I hope you found my play interesting if not insightful. I thought that to increase your experience with the script I would share some thoughts and foresight into the story, to better help you understand where I was going with these god-arc-types. There are a lot of talk backs to greek mythology, but I wanted the major fuel of the emotions to come from our social understandings and the epiphany of a real world setting. The most potent examples are in the following:
The Individual Climax's
Once the basic story was created the climaxes became obvious where each emotion would gain the most understanding and would go through the state of change that would lead to the tragic conclusion. The different climaxes were meant to ask questions about what reasons are moral or unsettling. I will do my best to explain my odd thought processes that I think led to a detailed story:
Aphrodite: Going to see Diana
Essentially Aphrodite, our own driving force of love is all about the love that we devote ourselves towards. That being said, she would understand heartbreak and finding true love, mush better than the others. Everyone else is elusive about their intentions with Diana. Athena fails to admit a sense of attraction, Hephaestus as always denise his needs and Ares only considers Diana a weapon of sorts. In contras the Love Goddess sees the situation far clearer than the others and is the most honest in her response. The idea is that instead of finding a new love interest to fuel a different desire, the spirit of Love wants only to love. It is that distinction that leads to the demise, being blinded by love never being able to understand where it leads. Also Love suggests that people act on intuition, which I think is the most honest response to who we choose to be with.
Athena: The man with the bible
Athena was meant to be the higher academic and personal contemplation within every person. The little part of ourselves that doesn't necessarily want to win, but wants to improve. The obvious choice was to confront the character with the homeless man who holds onto a bible, and show different ways people interact with something lesser than themselves. Most people would act and think as the other three act, they would worry about him or reject him or never take him seriously. Athena's reaction is from what I have observed, the reaction that most people say but don't feel; Athena respected and learned from the man with the bible. Athena becomes that little part of our mind that looks for the small clues, that tries to explain what it all means, and for Athena here, we find a desperate attempt to improve. Is that more heroic than giving to give someone food? Maybe not, but I think that it is the reaction that we are all looking for, and Athena finds it and it leads to the promise of a better life. This leads to the end of the story, where Athena tests herself and finds a better world than the one before. I think thats what we're all looking for in different ways.
Ares: The Mugging
This was what interested me into exploring this story. If your going to stop a mugging not to save someone but to challenge yourself, is it still heroic? In terms of urban heroism, there is no more potent example of stopping petty crime that happens right in front of you, and it scares us that the only thing that can stop it, is intervention. I immediately knew that Hephaestus the crippled altruist would see both sides and try to save everyone, Athena would enter on ethical reasons and her own questions, and Aphrodite's would think of the people who suffer, not being able to look at hate but only trying to think of love. But the god of war? It scared me to admit, but only he could see the truth behind the situation. It is the to be or not to be, the ultimate get busy or get going challenge that no one wants to admit is that simple. Ares looked at the situation and knew that it was only him there, and only his choice. What we discover is that choice was more self loathing than heroic and more fearful than insightful. This act leads directly to Ares Death and as in greek mythology antagonizing pain. Ares lives in all of us, we hate to admit that we like being smug and reckless, but its always there, and its control could get us killed.
Hephaestus: The End
Hephaestus is the crippled altruist. The greek mockery of selflessness that not until the Superman of Seagel and Shuster would he become appealing to look upon. Hephaestus is ugly, he defends everyone and is so great at being good that only he can create gifts for the gods. It is these reason that throughout the story Hephaestus does nothing but aid others, always pays close attention to detail others miss and only comes to understand what his desire for good gave birth to. Through the end Hephaestus just realizes that he has done nothing but try to help others, and when he no longer has the capacity to do that, he is lost. He is the ideal we have taken upon ourselves that we know is impossible, and eventually dies within most so that the satisfaction of having is had. Of all of them at the end, you pity Hephaestus the most, but from his last will and testimate probably find him the most pathetic. Had only he not been destroyed.
The Final Vision
The other thing that I wanted to specify was what all four of these embodiments would see at the last moment of their life. Its the one thing that we really want to see, even if its disappointing. Here they are:
Athena: Golden Hair
We can either see the best of ourselves or the worst of ourselves. For Athena, the best would be to have found the world and be given the thing that she states is the most important thing in the world. The beautiful nameless golden haired girlfriend. On the same note, Athena of greek myth was notorious for challenging and debating the greatest thinkers of old. In my story the girlfriend challenges Athena and at the end realizes that Athena has lost the great debate. Would the last thing you'd want to see the person who told you that you were wrong?
Love: The Smile
The Smile is the most open reference of the four. It could be the girlfriend, it could be Diana, it could even by the mugger as he watches her life ending, and could of coarse be an amalgamation of all of the love that the characters life experienced. It is meant to be that slight eluded feeling of never settling on a one true love. No one is afraid of death, everyone is afraid of dying alone and we can either see Love dying not seeing a face or having one last smile to go with her.
Ares: Four Dollars
The four dollars eludes to the money given to the homeless man. The connection probably ended the straingest of the four, but I really felt that it made perfect sense. What does a war hero, a murderer or someone overcome with hate feel at the end? I wanted Ares to see something ironic, essentially seeing something that he thought gave him such power over somebody else, realizing how fake that power was, as I imagine more than one world leader felt at the end. At the same time, I wanted to show Ares the one good thing that he did in his life (as the story goes), and I think that it makes us rethink who Ares is with his incapability of accepting the image before him. Ultimately no one is without that one moment of unyeilding good, and though he doesn't understand it, Ares has it just like the rest of us. At the same time, he might not and simply be brought lower by seeing something so insignificant thing. It really depends on your definitions of good and evil.
Hephaestus: Himself
If a person never spends time taking what he or she needs and wants, would there be anything to see? Hephaestus looses everything by finding that he has nothing and could see himself as seeing nothing but his own image. At the same time, he is the only one who can look at himself at the end. It all depends if you believe that we have a destiny to do good in the world. If you do you'll see yourself at the end, and if you don't you'll see yourself at the end, whatever you chose to be.
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