text ties together the oppositional strands of omnipotent fate and personal indecision. We worked initially on the physicalisation of Cassandra, and then began to explore her mind-space and inner world. Greek drama tends to be typified by a fatalistic quality which perhaps does not take hold of a modern audience as powerfully as it would have done several thousand (or even hundred) years ago. However, I felt that it was important to allow Cassandra an individuality of thought which would permit the audience to believe in the originality of her situation, and the decisions she makes. My most essential task as an actor therefore was to assure the audience of her capacity for choice. This undoubtedly makes her short life and untimely end all the more tragic. Taking part in the Greek Play was unquestionably the most thrilling theatrical experience I have been involved in while at Cambridge. The physical process of learning and performing the play was enormously challenging but infinitely rewarding. It is a tradition which should definitely be kept alive in Cambridge; Greek Drama is such a diverse, rich, and complex artform, and yet has the ability to reach out and grab hold of its audience with a unique vigour. If Cambridge University prides itself on both its historical and progressive elements, then there is truly no better emblem of this duality than the Cambridge Greek Play. Phoebe Haines Education with English and Drama 2008 –2011 Homerton College 11
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