User:Lovelydanae/sandbox

Adaptations of Chorus Stagings
The Greek chorus is difficult to stage, given the limited information from surviving tragedies. Herbert Golder, a specialist in Greek and classics studies, said, "The non-specialist who knows nothing else about Greek drama knows it had a 'chorus.' But as almost anyone who has ever seen a Greek play can attest, the chorus is every director's nightmare." Different directors and productions take on this 'nightmare' or problem of the chorus in varying ways.

Sophocles' Antigone
Director Ivo van Hove splits up the chorus lines between all the actors in his 2015 production instead of casting other actors to represent the collective voice. The Antigone actress Juliette Binoche also voices some of the lines. Antigone 's chorus is written as Theban elders who experience the recent tragedies of the play and speak from bearing witness. Van Hove's decision to have the main actors also play the chorus heightens their "individuality" and humanity.

Classical Theater of Harlem's 2018 production of Antigone has three actors playing the chorus alongside five dancers. The Afro-punk adaptation was influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement and gave a general ode to the black community. Carl Cofield had the chorus sing Gospel hymns to "mitigate [the chorus'] grief" in an adaptation that mentions black victims of state violence, such as Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland.

Aeschylus' The Oresteia
Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy is made into one performance by director Robert Icke's 2022 adaptation of the play. He does away with the chorus entirely despite Aeschylus' choruses' profound impact on the play's dramatic function. Icke further modernized the play by including different technological aspects in the form of video interviews alongside industrial sound and lighting. The lack of chorus was noted by Dominic Maxwell in his The Times article, as Orestes' narration in flashbacks is seen as "fiddly."

In 1981, director Sir Peter Hall staged The Oresteia for the National Theatre's Olivier theater before it moved to the famous theater at Epidaurus. With Hall's production, he upheld the Greek tradition of masks and all-male casts. That means all the female characters--Clytemnestra, Electra, Cassandra and the Furies--were portrayed by this male cast. These choices lend themselves to Hall's vision to focus on form and Aeschylus' words. Hall is described to compare “the cooling effect of a mask with the removal of all violence in Greek drama to behind closed doors. And he says that if you speak an Aeschylean aphorism, like ‘Suffering comes first, then afterwards awareness,’ with a naked face, it seems pretentious.” The masks also provide an anonymity to the actors, which was emphasized by their being no cast assignments in the 1981 program with the following note:

“The names of the actors are not shown against the parts they play because this seems in keeping with the spirit of a masked production, and of a text in which the main role is the Chorus, at some point played by them all.”

Euripides' Medea
Director Carrie Cracknell's production of Euripides' Medea took place at the National Theater in 2014. Her adaptation featured a 14-person female chorus that appears as individuals with different party dresses before gradually becoming a collective, ending the play in the same bridesmaid dresses. In this adaptation, the chorus closely align and sympathize with Medea's pain, with their transformation throughout the show reflecting the "increasing volatility" of Medea's mind. The women appear as if they are "short-circuiting Stepford Wives" when they perform the choreography by Lucy Guerin. Euripides' original text has the chorus representing the Corinthian women of the city who are like accomplices to Medea's murder of her children. Cracknell's use of the chorus is said to add to the themes of "female rage and powerlessness," as noted by The Guardian writer Susannah Clapp.