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Firstly some general words about a dramatic analysis. A dramatic analysis intends to find out
what the character wants to achieve. Knowing that, the actor/actress has a reason to act.
Everything the author has given in terms of text and circumstances, the director has given in
terms of additional circumstances and explanations, and everything the actor is inventing
while acting serves only that end: what does the character want. In this sense, all of Plato’s
philosophy is only a background knowledge that helps establish the characters’ reason for
being on stage.
The three pillars on which a theatrical play rests—author, director, actor—are all equally
important. One could even say that the actor is the most important one. Without author and
director an actor can still improvise a complete scene and that is already a full theatrical piece;
without actor, though, there is only a dead stage. That means that the actor’s imagination, fed
from his/her very own life experiences, is as important as the writing of an author such as
Plato. An actor can, therefore, approach Plato with the self-confidence of a colleague. He
should do so with the due respect for an older and very experienced colleague—but still with
a strong stance. An actor is anybody who enters a stage in order to perform, whether a
famous star or a university student who does it for the first time. Period. Others may pass
judgment on the quality of the performance—but that is a different issue.
The work process goes as follows: you analyse, you create a dramatic setting, you go onto the
stage and play, you sit down and analyse again, and continue to do so until the last
performance. In the beginning you call the performances “rehearsals”, then one of them
becomes “the opening night,” i.e. they are in front of an audience. The more often you play,
the more the dramatic analysis can happen in your sub-conscious. It should never stop. Plays
acted by serious actors become better the more often they are played. Therefore, what I am
going to give you now is only a first proposition. It is not carved in stone. That is the
fundamental difference between the arts and mathematics.
Now about the first pages of the Republic: The director has to decide the angle of the
performance. There are two possibilities: either you follow Plato by the word. Then you have
only one character, Socrates, that tells the whole thing. His objective is fairly clear. He wants
to tell the story of a very interesting conversation of how to run a state. Doing this in
politically, socially, morally, and spiritually very unstable times like his back then in Athens,
is a political statement. It makes it a political speech. Political speeches are held in order to
convince others in order to do something, usually in order to change the order of power within
society. That is very dangerous, of course. Not surprisingly, Socrates was executed later-on
and Plato sold as a slave. To do the Republic like that would be extremely difficult and not
necessarily more interesting than to just enact what Socrates is telling. I am going to focus,
therefore, on the latter version.
Socrates and Glaucon have attended the festival for a new goddess. Having had enough of the
carnival around it and having a long way home from Piraeus to Athens, they head home.
They are stopped by Polemarchus and his followers and forced to stay. Adeimantus,
Glaucon’s brother, eases the tension by bringing up the prospect of a torch race on horse-back
and Polemarchus himself adds to this the possibility of the presence of a lot of young men to
talk to. Thus, Socrates and Glaucon give in.
This beginning is very interesting. After all, the Republic is about how to run a state, that is
who should have the ruling power and how should that power be used. Polemarchus is
clearly acting like a representative of a tyranny, using force to get his will (instead of, e. g.,
convincing or money). Of course, this little scene can be played out with a lot of friendly
irony, since Polemarchus is the son of an old acquaintance of Socrates, and Glaucon’s brother
is amongst Polemarchus’s followers, and it is questionable whether Polemarchus would really
dare arrest Socrates. But in the end it remains the director’s choice of how the scene is to be
played.
About the main scene between Socrates and Cephalus, it could be said that the whole setting
hints at an arena. Instead of two boxers in the middle or two roosters, one sees two
philosophers and around them the crowd. Cephalus is the challenger. He is bored by his
existence. His physical pleasures have become limited by old age and he has no interesting
partners for a conversation. That is at least what he says, but probably it is true. So he
challenges Socrates with a bait that usually works: the question of how to live correctly, in
this case in old age. Maybe Cephalus also wants to show off a little bit in front of his sons.
Socrates takes on the challenge and starts right away to lure Cephalus to topics that allow
Socrates to approach the issue more directly. Cephalus falls into the trap not realizing that he
is out for a possibly painful experience. Socrates’ very own objective, to examine the
question of a correct life, often leads to a catharsive experience for his partners because
Socrates does not content himself with easy and cheap solutions, such as “in order to be
content in old age one needs to be rich.” Socrates is not out to destroy or humiliate the other,
but since human beings normally reject catharsive experiences because they make them feel
fragile and vulnerable, there is a strong conflict evolving in Socratian dialogues. This is what
makes them interesting.
If you continue to analyse this piece from a dramatic angle, you will not go wrong if you look
out for the human conflict between the characters. The philosophical conflict, however, is
only a hint to the human conflict and ranges in the dramatic analysis on second place.