Time: 50 minutes
Number of Students: 20+

Arizona Essential Standards:
    · Standard 2: Analyze the physical, emotional and social dimensions of characters found in dramatic texts from various genre and media

Materials: Greek Chorus ode or poem, Woody Allen's Mighty Aprhodite,

Introduction:
    · "Who started the motion" game
Form a circle and select one person to leave the room - that person is the inquirer. Select someone in the group to be the leader and the leader begins with a repetitive motion (jumping, snapping fingers, etc.) The inquirer returns and stands in the middle of the circle, trying to discover the leader. If the leader is brave, he/she will continue to change movements; it is up to the group to not give away the leader (without looking at the leader)-developing peripheral vision and a growing sense of connection. When the inquirer discovers the leader, choose two other players to take their places.

Body:
    · Pass out and read "Historical Background" information
    · View the Greek chorus sequences from Woody Allen's film Mighty
Aphrodite:
    · Compare this chorus with the study guide describing the functions of a chorus. Also discuss the effect of combining classical conventions with modern language.

    · Moving Tableaus
    · Have everyone in the class stand in a straight line. Then, one student will have to yell out an emotional state (for example, depressed) and then match it with a gesture. Then the entire line follows repeating the gesture. After awhile of coordinating the movements, someone else will call out a different emotion (for example, triumph) and the group has to start chanting that, but slowly evolving the gesture in unison to match the word. Do this so everyone has had a chance to say a word.

*Make Choral Masks
*Experiment with choral reading
    · Divide the class into small groups. Select a choral ode from a Greek play or poem. Divide the text into segments and assign lines to each participant. First, have each person read their lines in order. Then, have one person start and continue on with the next line, but fading out (two people talking at beginning, one at the end). Then, everyone at the same time. Then everyone say the lines as if speaking to different people in an audience. If you have a piece that can apply all of these techniques, use it, instead of splitting up the activities.
 Conclusion:
    · Discussion:
         Name some things that you learned about the elements of Greek Theatre today. What were the purposes of Greek Chorus members? As chorus  members, what was difficult or easy for you to do? Today, in contemporary plays and musicals we still see the tasks of the chorus, done without the use of a chorus - can anybody name some examples? How about in narration or expository purposes? Grease - Guardian angel in "Beauty School Dropout", My Fair Lady in "The Rain in Spain", Tom in the Glass Menagerie, Stage Manager in Our Town, etc
 
· Assignment:
      Start reading Oedipus Rex
 
 

Historical Background of Greek Theatre

Greek theatre evolved from ritual and dance with a strong choral focus, to greater emphasis upon dramatic action. The choric dithyrambs (choral songs) were originally about the death and resurrection of Dionysus (god of wine and fertility).

1 - The first function of the chorus was as narrator (telling stories, providing information).

2. When the first actor stepped out of the chorus and assumed a role, the chorus was then able to assume a role as well (i.e. If the actor was playing a god, the chorus could become his worshippers).

3. The chorus could work within the limits of the action as characters, or from outside the action as impartial commentators.

4. The chorus was the ideal spectator. It provided commentary and questions, gave opinions and warnings, and clarified experiences and feelings of characters in everyday terms. The chorus sympathized with victims, reinforced facts, separated episodes, and often served as spokespeople for the conservative members of the community.

5. As the number of actors increased from one to three, the size of the chorus, which originally numbered 50, was reduced.

6. In the fifth century BC the tragic chorus numbered 12-15 members, while the comedic chorus numbered 24.

7. Members of the chorus were chosen from the general population.

8. Chorus members were unpaid volunteers doing their civic duty.

9. The rehearsal period for a chorus was likely four months or more.

10. Choruses probably did not rehearse in the theatres in which they later performed. Not wanting spectators to see the play before the festivals, they probably rehearsed in a closed rehearsal room.

11 - The chorus was trained and costumed at state expense through a choregos (a wealthy citizen) who chose this job as his way of paying taxes and getting his name on a monument.

12. Early dramatists (Aeschylus and probably Sophocles and Euripides) taught their own choruses.

13. The parades (chorus entrance) marks the beginning of the play, and the exodus (its exit) the ending.

14. The purpose of the chorus was to bridge the gap between the audience and the players and to intensify the emotion.

15. The functions of the chorus were to-.
    · Maintain a sense of ceremony and ritual
    · Establish a lyric mood through rhythmic chanting and dance
    · Reinforce the passions of the dramatic action
    · Connect the audience and the actors by making responses and asking questions
    · unite music, dance, and speech and connect dramatic episodes

16. The chorus could punctuate the action of a play with bursts of song and dance, which enlarged the dramatic action and relieved tension.

17. Instruments used to accompany choric songs and dances included flutes, lyres, horns, drums, and bells.

                             FRAGMENT OF A GREEK TRAGEDY
                                                    by A. E. Housman

CHORUS: o suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveler, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.

ALCMAEON: I journeyed hither a Boetian road.

CHORUS: Sailing on horseback, or with feet for oars?

ALCMAEON: Plying with speed my partnership of legs.

CHORUS: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?

ALCMAEON: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.

CHORUS: To learn your name would not displease me much.

ALCMAEON: Not all that men desire do they obtain.

CHORUS: Might I then hear at what thy presence shoots.

ALCMAEON: A shepherd's questioned mouth informed me that-

CHORUS: What? for I know not yet what you will say.

ALCMAEON: Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.

CHORUS: Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.

ALCMAEON: This house was Eriphyle's, no one else's.

CHORUS: Nor did he shame his throat with shameful lies.

ALCMAEON: May I then enter, passing through the door?
CHORUS: Go chase into the house a lucky foot.
And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good, And do not, on the other hand, be bad;
For that is much the safest plan.

ALCMAEON: I go into the house with heels and speed.

CHORUS
                Strophe:
In speculation
I would not willingly acquire a name
But after pondering much
To this conclusion I at last have come:
LIFE IS UNCERTAIN.
This truth I have written deep
In my reflective midriff
On tablets not of wax,
Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there,
For many reasons: LIFE, I say, IS NOT
A STRANGER TO UNCERTAINTY.
Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls
This fact did I discover,
Nor did the Delphine tripod bark it out,
Nor yet Dodona.
Its native ingenuity sufficed
My self-taught diaphragm.

    Antistrophe:
Why should I mention
The Inachean daughter, loved of Zeus?
Her whom of old the gods,
More provident than kind,
Provided with four hoofs, two horns, one tail,
A gift not asked for,
And sent her forth to learn
The unfamiliar science
Of how to chew the cud.
She therefore, all about the Argive fields,
Went cropping pale green grass and nettle-tops,
Nor did they disagree with her.
But yet, how'er nutritious, such repasts
I do not hanker after:
 Never may Cypris for her seat select
My dappled liver!
Why should I mention lo? Why indeed?
I have no notion why.

    Epode:
But now does my boding heart,
Unhired, unaccompanied, sing
A strain not meet for the dance.
Yes even the palace appears
To my yoke of circular eyes
(The right, nor omit I the left)
Like a slaughterhouse, so to speak,
Garnished with woolly deaths
And many shipwrecks of cows.
I therefore in a Cissian strain lament:
And to the rapid
Loud, linen-tattering thumps upon my chest
Resounds in concert
The battering of my unlucky head.

ERIPHYLE (within): O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw; And that in deed and not in word alone.

CHORUS: I thought I heard a sound within the house Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.

ERIPHYLE: He splits my skull, not in a friendly way, Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.

CHORUS: I would not be reputed rash, but yet I doubt if all be gay within the house.

ERIPHYLE: O! O! another stroke! that makes the third. He stabs me to the heart against my wish.

CHORUS: If that be so, thy state of health is poor; But thine arithmetic is quite correct.