Stage directions play an important role and affect the plot and consequently, affect the characters. These directions are given to actors by the director and prescribe concrete actions which actors have to perform to make the play look specious. In both plays – Antigone by Sophocles and Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca – stage directions are very important in building the overall picture of characters and affect the plot.
The main difference between the two plays is the lack of concrete stage directions in Sophocles’ Antigone. Unlike in Blood’s wedding, the role of narrator in Antigone belongs to the chorus. By the means of music and singing, the director expresses all the events and shows the interaction between characters. He also helps the audience to understand what is going on better. This technique became one of the main characteristics of many Greek tragedies and Antigone is not an exception. Chorus can express different moods and becomes a better narrator than a person. Music arouses deep emotions and makes the spectator feel the drama of tragedy and pain of the main characters. This stage direction affects the plot a lot. Therefore, if the plot is affected, all the characters are affected as well. Everything revolves around music and the sense of the songs in Antigone.
It is clear, that in Greece in 442 BC when Antigone was written, the rules and the image of play were different than in modern Blood wedding written in the twentieth century. Therefore, methods of giving stage directions were different:
The ancient manuscripts of Antigone and other Greek plays do not supply stage directions (though the ancient commentators often provide information relevant to staging, delivery, “blocking”, etc.). But it is surely preferable that good stage directions should be provided by a translator than that readers should be left to their own devices in visualizing action, gesture, and spectacle. The ancient tragedy was austere and distanced using masks, which means that the reader must not expect the detailed intimacy that characterizes stage directions in modern naturalistic drama (Gibbons, 7).
Unlike in Antigone, Lorca uses concrete stage directions. He uses a technique that helps the reader or spectator to associate every character with color. By identifying Groom with yellow color, Lorca shows him as a wealthy person. According to his stage direction, yellow is a color of gold; therefore it helps the reader to identify Groom as a reach person. The author also compares this color with wheat, because the last one is a powerful plant that gives birth to bread. He also associates wheat with death, because Groom’s lips are yellow when he is dead at the end of the play.
Lorca associates other characters with colors as well. He characterizes Leonardo’s house as pink, which is a kind of red color. The last symbolizes blood which consequently means death. The author uses other colors in symbolism as well. Orange blossom represents innocence and the author also associates purity with the white color. These directions help spectators to associate each character with concrete color. In contrast to Sophocles’ Antigone, these directions make Lorca’s play more detailed, concentrate on the character’s intimacy.
In Antigone, Sophocles uses directions that make characters look like they are narrators and tell the story from the third person. This is a distinguishing feature of Greek tragedy and is one of the main characteristics of Antigone:
In Antigone, actors do speak about themselves in the third person; This stage direction, speaking in the third person and the narrative past tense, dissociates the actor from the role and infuses her with a narrative function; in addition, however, it serves to expose most blatantly of the scene, namely, Antigone’s loyal attempt to bury her brother in the face of Creon’s rage. Antigone thus becomes a play about one gesture- the gesture of burying a brother (Puchner, 155).
This stage direction affects the whole play because it gives the reader a sense of unreality. On the one hand, these are real characters, but at the same time, they tell about themselves like they do not exist anymore.
Federico Lorca uses a similar technique in his stage direction by not giving true names to characters. The only true name belongs to Leonardo. The other characters are generalized and are given such untrue names as Bride, Groom, and Mother. These stage directions from different plays give the reader the same feeling of unreality and introduce them to a surreal world. However, there are significant differences exist: while Teiresias is presented as a metaphysical force in Antigone, the moon is delivered to a reader as a physical force in Blood’s wedding. This difference in symbolism, which can be seen in numerous dialogs in both plays, makes the main difference between them.
Surrealism exists in both plays. However, in Lorca’s stage directions to Blood wedding, expression of male and female principles is more obvious and can be seen in non-human figures:
The stylization in Lorca can be seen in the songs, or the move towards the surreal, as in the appearance of non-human figures like the Moon and Death in Blood Wedding, who are described in the stage directions as representing the pure male and female principles (McMinn, 103).
All the stage directions listed above influenced the plot. Both authors used the power of sacrifice and love as the main theme of both plays and proper stage directions made the reader feel the drama and tragedy. The main heroes in plays are a woman who presented as strong characters. By the mean of stage directions, both authors tried to raise the issue of women in society and their rights.
Summarizing analysis of stage directions in both Antigone by Sophocles and Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca I realized that although there are many differences in their directions, such as a choir in Antigone that replaces the narrator and color presentation in Blood wedding that shows characters in detail, there are also some similarities. In my opinion, the most important direction that unites both plays is speaking from the third person. Both authors do it differently, but the effect that this direction has on the spectator is similar. It gives us the feeling of surreal. Another important similarity in their stage directions is the use of symbolism and comparison of characters with inanimate objects.
Stage directions are very important in any play. They exist not only to involve the physical movements of actors but to make the sense of the main ideas in the play more clear. Therefore, directors use various techniques in their directions to make their plays unique and to make spectators believe in what they see, and also to feel better what characters do. Antigone by Sophocles and Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca are bright examples of such stage directions usage.
Works Cited
Gibbons, Reginald, Charles Segal. Antigone. UK: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.
McMinn, Joseph. The Internationalism of Irish literature and drama. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992. Print.
Puchner, Martin. Stage fright: modernism, anti-theatricality, and drama. Baltimore: JHU Press, 2002. Print.