The Piece Chosen

What is the piece i have chosen?

The piece is from Aristophanes, a greek comedy piece, known as The Knights. The story starts with the 2 slaves of ThePeople used the oracle to search for the great one to rule the country, and get rid of cleon, the paphlagonian. They found Agoracritus, a sausage-seller. The sausage seller is uneducated. They believed that the sausage-seller has the ability outwit Cleon, and win the trust of ThePeople. Then the phaplagonian came and they battled, and quarreled. He even threatened to tell the incident to the official. However, the sausage-seller also went to the senate and through this monologue, told the story to The Chorus, mocking the paphlagonian’s foolishness. In the end, after ThePeople met with the 2 of them, and after much quarrelling and debate, ThePeople was convinced that the sausage-seller is the one who truly loves and cares for him and the country. The paphlagonian was sacked from his position as ThePeole’s steward, and was asked to do the sausage-seller’s job by selling meat. On the other end, the story ended with the sausage-seller taking the new position as the steward of ThePeople, helping to make decisions for the country.

Why did i chose this piece?

Firstly, this piece would give me room for more expression since in a piece itself, i have to play 4 different characters. This is a typical Greek comedy piece, in which one character may end up taking up different character in a single characeter to talk about other characetrs to the audience.

Secondly, my teacher approved me on doing this piece, thus i chose it.

Why did the author write this piece?

Before writing this piece, Cleon, subsequently sought to prosecute the young dramatist on a charge of slandering the polis. Thus after that, he wrote The Knights, with the intend to mock Cleon's position and power, and at the same time promote anti-Cleon.

What is my apporach? And why?

My approach would be on the physicality of the actor. This is because, i am deciding to use mask for this piece, and since the physical part is the one that convey much about the story, physicality would be the best option to do this piece of monologue. Moreover, since actions made when acting Greek are ususally BIG, thus physicality is a complement to the acting as well.