Worksheet 1: Medea, the Big Ideas:
Circle of Viewpoints Routine: perspectives of Medea, Chorus, Messenger, Jason.
Brainstorm a list of different perspectives and then use this script skeleton to explore
each one:
1. I am thinking of ... the topic... From the point of view of ... the viewpoint
you've chosen
2. I think ... describe the topic from your viewpoint. Be an actor - take on the
character of your viewpoint
3. A question I have from this viewpoint is ... ask a question from this
viewpoint
Wrap up: What new ideas do you have about the topic that you didn't have before?
What new questions do you have?
Medea and her actions:
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Consider Medea’s speech L 1020- 1080.
Consider the Chorus L 1080-115
Consider the Messenger’s speech L 1121-1235
Possible discussion questions:
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Is there any justification for killing her children?
In this play, is it Euripides suggestion that there could be a justification for
such a heinous crime so that, ultimately, a truly just society may come about?
See Sydney Studies, Medea: p.20 “ …what is affirmed in the killing of her son
is the unnaturalness of the act, generated not out of impulse but from a
rational reading of the situation to which she has been brought by the social
order of Creon and Jason.”
L1320-1346
As a woman she embraces her personal agony, but her act had wider political
significance.
Do you agree and do we then pity Jason?
What justification does Medea give for her action?
Does Medea ultimately obtain justice for Jason’s actions?
What makes the play a tragedy?
Some considerations:
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The untimely death of innocents
No satisfactory resolution to impact individuals or society
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No ‘heroic’ figure- who understands and learns or acknowledges a
weakness
Tragedy does not always equal death, and if it doesn’t, what is the
suffering for Jason and Medea?
What is the role of the outsider?
Extended response:
Either:
The effect of social isolation and lack of understanding can lead to breakdown,
suffering and violence.
Discuss this notion in relation to your reading of the play.
Or:
How has Medea’s role as an outsider contributed to this tragedy?
Worksheet 2: Explanation Game:
We are going to use the Explanation Game as tool to explore three important
conversations in the text: They are:
1. Medea and Creon (215- 360)
2. Medea and Jason (445- 625)
3. Medea and Aegeus (662-765)
The Routine is a tool for groups to explore why the characters act and think as they
do. Each group can record their interpretation on butcher’s paper or on their laptops.
You must have clear references to evidence which support your interpretation.
Keep our Understanding Goals in mind:
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What is the impact of society upon the individual?
How do playwrights allow the audience to experience the feelings of
individuals as they navigate the expectations of society?
How does witnessing the characters struggles help develop our own sense of
empathy and tolerance?
How can you use an aspect of the tragic form to demonstrate understanding
of the characters plight?
First your group identifies aspects of interest about objects or ideas in each of
the conversations:
“I notice that…. (e.g. in speech 1, Medea says …”
And then follows these observations with the questions:
Why is it that way?
What does this mean for why she acts as she does?
What is the importance of this observation?”
Reflection:
How has your understanding of Medea been enriched by her interaction with these
three men?
Worksheet 3: Tennessee Williams and what happens beneath the surface:
We are going to look at the end of Scene 1 and the beginning of Scene 2 to explore
the emotional undercurrents of the dialogue in Williams’s play:
Williams was very interested in representing not just what the characters say but the
currents beneath their words. He didn’t want to create surface reality on stage, what
we can see and observe, but desired to render truth through symbolically presenting
what may be happening underneath.
In a letter to his friend Eric Bentley in 1948, for instance, Williams stated that
previously in theatre there had been a ‘lack of respect for the extra-verbal or nonliterary elements of the theatre, the various plastic elements, the purely visual things
such as light and movement and colour and design, which play, for example, such a
tremendously important part in theatre . . . and which are as much a native part of
drama as words and ideas are.’
In other words, to Williams, the stage directions and production elements are as
essential as the words the characters speak.
In, ‘The Sculptural Drama’: Tennessee Williams's Plastic Theatre’, Richard E.
Kramer states:
Williams wanted all the so-called production elements traditionally added by the
director and designers to be co-equal aspects of the play and part of the playwright's
creative process. Instead of merely composing the text of a play and then turning it
over to a director and his team of theatre artists who will add the non-verbal
elements that turn a play into a theatrical experience, Williams envisioned a theatre
which begins with the playwrights who create the theatrical experience in the script
because they are not just composing words, but theatrical images.
Consider:
 How would describe the type of theatre that Williams is imagining here?
 How does this differ from the type of theatre that we experienced with Medea?
 Looking closely at the end of Scene 1 and the beginning of Scene 2 what do
you think are some of the powerful ‘non-verbal’ elements of these scenes?
 What do you think is happening beneath the surface in this section of the
play? How do Williams’s theatrical images help to convey this?
 How would you compare Stanley and Jason. Look at Jason’s debate with
Medea and Stanley in this section of the play?
 How would you respond to the following idea?
Medea openly expresses her emotions and directly communicates to the audience
what she thinks and feels; whilst with Blanche the audience must look beneath the
surface to understand her emotions.
Worksheet 4: Psychoanalytic Framework:
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Psychoanalytic criticism is based on the work of Sigmund Freud. Freud began
his psychoanalytic work in the 1880s in Vienna while attempting to treat
behavioural disorders in his patients. He dubbed the disorders 'hysteria' and
began treating them by listening to his patients talk through their problems.
Based on this work, Freud argued that people's behaviour is affected by their
unconscious: ‘...the notion that human beings are motivated, even driven, by
desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware...’ Freud
believed that our unconscious was influenced by childhood events. He
maintained that we repress painful experiences and emotions from our
childhoods and that this affects our behaviour as adults. Freud stated that
‘...repression doesn't eliminate our painful experiences and emotions...we
unconsciously behave in ways that will allow us to play out...our conflicted
feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress.’ To keep all
of this conflict buried in our unconscious, Freud thought that we develop
defences: selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement,
projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among others. Is
there evidence of repression in the behaviour of the characters in your text?
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Freud explained that each person’s personality is formed of three parts: the
Ego, the Superego and the Id. The id is the part of the personality that
contains our primitive impulses - such as thirst, anger, hunger - and the desire
for instant gratification or release. According to Freud, we are born with our id.
The id is an important part of our personality because as newborns, it allows
us to get our basic needs met. Freud believed that the id is based on our
pleasure principle. The id wants whatever feels good at the time, with no
consideration for the other circumstances of the situation. The superego is the
part of the personality that represents the conscience, the moral part of us.
The superego develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on us
by our caregivers. It dictates what we believe is right and wrong. The ego is
the part of the personality that maintains a balance between our impulses (our
id) and our conscience (our superego). The ego understands that other
people have needs and desires and that sometimes being impulsive or selfish
can hurt us in the end. It is the ego’s job to meet the needs of the id, while
taking into consideration the reality of the situation. The ego works, in other
words, to balance the id and superego. Is there evidence in your text of
struggles between these elements of a characters personality?
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Freud believed that the Oedipus complex was ‘...one of the most powerful
elements in the growth of the child’. Essentially, the Oedipus complex involves
a child's need for their parents and the conflicts that arise as children mature
and realize they are not the absolute focus of their mother's attention. Freud
argued that both boys and girls wish to possess their mothers, but as they
grow older ‘...they begin to sense that their claim to exclusive attention is
thwarted by the mother's attention to the father...’ Children, Freud maintained,
connect this conflict of attention to the intimate relations between mother and
father, relations from which the children are excluded. Freud believed that ‘the
result is a murderous rage against the father...and a desire to possess the
mother.’ Freud believed that the impact of the unconscious, id, ego, superego,
the defences, and the Oedipus complexes was inescapable and that these
elements of the mind influence all our behaviour, and dreams. Is there any
evidence of repressed oedipal feelings in the text?
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Freud understood that when an individual experiences trauma they may
repress this experience. However, the trauma will reappear in the form of very
vivid dreams that may become more real for the patient than reality. Freud
wrote that trauma is, ‘an event in the subject's life, defined by its intensity, by
the subject's incapacity to respond adequately to it and by the upheaval and
long-lasting effects that it brings about in the psychical organization of the
individual.’ How are the psychological effects of trauma evident in the text?