Happy Birthday Lex!

Heeeey since no one's reading I can do what I want - for now - and I want to wish my sister Lexi a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

First blog research trip

So I'm headed down to the Harold Washington Public Library here in good ole Chicago, IL, for my first list of topic post research day!  (Also: how to find a grad school.  Go.)

Agamemnon

Agamemnon

by Aeschylus

First Performed: 458 B.C. 

Cast Breakdown: 4M/2W/Chorus/Non-speaking Roles

Previously, on Atreus

Welcome to my first author post!  Very simple - just a set up and background information to prepare for the onslaught of words, words, and bloodshed to come....

By the time of Aeschylus (b. 513 B.C., d. 456 B.C.) Greek tragedy traditions were largely set.  Athenian festivals consisted of three groups, each consisting of three actors and a chorus, acting out sets of four plays. Aeschylus was said to have won first prize in the dramatic contest 13 times while alive, but even in death he kept rakin’ ‘em in against other, more living, playwrights.  Crazy!  Of the 70+ plays he’s credited with, only 7 survive: The Suppliants, The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.  All of them some of the finest, clearest action taking place in a play yet today.  Pretty good stuff, and undeniably human.  Who hasn’t felt that a certain murder would be justifiable?

A monthly book breakdown: Backwards and Forwards

Twice a month I plan to write longer posts covering whatever I feel like when I sit down at the library to start researching, or maybe a topic a reader wants to talk about.

But for a while, one of these will be a monthly installment where I cover chapters from David Ball's Backwards and Forwards: a Technical Manual for Reading Plays.  If you haven't read this book, I recommend it highly!  So highly!  It has made all the difference in how I read plays.  You remember how you viewed movies before and after your Film Studies class?  Yeah, like that.  Except now you enjoy them even more, since you know what's going on.

Rock on,
Ben

Classic Trilogy Smackdown, coming soon!

Ladies and Gentlemen, for my first trick!


For my first 6 sets of posts I'm going to be doing a relatively straightforward operation - six plays in two trilogies.  It's Aeschylus vs. O'Neill!  The Oresteia goes round for round with it's (relatively) modern American Civil War retelling, Mourning Becomes Electra.  Here's my (optimistic) schedule:

First Post Guide to this Blog

What is this blog about?

This blog is both my attempt to stimulate the online popular literary discussion of plays, as well as an outlet for writing.  It will attempt to begin conversations through a series of posts for each play: A post about the Author, a post about the play, and a followup topic post, generally on a subject relating to the play and hopefully ripe for discussion.  Or at least enough to fulfill my quota of shouting into the void.

Posts might include information such as: