~Who is Teiresias?~

In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the character of Teiresias is developed in such a way that he utilizes many dramatic devices in order to reveal information and move the play along. As a fortuneteller, Teiresias is able to see the fate and destruction of Oedipus’ life. Teiresias uses his great ability to reveal to the reader the downfalls in Oedipus’ life that will soon occur because of his quest to know. Teiresias appears as the name of a recurring character in several stories and Greek tragedies concerning the legendary history of Thebes.

Teiresias was a prophet of Zeus. According to the mythographic compendium Bibliotheke, different stories were told of the cause of his blindness, the most direct being that he was simply blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets. Teiresias's background, fully male and then fully female, was important, both for his prophecy and his experiences. Also, prophecy was a gift given only to the priests and priestesses. Therefore, Teiresias offered Zeus and Hera evidence and gained the gift of male and female priestly prophecy. How he obtained his information varied: sometimes, like the oracles, he would receive visions; other times he would listen for the songs of birds, or ask for a description of visions and pictures appearing within the smoke of burnt offerings, and so interpret them.

Often when his name is attached to a mythic prophecy, it is introduced simply to supply a personality to the generic example of a seer, not by any inherent connection of Teiresias with the myth: thus it is Teiresias who tells Amphytrion of Zeus and Alcmena and warns the mother of Narcissus that the boy will thrive as long as he never knows himself. This is his emblematic role in tragedy (see below). Like most oracles, he is generally extremely reluctant to offer the whole of what he sees in his visions.

In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, calls upon Teiresias to aid in the investigation of the killing of the previous king Laius. At first, Teiresias refuses to give a direct answer and instead hints that the killer is someone Oedipus really does not wish to find. However, after being provoked to anger by Oedipus' accusation first that he has no foresight and then that Teiresias had had a hand in the murder, he reveals that in fact it was Oedipus himself who had (unwittingly) committed the crime. Outraged, Oedipus throws him out of the palace, but then afterwards realizes the truth. Teiresias was important in that play and he represented the idea of wisdom. He was physically blind but he was not morally blind.

....HamLet.....

I’ve watched another movie with my classmates few weeks ago. The movie entitled ‘HAMLET’ is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play, HAMLET.

The movie is about Hamlet, the protagonist of the story. He is the king of Denmark who seeks for his father’s murderer. Then, he found out that the murder was done by his own uncle, Claudius. Hamlet then wants to revenge about his father’s death and reveal that the murderer is Claudius. Unfortunately, everyone thinks Hamlet is crazy. Then, Claudius also tries to kill Hamlet after knowing that Hamlet has found out the truth about him. Claudius then tries to poison Hamlet by putting a poisoned pearl in Hamlet’s drink.

However, the one who drinks it is the queen. The truth completely revealed after that. Hamlet also faces the death because he has been cut by a poisoned sword. However, Hamlet stabs Claudius with the same sword and pours the poisoned drink right into his mouth that cause him death. All of them died at the end of the story. After I watched this movie, I noticed that it has similarities with the play Oedipus Rex which is ending in sadness. Nonetheless, Hamlet is really a good movie.

Strength as a teacher?

Become a teacher is not a simple task, especially for me. I always ask myself a question. Can I be a good teacher? Yes, I know I can do it if I want.

During my simulated teaching, I think my strength is my voice projection. I believes that my voice is loud enough and can be heard by the students. Besides, I’ll make sure that my students can hear me especially when I’m teaching the lesson and read aloud the instructions for them.

In order to maintain my strengths, i will do more exercises and practice. I believes that by doing some exercises, they can help me to become a better person and help me especially when i face my real student. Besides, i really hope that i will be able to project my voice clearly and also will be able to control my students. I'll try my best.

~ My Simulated Teaching~

After waiting for almost two weeks, I’ve finally done with my simulated teaching. I’ve already passed with the stage where I have to be a teacher for 15 minutes. Actually, I’m always feeling nervous when it comes to simulated teaching. Furthermore, being in the last few groups to present it gives me a lot of pressure. For my simulated teaching, I choose ‘The Ring’ for my presentation. I started my presentation by showing a picture of a stressed boy as my set induction. Then, I asked my students whether they could see the pictures or not. Thanks to my students for giving me the answer. After that, I asked them what are the factors that can lead to the stress and fortunately they gave me a lot of answers. Then, I explained to them the effect of being stressed. It can lead to the mental problems, same as one of the characters in the story ‘The Ring’.

For my pre-reading stage, I distributed handouts for the students. In my handout, there were 3 tasks to be completed by the students. First of all, I read the instruction clearly. For the first task, I asked my student ti read the dialogues between Leila and Raj. Then, they have to identify what are the problems faced by Raj based to the dialogues given.

My second task is I asked the students what is the characteristics of Raj that they can identify from all the problems that they have mentioned before. My last task is for post-reading stage. I asked the students to identify what is the theme for the story. I gave the task as their homework and they were needed to submit their homework in the next lesson. It was really a nice and good experience for me and yeah!! I’m so glad right now. Hahahaha….

~Different or Same??~

Hmmm….when I’m doing my simulated teaching, the experience for being a teacher brings me back to my sweet time as a student. I missed all my teachers. Hurrmm…stop thinking about the past. Let’s get back to my topic.

Actually, when I’m doing my simulated teaching, I have to follow the rules of teaching. I have to teach my lesson in few stages which are set induction, pre-reading, while-reading and the post-reading. So, I realized that the way I was taught in school is totally different from the way I taught for my simulated teaching. It is different because I follow all of the stages in teaching. For example, before I start my lesson, first, I will introduce to my students what I am going to teach and I will connect it to the lesson.

But, my school teachers were using the different ways. They not give clear explanation about what they are going to teach. In my own opinion, that way of teaching is not good especially to the students because there will be no information about what are they going to learn. As a result, some students maybe cannot understand the lesson. So, I really hope that my experience will never happen again.

Elizabeth : The Golden Age

What a great movie!! That’s my first impression when I finished watching Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I watched this great movie with my fellow classmates.

I really enjoy watching this movie because it is a story about the Queen of England, Elizabeth, who was portrayed as a caring and loving queen. She has all the abilities as a queen even though she is a woman. At the beginning of the movie, Walter Raleigh is presented at Elizabeth's court, having returned from the New World, and offers her some of the New World's riches: potatoes, tobacco, and two Native Americans. Raleigh also offers her gold from Spanish ships that he ironically claims were unable to continue their journey, but the Spanish ambassador present protests that Raleigh is a pirate and should not be welcomed. Elizabeth commands the Native Americans be treated well, and refuses to accept the gold. Elizabeth quickly finds Raleigh is attractive. She becomes enamoured with his tales of exploration and high-seas adventure and asks Bess, her most favored lady-in-waiting, to observe him. Bess also finds Raleigh an attractive man and secretly begins an affair with the explorer. That gives Elizabeth some hard times in life. The Spanish Armada begins its approach up the English Channel, and Elizabeth forgives Bess and sets Raleigh free to join in the attack on the Armada. Then, Elizabeth, back at her coastal headquarters, walks out to the cliffs and watches the Spanish Armada sink in flames.

The ending of the story also is very touching. As the film ends, Elizabeth visits Walsingham on his deathbed, telling her old friend to rest. She then visits Raleigh and Bess and blesses their child, presumably Damerei. Elizabeth seemingly triumphs personally through her ordeal, again resigned to her role as the Virgin Queen and mother to the English people.

Watching this movie makes me realize that it has some similarities with the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles especially the part that Elizabeth believes in the prophecy of a prophet about her life and her country. The same thing happened in the play Oedipus Rex where Oedipus really believe in prophecy of Teiresias to fullfil the riddle and find the murderer of Laios.

Whatever it is, I am very happy and excited that I have a chance to watch this great movie with all my friends.

Write my own script??

Writing my own script? I never thought to do it before but now I have to. Writing a script for a play is not a simple task. It is very difficult and challenging to me and also to my partner. Guess what? We are debating and fighting only to choose the best title and theme for our script. But finally we’ve come out and agree to choose feminism as our theme. It is funny right? Ok, now I’m relief because we already have the theme for our one act play script. We send our first draft to Miss Kasthoori by giving her the full synopsis of our whole story. But then Miss Kasthoori said “Only one group send in their first draft without the dialogues”, “Is it both of you?”. Hahahaha….we have to admit it. “Yes, that’s us, Miss”. However, we still got positive feedback by Miss Kasthoori regarding our theme. That’s my problem in doing the first draft.

Now I am struggling to come out with the dialogues for my second draft. I admit that I didn’t have any experience in writing the script before. So, once again my partner and I are debating, discussing and fighting to come out with the best script in the world. But it’s not that simple. There are a lot of things need to be considered in writing the script. I have to make it interesting. Now, I’m trying to improve myself and also trying to improve my script.

Tutorial Class..!!

My first tutorial class for EDU3217 was fun. Although it was three hours class, but my tutor, Miss Kasthoori successfully make it enjoyable. During the class, we are discussing about three short plays and the most interesting play for me is The Ring. The first time I entered the class, I thought it will be boring but my impression suddenly changed when we were asked to act in front of the class. I really love it. I love to ACT.

But that is not all because the most important thing is, I started to realize that to get a better understanding of a play, we need to practice and act on it. Besides, the class was enjoyable because there were so many activities given by the tutor. It was very good for me and for all my classmates. In the other words, this class gives me a lot of new experiences and makes me slowly falling in love with drama.

D.R.A.M.A

Honestly, I never want to know about the world of drama before. The drama is not close with my sensitivity and heart unless it is the drama that I am familiar with, as the drama in the television.

But when I’m having the first lesson about drama with Dr. Edwin, I slowly started to fall in love in with it. When Dr. Edwin started to talk about it, the history, venue, the audience and more, it was totally out of my perception and really impressed me. Now I find the play quite interesting. I have learned so many interesting facts about theatre.

Now I can proudly say that I know the names of Tragedy and Comedy playwrights and one of the plays I have read and learned about is Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Guess what, that play had attracted me a lot especially about the fact that the main character, Oedipus the king married to his own mother

MOVIE vs THEATRE

Which one is my choice? Well, I would like to say that I love watching movie very much but what are the differences between movie and theatre? Well these are what i think about. For movie...the first thing that comes into my mind is the actors are not performing live in front of the audience and their performance is delayed. While for theatre, there must be people or actors that will perform live in front of the audience and the theatre also used to be played on a stage that is surrounded with audiences. In theater, the action is aimed at the audience but in movie, the audience is aimed at the action so there’s more work in organizing a play than a movie. However, theatre to me is very exclusive and theatre only can be watch by people from high-class in society. Besides, there are also protocol needed in order to watch and enjoys the play. Whatever the differences are, they both are part of arts and bring messages to us. Both movie and theatre have their true followers.