Executive Decision

So for the past couple of days our class has come to focus specifically on the role of the director. The role of the director as a functional linchpin who basically has to stick his or her fingers in just about everyone's affairs. Digressing from our main topic of Greek Theater, we were able to form a connection between that of a more arcane performance with something very familiar and modern for many of us. Upon completing Oedipus Rex today, we took some time to emphasize the differences we noticed between the text and that of the actual movie. Probably the most major inconsistency that a classmate picked up on were the ending words of the Chorus. In the movie version of Oedipus, the Chorus seems to go on and reiterate that:

Look, ye who dwell in Thebes. This man was Oedipus.
That mighty King, who knew the riddle's mystery.
Whom all the city envied, Fortune's favorite.
Behold, in the event, the storm of his calamities,
And, being mortal, think on that last day of death,
Which all must see, and speak of no man's happiness
Till, without sorrow, he hath passed the goal of life.

These words poignantly marked the ending of the play in the movie, yet upon reading the literal text of Oedipus we almost felt left hanging. Originally in our version translated by H. D. F. Kitto, he himself make the executive decision to leave out these last words. Few other scholars share Professor Kitto's suspicion that the concluding lines in the manuscript are spurious. And thus the ending passage was thus translated by J. T. Sheppard.

Still, however, this all goes back to the notion of the executive decision which often involves the choice between inclusion or exclusion of certain material. The same goes for contemporaries of the arts such as Shakespeare and Mozart themselves. In regards to Shakespeare specifically, his plays were only later published as a result of random collections of existing scrips from his previous plays. As is demonstrated by the Sly character of Macbeth, portions of Shakespeare's texts were either missing or rewritten to the extent that no one truly knew to which the title of the finally copy went to. Therefore it is now left to the task of modern directors to figure out a way to utilize such abrupt portions due to errors in either printing or existence. Sophocles, too, went through a similar creative process in the sense that he had to choose from the wealth of oral mythology to form his own story.

Some choices that directors must make during the creative process are...

• How many actors will be involved?
• What is the functional size of the stage?
• What is the general concept (ex. play within a play)?
• Will there be a prevalent theme or style?