1 Greek Tragedy and Its American Choruses in Open Air Theaters from 1991 to 2014: the Cases of Gorilla Theatre Productions and T

Home , Greek chorus

Greek Tragedy and Its American Choruses in Open Air Theaters from 1991 to 2014: The

Cases of Gorilla Theatre Productions and The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon

Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the

Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Joshua Streeter, B.A.

Graduate Program in Theatre

The Ohio State University

2019

Thesis Committee

Stratos E. Constantinidis, Advisor

Benjamin Acosta-Hughes

Copyrighted by

Joshua Aaron Streeter

2019

Abstract

Classicists and theater scholars have long identified the chorus as a “problem” for modern directors of Greek tragedies, a recurring label which Billings, Budelmann, and

Macintosh (2013) argue stems from 19th century German Idealism. This inquiry identifies the components of this “problem” and studies the solutions offered by two American theater companies: a) Gorilla Theatre Productions founded and headed by Artistic

Director David Brisco Luby from 1991 to 2014 and b) The Classic Greek Theatre of

Oregon originally headed by director and adaptor Keith Scales, 1993 to 2008. Using photographs, video recordings, statements by the directors, and critical performance reviews this inquiry details how the tragic chorus was realized by American theater companies for American audiences from 1991 to 2014.

iii

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge Dr. Stratos E. Constantinidis for his indispensable guidance on this project, and Dr. Benjamin Acosta-Hughes for his suggestions on this research. The author owes a great deal to Rebecca J. Becker for her assistance with archival material on The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s productions. Finally, the author wishes to thank his wife and his family for their love and support during this work and many others.

Vita

May 2005 …………………………………..Alamosa High School

2009 ………………………………………..U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country

Coaches Association Outdoor Track

Scholar-Athlete of the Year

2010 ………………………………………...B.A. Theatre, Adams State University

2013 to 2017 ………………………………..English and Theater Teacher, Alamosa High

School

2017 to 2018 ………………………………..University Fellowship, The Ohio State

University

2018 to Present ……………………………..Graduate Teaching Associate, Department

of Theatre, The Ohio State University

2018 to Present ……………………………..Graduate Teaching Fellow, University

Center for the Advancement of Teaching,

The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Theatre

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... iii Acknowledgments...... iv Vita ...... v List of Tables ...... viii List of Figures ...... ix Chapter 1. Introduction ...... 1 Review of Literature ...... 3 Methodology ...... 12 Chapter 2. The Greek Tragedies of Gorilla Theatre Productions ...... 18 Formation and History of Gorilla Theatre Productions ...... 18 The Venues of Gorilla Theatre Productions ...... 19 Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Earlier Greek Tragedies, 1991 to 2005 ...... 24 Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Hecuba [2007] ...... 27 Gorilla Theatre Productions’ The Persians [2010] ...... 36 Gorilla Theatre Productions’ The Seven Against Thebes [2011] ...... 43 Gorilla Theatre Productions’ The Suppliant Maidens [2012] ...... 56 Gorilla Theatre Productions’ “Final” Greek Show: Elektra [2014] ...... 63 Chapter 3. The Greek Tragedies of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon ...... 76 The Venues of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon ...... 79 The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s Earlier Tragedies by Keith Scales, 1986 to 1998...... 82 The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s Later Tragedies by Keith Scales: Bacchae [2001], Medea [2003], Prometheus Bound [2004], Orestes [2006], and Antigone [2008] ...... 90 The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s tragedies by Elizabeth Huffman: Trojan Women [2009] and Oedipus the King [2010] ...... 104 Chapter 4. Conclusion ...... 117 Bibliography ...... 122 vi

Appendix A. Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Greek Tragedies ...... 128 Appendix B. The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s Greek Tragedies ...... 132

vii

List of Tables

Table 1. Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Greek Performances and Chorus Size by Year .... 19 Table 2. The Gates, Attackers, Defenders, and Lines of Choral Responses of The Seven Against Thebes...... 48 Table 3. The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s Performances and Chorus Size by Year ...... 77

viii

List of Figures

Figure 1. Rendered image of Charles B. Wheel Amphitheater, Kansas City MO and the ancient theater at Thorikos...... 20 Figure 2. Rendered image of the southern exterior of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO and the Hellenistic theater at Hierapolis...... 23 Figure 3. A collage of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ early tragedies...... 26 Figure 4. The set of Hecuba; the chorus sitting, Hecuba kneeling behind the body of Polydorus, and Agamemnon standing...... 29 Figure 5. Detail of choral costumes, Hecuba...... 31 Figure 6. Set of The Persians...... 38 Figure 7. The chorus summons the ghost of Darius...... 40 Figure 8. The Ghost of Darius addresses the chorus...... 41 Figure 9. The chorus of The Seven Against Thebes...... 45 Figure 10. The Herald addresses the chorus in a dress rehearsal for The Seven Against Thebes...... 47 Figure 11. The Theban princesses mourn their fallen brothers...... 53 Figure 12. The chorus of The Suppliant Maidens under the protection of Argive soldiers, on the steps of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art...... 58 Figure 13. The Danaïdes dance on the intermediate landing...... 60 Figure 14. The Danaïdes arrested by their cousins and the Herald...... 62 Figure 15. The chorus of Elektra consoles the titular princess...... 64 Figure 16. The chorus sings the first passage...... 68 Figure 17. Elektra, the Old Man, Orestes, and the chorus intreat the deities...... 69 Figure 18. Cerf Amphitheater ...... 80 Figure 19. Aerial view of Cerf Amphitheater, with Reed Lake...... 81 Figure 20. The chorus of Agamemnon looks on Clytemnestra...... 85 Figure 21. Detail of a chorus-member dancing before Agamemnon...... 86 Figure 22. The chorus encircles Cassandra...... 87 Figure 23. The chorus of Oedipus, with the coryphaeus standing on the palace steps. .... 88 Figure 24. The chorus listens to Oedipus...... 89 Figure 25. Collage of the chorus from Bacchae (2001)...... 92 Figure 26. Collage of the chorus of Medea (2003)...... 94 Figure 27. The Corinthian women avert their eyes in their final ode...... 96 Figure 28. Collage of the chorus of Prometheus Bound (2004)...... 98 Figure 29. Collage of the chorus of Orestes (2006)...... 101 Figure 30. Collage of the chorus of Antigone (2008)...... 103 ix

Figure 31. The chorus of Trojan Women, in make-up recalling Minoan frescoes...... 106 Figure 32. The masks worn by the chorus on the back of the head...... 107 Figure 33. The ‘Peasant Chorus’ from Oedipus The King in the “Zen garden of a mythical Theban court.”...... 110 Figure 34. Detail of the ‘Elder Chorus’ from Oedipus The King, showing two of the four members...... 111 Figure 35. Detail of the ‘Peasant Chorus’ in a butoh dance sequence...... 112

Chapter 1. Introduction

For playwrights, adapters, translators, dramaturgs, actors, designers, and directors in the

21st century, the chorus of Ancient Greek theater presents a complex challenge. Where and how does the chorus fit in an American production of a Greek tragedy?

The chorus’ centrality to the theater of Classical Athens cannot be overstated. As only one type of choral activity that pervaded the entire Greek culture, the chorus of tragedy contains a particular importance to its reception. Choruses of tragedy were selected and trained for the City Dionysia festival some eight months before the actual event. Sponsoring a chorus for the tragedies was one of the leitourgical duties asked of

Athens’ wealthy citizens—a duty on par with the maintenance of a warship and a significant source of honor (τιμή) for winning the festival (Wilson 144-145). As another testament to its vital position, the idiom used to announce a playwright’s selection to the

City Dionysia festival was that his work was “granted a chorus,” the linguistic expression marking the transformation from proposal to performance. A play without a chorus, then, was not a play at all, or at least a not performable one.

Regarding the practicalities of tragic choral performance, the chorus members sang and danced together and likely wore similar or coordinating costumes, which may or may not have included masks. The chorus members were likely drawn up from the young men (epheboi) of each deme, and danced within the area designated the orchestra. The

1 chorus was closer to the spectators in the theatron than the actors and performed to the musical accompaniment of an aulos double-pipe. Edith Hall, in The Theatrical Cast of

Athens offers, an even more poignant connection between the audience and the chorus than mere proximity, chiefly that “many of the spectators had once performed in dramatic choruses themselves, and may often have been watching their own sons or grandsons participating” (2).

J.R. Green, in his 1994 book Theatre in Ancient Greek Society, identifies the participatory sense created in the audience, with the chorus acting as the catalyst for this experience, and this relationship is explored further in Peter Meineck’s recent work pairing neuroscience and Greek drama in his 2018 Theatrocracy: Greek Drama,

Cognition, and the Imperative for Theatre. Specifically, Meineck recalls a 2005 experiment with groups of professional ballet and capoeira dancers watching performances of both styles, and the two groups displayed stronger “kinesthetic empathy” when viewing the style they had practiced and weaker with the unfamiliar (131). Meineck suggests the common Greek experiences of choral dance from prior participation, in addition to more abstracted dancing forms like “hoplite drill, rowing a trireme, riding in a cavalry formation, or being part of a procession” would have made most any original spectator of tragedy an “expert dancer” who would derive a benefit from such increased neural activity (132). These factors, the existential link between chorus and actualized tragic performance, cultural value and honor derived from a winning choral presentation, and the blending of visual-kinesthetic stimuli based on previous dancing combine to

2 create a powerful, peculiar source of entertainment and appreciation for those Classical

Greek tragedy attendees.

What then of restagings of Greek tragedy in a 21st century United States context?

In Karelisa Hartigan’s foundational 1994 book Greek Tragedy on the American Stage, she notes that the chorus is often the theatrical convention modern directors find

“difficult to use effectively” in their productions. There are certainly many barriers to recreating a generally similar, much less a precisely equal, effect that the Greek chorus had on its spectators. How does the economic situation of some American theater companies, compared to the additional civic and religious significance for the Greeks, affect the chorus in performance? American indoor performance spaces lack the orchestra of the outdoor Greek theaters, which also placed the chorus in closer proximity to the audience. Americans do create intergenerational bonds formed through shared participatory experiences, but those participatory experiences are inevitably different from the strong Greek choral tradition of singing and dancing in and beyond dramatic performance. How then are American directors able to surmount these “difficulties” when they try to do so?

Review of Literature

Classicists and theater scholars identify the chorus as the most challenging aspect of restaging Greek tragedy. Two historical surveys of Greek tragedy in America, Karelisa

Hartigan’s Greek Tragedy on the American Stage and Helene P. Foley’s Re-imagining

Greek Tragedy on the American Stage identify the persistent “problem of the chorus”

3 through several decades of American theater history. Hartigan found from the critical reviews of primarily commercial productions of Greek tragedy in the United States up to

1995 that “the ever-present chorus is difficult to use effectively” (1). While each review is clearly paired to a specific production, the overwhelming majority of critics adjudicate the American versions of the tragic chorus as varyingly “impenetrable” (73), worthy of

“condemnation” (75), a “disappointment” (75), “disjointed” (84), with “no coherent interpretation” and “lacking in passion” (84), an “abomination” (91), a “difficult distraction to bear” (94), and “onstage chaos… increased by incomprehensible mutterings” (103).

The choruses of the National Greek Theatre touring productions of Oedipus in

1952 and Electra the following year had a much warmer reception in the United States.

For the Oedipus, Walcott Gibbs wrote for the New Yorker that “the cast, and especially the chorus, succeeded brilliantly” (qtd in Hartigan 41). For the Electra, theater critics raved about the chorus of Electra. Brooks Atkinson’s review in the New York Times found the chorus “especially fine… drawn straight into the heart of the performance… spiritual[ly] magnificen[t]… [and] an integral part of the whole tragic experience” (qtd. in Hartigan 30), William Hawkins for the New York World Telegram and the Sun “waxed eloquent about the chorus, ‘certainly the second most important character of the play’”

(30), and even Walter Kerr, who was less impressed by the entire production in his review for the New York Herald Tribune, conceded that the chorus gave “genuine theatrical excitement” for the audience (qtd. in Hartigan 30). The constant, rather grim assessment of American choruses compared to those more favorably-received ones of the

Greek National Theatre is striking, if not startling, and serves to emphasize the difference between modern interpretations of the tragic chorus by cultures lacking or steeped in such traditions. It also illustrates that American audiences were not disinclined to Greek drama, per se, and that much of its reception depended on how the chorus was realized in these performances.

While her interests are overtly in the ‘re-imaginings’ of Greek tragedy, rather than

‘faithful’ reproductions, Foley arrived at a similar conclusion nearly twenty years later, noting that “the problem of representing the chorus on the American stage” persists,

“unfortunately, quite often to the present day” (Foley 76). Foley highlights several productions which distance, if not sever, the chorus from the performances of tragedies, all the way back to an 1891 production of Antigone in New Haven with a “weak additional chorus of eighteen young women” (130-131) to Prospect Theater Company’s

2007 The Rockae, which reviewer Rachel Saltz deemed “hokey” and “dimwitted” with its chorus of “women [who] seem like extras in a 1980’s hair-band video” or “a riot of seething Pat Benatars” (Saltz). However, Foley foregrounds the titular characters like

Electra, Antigone, and Medea than devoting too much attention to the varied choruses themselves. Surprisingly, the chapter “Democratizing Greek Tragedy” contains limited analysis of the chorus to effect that exact outcome.

Even classicists, when their scholarship assumes primarily scopes historical and theoretical, are generally inclined to offer their perspective on the fastidious challenge the chorus makes for modern directors. Simon Goldhill conceived and wrote Reading Greek

Tragedy “as an advanced critical introduction for Greek tragedy, primarily for the reader

5 who has little or no Greek” (1986: ix), and he left enough room for “certain contemporary critical associations with the term ‘reading’” (x) for his final chapter on “Performance and Performability.” Using the Bacchae of Euripides for a sort of case study in consideration of a performance, he started this “particularly interesting example” with a

“look at a topic which is always a major concern for a modern viewer or producer of

Greek tragedy… that is, the chorus” (267). The following eight pages detoured into the choruses of other tragedies (Aeschylus’ Persians, Suppliants, Oresteia; Sophocles’

Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus, Electra; and Euripides’ Electra) before returning to the chorus and full performance of Bacchae, so Goldhill was considering a usage of the chorus broader than just this one tragedy. From a later impetus, Goldhill would return to and elaborate upon the challenges of a modern performance of Greek tragedy in How to

Stage Greek Tragedy Today (dealt with below).

Lastly, the few more prescriptive writings for theater directors highlight the chorus as a particularly complex ordeal for modern productions. As a sort of follow up to his earlier Reading Greek Tragedy, Goldhill devoted a full chapter to the chorus in his

How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today, a chapter he opens by claiming, “the most distinctive feature of Greek tragedy is also the most vexing for every modern company: the chorus” and “more modern performances fail because of the chorus than for any other reason: if the chorus isn’t right, the play cannot work” (45). More certain than Hartigan and Foley (compare his “most vexing for every modern company” and “more performances fail” to the more measured “difficult to use effectively” and “quite often”),

Goldhill still acknowledged the creative potential of solving this “modern problem” for

“a director of real imagination” (79). The conclusions he drew from selected case studies of performances of both “full” choruses from Breuer’s The Gospel at Colonus [1985] and

Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides [1990] and the Hall/Harrison Oresteia [1981] and the numerically “reduced” choruses of Leveaux’s Electra [1997-98] and Kent’s Hecuba

[2004] serve only to posit questions for the aspiring director of Greek tragedy rather than to prescribe solutions. Chiefly, he advises directors to consider these three main items:

“[1] the relation between the collectivity of the chorus and the individual commitments of the actors; [2] the narrative flow of each ode, including the relation between the ode and the surrounding action; [and 3] the shifting of the voice of the chorus” (78-79), and

Goldhill’s attention to the chorus, along with five other considerations (playing space, the actors, politics, translation, and the supernatural), will serve most any director of Greek tragedy well.

Likewise writing about and for modern directors of Greek tragedy, George

Rodosthenous edited a collection of essays in Contemporary Adaptations of Greek

Tragedy, and offered his perspective on the matter of the chorus in his introduction.

Rodosthenous concurred that the chorus “[is] key to the character of the original plays,” and lamented that choruses “are often cut” (13). Citing an interview with Ivo Van Hove having just directed a production of Antigone in 2015, Rodosthenous agreed with the director’s judgment “If you are not interested in the chorus as a director, better take your hands off a Greek tragedy. Better not do it.” (Higgins), which at first blush appears to align with Goldhill’s How To Stage Greek Tragedy Today. However, Rodosthenous took a drastically different perspective about “the eternal issue of the chorus,” breaking from

Goldhill’s advice for collectivity, and opined, “In my view, it is crucial to treat the chorus as individual human beings” (13). He pointed to the “very successful” 2012 Antigone at the National Theatre in London, commending director Polly Findlay for “giving [the chorus members] individual voices” (13). While Goldhill rightly identified the collective, cultural authority of the chorus in its context of Classical Athens, Rodosthenous’ observation that “[modern, English-speaking] choruses no longer talk, dress and move in the same way, do not wear masks and do not speak in unison” apparently served as justification enough for the more individualistic approach (13).

This apparent contradiction is reiterated from conclusion drawn from the

Contemporary Adaptations chapter courtesy of Marianne McDonald entitled “American

Directorial Perspectives: Independence Day Meets Greek Tragedy.” McDonald attends more to the significance of women and feminism, African-American and racial aspects, and thematic elements (particularly towards justice and freedom) of “American” productions, and the absence of detailed choral analysis speaks volumes. At its most focused, the analysis given to the chorus1 extracts the impact of allocating the choral passages to a single female actor rather than a regiment of men. This commendation is doubly ironic given that the chorus of Antigone is comprised of elder Theban men. This decision avoided “the abominable slurring that so often occurs when actors no longer have a living choral technique” (emphasis mine), and McDonald gathered “Many directors (like Peter Stein in his Oresteia, Michael Cacoyanis in his Iphigenia, and Ariane

1 Curiously to a 1999 production of Antigone directed by South African born Athol Fugard and performed in Ireland, no less. McDonald’s apologetics for counting Athol in her chapter on “American” directors, that Fugard is deemed sufficiently American “by citizenship and outlook,” is lacking. 8

Mnouchkine in Les Atrides) succeed by having one actor deliver lines for the most part, perhaps alternating with others in the chorus” (41), and note well that McDonald cites three Continental directors as exemplars. It would seem, then, a “good” chorus is not one at all, but a conglomeration of individuals, or better still a talented virtuoso. This begs the question of what McDonald precisely meant by a “living choral technique,” a phrase upon which she didn’t elaborate in this chapter. One would assume that a modern theater company would not experience the same sort of tragic choral training the epheboi undertook in the choregion2 in preparation for the City Dionysia festival, much less benefit from the kind of pervasive choral traditions of Greece as a whole,3 yet one wishes for some kind of alternative or example to be offered. As a final point, McDonald identified and commended the American directorial tradition of including music in tragedy, in opposition to the British tradition, yet divorced that music as emanating from, even partially, the chorus (49). Even when specifically addressing the importance of dance, McDonald rightfully credited the ingenuity of female directors, so far as justification for greater female representation in theatrical company leadership and creative directing roles, yet neglected an analysis of dance with regards to the chorus per se. These kinds of hanging questions regarding music and dance naturally seem more appropriate for a book addressing composers and choreographers than Contemporary

Adaptations’ intended audience of directors, but the lack of such a follow-up is felt.

2 For more on choral training, see Peter Wilson’s The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia (2000). 3 For more on Greek choral traditions other than tragic, see Calame’s Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece, translated by Derek Collins and Janice Orion (1997) and The Chorus in Greek Tragedy and Culture, One and Two eds. Golder and Scully from Arion, Third Series 3.1 and 4.1 (1995 and 1996). 9

A major and undeniably related issue to the “problem of the chorus” is the evolved playing space from the open, outdoor amphitheaters where the Athenians of 5th century B.C.E. watched these performances to the more commonly seen indoor proscenium stages of the United States in the 21st century C.E. The problem, summarized by David Wiles in Greek Theatre Performance, stems from the notion that:

The proscenium arch negates the form of Greek tragedy because it places so much

focus on the protagonist. The chorus retreats inconspicuously to the wings or

backdrop, or else takes over the stage for choral ‘interludes.’ What the

proscenium cannot represent is a continuing dynamic between the actor and a

large choral group…. The two-way relationship established by a proscenium arch

is incompatible with the triangular relationship of audience/actor/chorus upon

which Greek tragedy depends (125-126).

The chorus’ relationship to the orchestra cannot be overstated. Goldhill’s first two chapters in How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today, to which I now return briefly, are first on the playing space and second the Greek chorus, and this is surely no coincidence.

Goldhill gave mention to both the centrality of the main palace door, as well as the generally lost eisodos/parodos entrances on either side of the playing space, but for the purposes of the chorus and the orchestra, described this conundrum not as an issue of line or triangle but favorited the geometry of "the dire effects of forcing a round play into a square box” (Goldhill 11). The ancillary debate of whether tragic choral dancing was more circular and lyric or rectilinear and militaristic notwithstanding, the more germane point remains that a spatial dissonance from the playing areas of 21st century C.E.

American, indoor theater and a 5th century B.C.E. Greek, outdoor one clearly contributes to the “perennial problem” of the chorus.

Graham Ley’s The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy expressly limits itself to two foci, as identified in the subtitle: Playing Space and Chorus (mirroring Goldhill’s prioritization). Intending to “make the particular nature of these problems accessible to those who may not be specialists or linguists but who do have a strong interest in the ancient Greek theater and theater in general” (2007: ix), Ley outlined first the possible staging of Aeschylus’ Oresteia within the Theater of Dionysus in Athens, providing enlightening bird’s-eye view diagrams as well as illustrations from the perspective of one sitting in the theatron. More to this purpose, Ley’s extensive chapter on the chorus is wide ranging and deep, beginning with framing the chorus in epic roots and continuing on to topics like musical composition and poetic meter and dancing. In his conclusion, though, he warned against interpreting the chorus, and generally Greek theater, by too loose contemporary analogies like “musical theater” and “dance drama.” For while

“Greek tragedy was undoubtedly a performance that was both of these,” insofar as learning about the actual performances of Classical Athens, “we shall get further in understanding it if we do not expect it to be familiar” (206). A judicious outlook, certainly, and one to be applied in this inquiry on the modern American choruses of

Greek tragedy.

I wish to draw attention to the abundantly negative perception of the chorus, at least in terms of modern productions of Greek tragedy. The chorus manifests to the director as a “problem,” a “challenge,” a “concern” one which is “vexing,” “eternal,”

“dire,” “difficult to use effectively,” “intricate,” “perennial” yet also “integral,” “key to the character,” and “the very heart of Greek tragedy.” That the chorus of Greek tragedy has been defined as inherently negative and unwieldy has served also as a sort of self- fulfilling prophecy, an inheritance which Joshua Billings, Felix Budelmann, and Fiona

Macintosh traced to German Idealist thinking in Choruses, Ancient & Modern,

“remarkably tenacious for understandings of the chorus” (5). The editors claimed in their

Introduction that German Idealism interrogated the chorus with theoretical concerns of identity, cultural and religious notions, and the imperative of “staging Greek choruses or choruses in a Greek manner as an urgent dramaturgical issue” (5), in contrast to the earlier, more functionalist manner of Aristotle’s Poetics. “Idealism,” they concluded,

“has proven most powerful for modern notions of the chorus in that is has defined the chorus as a problem” (6, their emphasis), as is also evident from the preceding.

Methodology

I hypothesize that the American choruses of Greek tragedy will tend to fall somewhere between the spectrum of Goldhill on one end, who advocates for maintaining or finding new approaches to traditional conventions of the chorus’ collectivity and authority, and

Rodosthenous on the other, who recommends that modern directors treat the chorus as

“individual human beings.” Rodosthenous is not wrong in identifying that choruses “no longer talk, dress and move in the same way, do not wear masks and do not speak in unison,” clearly, yet those are only a few, superficial aspects of the chorus as it appears onstage. Rather than the false dichotomy of a distinct individual or a completely

12 subsumed collective one, human today define themselves within a range of personal/individual identities amidst a multitude of group memberships and descriptors.

The reality is rarely so simple as an original tragedy’s text designation of the chorus as

“enslaved Trojan women” or “Persian councilmen,” which undercuts Rodosthenous’ recommendation to individualize the chorus members, or at least presents a challenge to its easy implementation. By examining the chorus of modern productions of Greek tragedies by American directors for American audiences, this inquiry endeavors to provide future directors with examples of the how the tragic chorus was used for their own consideration.

To achieve this, I devised to select at least two, non-academic American theater companies which produced primarily Greek drama, at outdoor venues, regularly collaborating with choreographers and composers, with a sufficient record to afford a deep analysis of their use of the chorus. Having identified these companies, I would then amass and analyze evidence of their performances and how the chorus was employed by using photographic and video recordings (if possible) of the productions, statements from the directors regarding the chorus, and critical reviews which mentioned the usage of the chorus. By drawing upon and analyzing these data, I would look for any trends in treatments of the chorus and which treatments were standardized over the company’s life.

The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, maintained by the

Classics Centre at Oxford University4, includes an online database of productions which served as a springboard for this research, and it is from this database that I located

4 http://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/research-collections/performance-database/productions 13 productions to be used as case studies. While by no means exhaustive, and with certain precautions against reading any extraordinary authority into its records, it has proven invaluable for this inquiry as well as many others within the field. A search with terms suited to my interests (i.e., performances of works by “Aeschylus,” “Sophocles,” and

“Euripides” as “stage-plays” in the “United States” between the years “2000-2018”) yielded 386 results from the APGRD database. Of those, 119 of those performances were produced by or in affiliation with 73 distinct institutions of higher learning;5 these I excluded from further consideration given my interest in analyzing the choruses of commercial, non-academic theater companies, although productions of Greek drama in academic contexts continues to be an area underexplored by scholars. Of the remaining performances, I was able to identify the names of some 85 theater companies,6 of which

5 In alphabetical order: Augsburg College, Augustana College, Barnard College, Baylor University, Benedictine College, Berea College, Biola University, Brandeis University, Brigham Young University, Brown University, Butler University, California Institute of the Arts, Cameron University, Christopher Newport University, Clemson University, Coffeyville Community College, College of Marin, College of the Sequoias, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Eureka College, Fordham University, Indiana University-Purdue University, Jacksonville University, John Jay College Theater, Kurtztown University of Pennsylvania, LaGuardia Community College, Loyola Marymount University, Marietta College, Morningside College, Muhlenberg College, Naropa University's MFA Theatre, New York University, Northwestern Missouri State, University of Notre Dame, Our Lady of the Lake University, Pace University, Palm Beach Atlantic University, Princeton University, Providence College Purchase College, Randolph-Macon Women's College, Ripon College, Southern Oregon University St. Mary's College of Maryland, Stanford University, State University of New York, Swarthmore College, Tarleton State University, Transylvania University, University of Alaska Anchorage, University of California Berkeley, University of California Irvine, University of California Santa Cruz, University of Chicago, University of Cincinnati, University of Dallas, University of Harvard, University of Indiana, University of Louisville, University of Massachusetts, University of Michigan, University of New Mexico University of South Carolina, University of Utah, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin Villanova University, Wayne State University, Western Michigan University, Winthrop University, Yale University. 6 In alphabetical order: 6th @ Penn Theatre; 71a Productions; Access Theatre; Actors Studio*; American Conservatory Theater; American Players Theatre; American Repertory Theatre (ART)*; Artes de la Rosa; Black Artists Network Development; Black Moon Theatre Company; Blue Heron Theatre; Boulder's Upstart Theatre Company; Charming Hostess; Clarence Brown Theater Company; Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon*; Classic Stage Company (CSC); Classical Theatre of Harlem*; Company East; Constellation Theatre Company; Cypreco Theater Group; Double Helix Theatre Company; Electric Lodge; Eleventh 14

17 were listed in multiple entries, signifying multiple productions of Greek tragedy. From that number, two companies featured credited choreographers and composers as well as listed outdoor performance venues, and these two companies would be the interest of this inquiry: Gorilla Theatre Productions of Kansas City, Missouri and The Classic Greek

Theatre of Oregon based in Portland. Branching from that discovery, I learned that

Gorilla Theatre Productions had produced sixteen tragedies and seven comedies from the years 1991 to 2014, with only one year without a performance (2008). I identified this particular company as one to analyze for a number of reasons.

First, as a non-academic company, whose mission is “to educate, train, and culturally enrich the community,” the Gorilla Theatre Productions offered a sustained oeuvre spanning three decades and a wealth of data (see Appendix A). Many of these performances were well documented with photographic and video evidence, increasingly so over time. Second, that its director and company were expressly from middle America, not from the usual theater hotspots on either coast nor Chicago, would appear to generate

Hour Theatre Company; Ethniko Theatro*; European Repertory Company; Fluid Motion Theater; Ghost Road Company Los Angeles; Good Company; Gorilla Theatre Productions*; Greasy Joan & Company; Handcart Ensemble*; Homeboy Industries; Hopeful Monsters; Ipanema Theater Troupe; International WOW Company; Jean Cocteau Repertory*; Lantern Theater Company; Looking Glass Theatre*; Magic Theatre; Main Street Stage; McCarter Theatre Company; My Lucha [Company]; National Asian American Theatre Company; Natural Theatricals*; Nebunele Theatre; NEST company; Next Step Theater Group; Noise Within Company*; Oasis Theatre Company; Old Globe Theatre; One World Theatre; One Year Lease Theater Company*; Ontological-Hysteric Incubator Company; Orphan Girl Productions; Payvand Theatre Group; Pearl Theater Company*; Persona Theater Company; Phoenix Theatre Ensemble; Poet's Theater; Project Twenty12; Public Theater; Rising Phoenix Repertory; Seattle Repertory Theatre; Serios Play Theatre Ensemble; Shakespeare Theatre Company*; Shotgun Players*; Sledgehammer Theatre; Spring Theatreworks; Synapse Productions; Target Margin Theater*; Teatro Bellas Artes; Teatro Carmen Zapata; Teatro Luna; Teatro Vista; Ten Thousand Things*; The American Renegade Theatre; The City Garage; The Fountain Theatre; The New Group; The Theatre, Inc.; The Villa Theater Lab; Theater Transgression; Theatre Space Company; Troubadour Theater Company; Upstart Crow Theatre Company; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; Word of Mouth Theatre. * Signifies companies with multiple entries in the APGRD. 15 a more purely American interpretation of the chorus, apparently less influenced by larger trans- or international theatrical trends. Finally, these performances were outdoors, site specific, often listed a choreographer, and regularly featured original music performed live, all of which harken to several important conventions of the Greek chorus as identified by Goldhill and Ley.

Evidence of the Gorilla Theatre Productions’ tragedies has been maintained by the company’s Facebook page, mostly through production and publicity photographs; its last five tragedies have been video-recorded and uploaded to YouTube for general viewing; and the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has snapshots of Gorilla Theatre

Productions’ website from before the company’s dissolution, which provide additional photographs as well as lists of the artistic and production staff. These data illustrate the evolution of the chorus for a single theater company and will assist in finding trends of how an American chorus of Greek Tragedy is presented in performance, which will be the focus of Chapter 2.

I will turn my attention in Chapter 3 to The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, founded by British-born Keith Scales (see Appendix B), which produced sixteen tragedies and two comedies from 1993 to 2010. The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon warranted mention in The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas, in the chapter on “Greek Drama on the U.S. West Coast,” and while there is less direct evidence via video recording, Scales’ multiple productions (also regularly in collaboration with musical composers and choreographers), production photographs provided by Rebecca J.

Becker, a longtime associate of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon and Scales’ wife, provide sufficient data for analysis.

Each chapter on its respective company will feature a brief history of the company and its founding director; descriptions of the outdoor venues where these performances were held; a selection of case studies regarding how the chorus appeared, how they talked (sang) and moved (danced), and how they interacted amongst themselves and with the actors onstage. In some instances, the outliers, like a surprisingly effective two-member chorus of The Persians or an ambitious fusion of Classic Greek and

Traditional Japanese theater aesthetics and conventions for Oedipus The King, offer unexpected entrances or framings for the chorus. By tracing these case studies of Gorilla

Theatre Productions’ and The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s performances, a general picture of the American choruses of Greek tragedy begins to emerge, which shows a preference closer to Goldhill chorus than to Rodosthenous and McDonald.

Chapter 2. The Greek Tragedies of Gorilla Theatre Productions

Formation and History of Gorilla Theatre Productions

Gorilla Theatre Productions was founded in Kansas City, Missouri in 1988 by David

Brisco Luby, who would serve as Artistic Director and Board President (“About”). Luby graduated with a B.F.A. in Theatre Production Design and a minor in Film Production and History from the University of Utah in 1984 (“David”). During his tenure at Gorilla

Theatre Productions, Luby outlined the company’s mission “to educate, train, and culturally enrich the community,” and as part of that mission, Luby and Gorilla Theatre

Productions set about the goal of “systematically working our way through all thirty-three existing Greek shows [sic]” (“Hecuba”). While Gorilla Theatre Productions ceased after the 2014 season, the company performed a laudable twenty-three Greek plays—tragedies and comedies—from the years 1991 to 2014, with only one “much needed” break in 2008

(“About”), although additional evidence suggests that this hiatus was not completely planned in advance. Even if falling short of the (miscalculated) thirty-three performances as intended,7 Luby and Gorilla Theatre Productions set a model for future directors of

Greek tragedy, and it is their treatment of the chorus which warrants special attention (see

Table 1).

7 If Luby were counting only the extant plays of the tragedians, he would have been closer; seven by Aeschylus, seven by Sophocles, and eighteen (or nineteen) by Euripides makes thirty-two (or thirty-three). That Gorilla Theatre Productions’ second offering was Aristophanes’ Lysistrata in 1992 immediately added his eleven extant comedies to the pot, and it is unknown if Luby intended to stage Menander’s Dyskolos as well. At any rate, the phrase “thirty-three existing Greek plays” was repeated by Luby on several occasions. 18

Table 1. Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Greek Performances and Chorus Size by Year

Year Playwright Title Chorus Size 1991 Euripides Medea ? 1992 Aristophanes Lysistrata ? 1993 Sophocles Antigone ? 1994 Sophocles Oedipus Rex ? 1995 Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 6 1996 Aristophanes The Poet & The Women ? 1997 Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 10 1998 Aristophanes The Frogs 12 1999 Euripides The Bacchae 8 2000 Euripides Helen 6 2001 Euripides The Trojan Women 8 2002 Aristophanes The Clouds 7+ 2003 Aeschylus Agamemnon 5+ 2004 Aeschylus The Libation Bearers 3 2005 Aeschylus The Eumenides 6 2006 Aristophanes The Wasps 7+ 2007 Euripides Hecuba 6 2008 --- No performance --- 2009 Aristophanes The Birds 12 2010 Aeschylus The Persians 2 2011 Aeschylus The Seven Against Thebes 15 2012 Aeschylus The Suppliant Maidens 7 2013 Aristophanes The Knights 5 2014 Euripides Elektra 5

The Venues of Gorilla Theatre Productions

The two primary performance sites for Gorilla Theatre Productions’ “Greek shows” were

Charles B. Wheeler Amphitheater in Frank A. Theis Park and the exterior steps of nearby

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, about 2000 feet apart from each other, less than one and a half miles from the Kansas border. In several regards, these two venues are quite opposite each other. First, Charles B. Wheeler Amphitheater has a gently sloping grassy seating

Figure 1. Top: Rendered image of Charles B. Wheel Amphitheater, facing SSE. Frank A. Theis Park, Kansas City, MO. Bottom: View of the ruins of the ancient theater at Thorikos, Greece. area, and a flat and wide performance space, with Brush Creek behind (see Figure 1, above). It evokes particularly the earlier ancient theaters like the one at Thorikos (see

Figure 1, above), with its more rectangular, oval-shaped performance space than the later, more circular ones. The walking path leading into and out of the amphitheater might also be used as proper parodoi, a critical feature which is often missing from modern stagings

20 of Greek tragedy, according to Goldhill. In many regards, Wheeler Amphitheater would be an ideal location for such modern productions of Greek drama, but an outdoor venue using natural sunlight and sharing a rough geometry of the theaters of Classical Greece is by itself not sufficient, at least as Peter Meineck would have it.

Meineck further argued in Theatrocracy the significance of the open-air playing space, and the reception of those in the theatron to witness not only the performance before them, but also to incorporate the ordered beauty (κόσμος) of man-made and natural landscapes and most significantly the sky of the background within the larger

‘embodied-viewing’ (62-67). From analyzing these venue by way of Meineck, one will discover that to present these tragedies at an open-air venue using natural lighting with the aim of recreating the experience of the original Greek audiences is evidently only part of the problem: other factors, like realizing the effect of ‘ambient extrapersonal’ space on reception, should be a concern of the director.

Accordingly, while the venues of Gorilla Theatre Productions are open air, their respective ‘ambient extrapersonal’ spaces, as labeled by Meineck, lack the same significance for different reasons. Wheeler Amphitheater, to start, does more closely resemble the Classic Greek performance space, yet its ‘ambient extrapersonal’ space,

“the spatial field furthest away from our own bodies – the sky, distant mountains, the horizon,” is interrupted by a noisy highway and high-rise commercial park. Meineck would argue that this interruption would inhibit the audience’s natural production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter which inspires feelings of awe and wonder, and subsequently would cut off the audience member from receiving the same kind of

21 contemplative and awe-inspiring effect. Additionally, that the amphitheater and sitting area on are flat land, and not built into a south-facing hill, limits both the view distance of the horizon, a limit which would exacerbate the disrupted ‘ambient extrapersonal’ space, and would serve to hinder any individual audience member’s view if another were in front.

The second site of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ “Greek shows” was The Nelson-

Atkins Museum of Art. Whereas Wheeler Amphitheater carried much of the curving and circular aspects of more traditional Greek theaters, this performance space is much more linear and rectangular. The building’s façade does evoke Classical Greece with its

Neoclassical architecture, six Ionian columns at the top and a set of three large doors into the museum (see Figure 2), although the inversion of the “usual” arrangement of flat performance space and inclined theatron does create interesting challenges for the director. The steps up to the museum entrance do provide a useful verticality, and an intermediate landing afford a reasonably sized acting space. Two bronze urns decorate either side of the landing, and notwithstanding the giant sculpture of a shuttlecock, installed in 1994 courtesy of husband-wife duo Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van

Bruggen, this venue very much evokes a grandeur and severity not inappropriate for

Greek tragedy.

Figure 2. Top: Rendered image of the southern exterior of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, facing NNW. Kansas City, MO. Bottom: View of the ruins of the Hellenistic theater at Hierapolis, in modern Turkey. For the tragedies performed on the southern steps of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of the Arts, the result is closer to a Greek theater after Roman renovation. The imposing, rectilinear dominance of the building’s façade prevents any real consideration of the 23

‘ambient extrapersonal’ space in these performances, and it gives an effect much closer to the Roman scaenae frons, which “[denied]… spectators this spatial view” (Meineck 158).

Whereas the ‘ambient extrapersonal’ space was merely disrupted at Wheeler

Amphitheater, it is essentially non-existent at this other venue and inhibits any of the sort of extra-theatrical experiences Meineck hypothesizes. The verticality of performers- spectators is also inverted from the traditional convention—the one raised and the other lowered—which may serve to conflate the ‘grounded’ actors and chorus with whatever

‘heavenly’ associations gained by the scantly visible sky. Rather than the panoramic, ordered beauty of chorus-actors-skene-city-mountain-sea-sky, a colossal, sandstone front dominates the eye and frequently swallows the performers on its steps (particularly if their costumes blend into the grey-brown mass).

Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Earlier Greek Tragedies, 1991 to 2005

Three years after its founding in 1988, Gorilla Theatre Productions began its project of performing an annual Greek play with 1991’s Medea. It is my intent to illustrate briefly how the chorus was depicted and utilized in these earlier tragedies before targeting the later ones, which have much greater and more robust evidence (see Figure 3). Aside from a few photographs and a brief director’s statement, comparatively little remains from these earlier shows, yet a general outline of the chorus develops from the data available.

The Medea, for instance, utilized half-masks for Jason and Medea, and it would seem likely that the chorus might have been masked as well, particularly given the preference for masks in the earlier tragedies. Indeed, considering a similar photograph from the next

24 tragedy, 1993’s Antigone, masks continued to be an integral feature for Gorilla Theatre

Productions’ tragedies up through 2000’s Helen, which appears to the first, or one of the first, performances which forewent masks, unless either the 1994 Oedipus Rex or the

1995 Oedipus at Colonus parted from the convention prior.

Two other noteworthy conventions for the chorus are worth mentioning. First, the chorus is often reduced in number, showing a preference for even-numbers and including a coryphaeus. This allowed the chorus members to arrange themselves in a variety of shapes, lines, and groups on the playing spaces. The smallest chorus, for the moment at least, is the three-member strong one from The Libation Bearers and the largest chorus

(barring potentially that of the Oedipus Rex or the Oedipus at Colonus) is of the ten

Oceanides featured in Prometheus Bound. Second, from the available evidence, these choruses interacted fully with the principle actors and were not confined to any particular playing space.

With this brief survey of the earlier performances completed, I will now turn to the final five Greek tragedies from Gorilla Theatre Productions, which will allow for an additional, more intensive analysis by way of their being recorded and uploaded to the popular video sharing website YouTube by the user afishnc8. While the raw video and audio quality is less than ideal, these recordings permit a more detailed analysis of the chorus and its physical and vocal characteristics. To see choreography unfold over time

8 https://www.youtube.com/user/afishnc 25

Figure 3. A collage of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ early tragedies. From left to right, top to bottom: Medea (1991), Antigone (1993), Prometheus Bound (1997), The Bacchae (1999) Helen (2000), The Trojan Women (2001), Agamemnon (2003), The Libation Bearers (2004), and The Eumenides (2005).

26 within a defined space, to hear the vocal delivery and song, and to analyze the composition and interactions among its members and the principle actors all illustrate a more detailed understanding and deployment of the chorus in these final five tragedies.

The first case study, Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Hecuba by Euripides includes a chorus terrified first by their position and future at the behest of the victorious Argives and later by the shocking vengeance their former queen, in whom they sought comfort, undertakes. The Persians of Aeschylus features a chorus of old advisors to Xerxes, freshly defeated at Salamis, in a precarious power vacuum between the Queen Mother

Atossa, the young king, and the foreboding spirit of Darius. The chorus of The Seven

Against Thebes, also by Aeschylus, at first pray heedlessly for their protection, only to be mortified by Eteocles’ decision to challenge his own brother for the fate of the city and mourn those who have perished so terribly. The titular Suppliant Maidens of Aeschylus’ play find themselves in a similar situation, only now outside the walls of a city their ancestors called home, pleading for sanctuary from the heated pursuit of their fifty cousins intent on marriage. Finally, and unfortunately bringing a premature ending to

Luby’s endeavor, the Elektra of Euripides has a chorus of delighted young Argive women, playing a stark contrast to the bitter and vengeful daughter of Clytemnestra.

Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Hecuba [2007]

The earliest available video evidence of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ chorus is of their seventeenth Greek show, the Hecuba of Euripides. Luby, in his pre-show address, described this Hecuba as the “halfway-point” on the journey to perform the extant

“Greek shows.” He mentioned the name of set designer Steve Elliot and referenced the director only by her first name, “Barbara,” and subsequent efforts to locate Barbara’s last name have yet to be successful. It was performed at the Wheeler Amphitheater in Theis

Park on the morning of 23 June 2007.

The set consisted of a large tent upstage and further upstage of that a replica of a trireme, with its sail lowered on the main mast. On either side of the tents’ opening were two modest wooden benches, and distal from those was a single cushion lying on the ground. Downstage center a bench was draped with red fabric, from here on the ‘royal bench.’ Extreme downstage right was a piece of ruined architecture, a column or wall, or perhaps a large stone upon which several characters sat, leaned, or nearby stood; extreme downstage left was a dead tree, branches bare, which was similarly used as a set property.

Halfway between the ruin and the bench right of the tent opening was a simple stool, and likewise halfway between the dead tree and the bench left was another, even more meager bench. The entire set gave the impression of a circle, not unlike the orchestra, with these set pieces and the grass of the viewing space suggesting its circumference, the one exception being the ‘royal bench,’ which functioned more like the circle’s center point. What might have served as parodoi were the areas around the tent right and left; several characters as well as the chorus used these undefined paths to exit behind the tent.

For all its referencing the classical Greek space, with the tent acting as the skene, the characters and chorus freely moved about the space and interacted with one another physically throughout the play (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. The set of Hecuba; the chorus sitting, Hecuba kneeling behind the body of Polydorus, and Agamemnon standing. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. Hecuba featured a chorus of six, all female, and unmasked. Each wore a similar style of dress, reminiscent of a peplos or himation, but they were distinguished from one another by the color and style of fabric: purple, violet, maroon, carmine/yellow, brown, and scarlet/white. Each wore simple sandals and simple headwraps. The costumes suggested a past nobility of the enslaved women without a definite uniformity among them (see Figure 5). While most of the chorus members were older women, two (in violet and in carmine/yellow) appeared younger, in their 20s or 30s. From their first entrance to their final exit, the chorus remained onstage for the vast majority of the play. Only twice did they exit the stage entirely while action played out: first to heighten the tension between the agon and stichomythia between Hecuba and Polymestor (lines 953-1022, the blocking of which is discussed below) and second having been commanded by 29

Agamemnon, “You women must go to your new masters’ tents” (lines 1288-1289) the chorus shuffled off at the end of the tragedy.

While the former succeeded in focusing and sustaining the tension between

Hecuba and her son’s murderer, the latter unfortunately undermined the very end of the play for two reasons. First, it truncated and stole lines traditionally reserved for the chorus and allotted them to Agamemnon; rather than the tortured Trojan women lamenting their new lot in life, it became an invective of sorts spat out by a strangely angry Agamemnon, “Necessity is hard, it never lets you off.” Second, and far more egregious, a scene was added after the chorus’ premature exit, featuring this now melodramatic Agamemnon, his herald Talthybius, and a belly-dancing Cassandra (!) to foreshadow the events of his arrival in Argos. Perhaps this was some reference to Gorilla

Theatre Productions’ Agamemnon a few years earlier in 2003, but it was redundant given

Polymestor’s prophecy (lines 1259-1284), heavy-handed in its dialogue, and detracting from the pitiable condition of the chorus, much less the entire preceding performance.

The chorus did not sing their lines. Rather, the choral odes were divided between the chorus members, who recited the excerpts more like a monologue than a poem, and these were directed variously to other characters or out to the audience in a direct address.

Often a single chorus member would take an entire section of an ode (strophe, antistrophe, or epode) and would “pass off” the next section to another nearby, or who had just entered the space from within or behind the tent. This was a treatment similar to

Findlay’s Antigone at the National Theatre of London, “the chorus as individual human beings” which Rodosthenous so highly praised. This chorus of Hecuba, however,

Figure 5. Detail of choral costumes, Hecuba. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. delivered their lines in the unsatisfying space between psychologically realistic dialogue and poetic, droning intonation. A stronger commitment to either one or the other might have served these “individual human beings” better.

Nor did this chorus ever dance, excepting the occasional behavioral or expressive gesture with their assigned speech. The most meaningful gesture, and even then not by much, was the sole chorus member who recited the traditional expressions of grief, “tear out gray hairs and rake down her cheeks with nails” (lines 655-656), pantomiming vaguely these actions with her hands. No, this chorus was more in the realm of psychological realism, they trudged into and out of the tent, consoled Hecuba and one another with each revealed misfortune, bore the broken and bloated corpse of Polydorus, shuddered at cries of murder, but mostly framed the greater action, literally and

31 figuratively. By sitting in the aforementioned benches and stools, or by standing in spaces between them, the chorus often completed the circumference of the playing space, particularly if one or more principle characters were onstage—usually placed center and/or downstage. The chorus generally avoided direct interaction with the male characters, being too intimidated by the likes of Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Polymestor, but they retained a closer relationship with Hecuba. Although at the beginning the chorus mostly formed the back arc of the circular playing space, they drew closer to the queen during the sacrifice of Polyxena and the recovery of Polydorus’ body. Hecuba would sometimes physically lean on members of the chorus, or they would rush to her.

A particular blocking moment epitomizes the treatment of the chorus in Gorilla

Theatre Productions’ Hecuba, and it demonstrates the ways in which the chorus was fragmented. One of the chorus members was sent by Hecuba to summon Polymestor (line

890)—as a replacement to the servant she commands in the text—which brought the number of onstage chorus members to five, and she exited hurrying by the stage left side of the tent. After Agamemnon’s exit around line 904, three chorus members carried the body of Polydorus into the tent upstage, with Hecuba following, supported by one more member of the chorus. This left just one chorus member onstage, and she began the strophe of the choral ode, lines 905-913, and exited by walking around the stage right side of the tent. Soon, the three chorus members who bore Polydorus returned from the tent, one of whom recited the accompanying antistrophe (lines 914-922) the other two standing side on either side of the tent opening, and exited in the same fashion around the tent as with the strophe (lines 923-932). The chorus member sent for Polymestor then

32 returned from stage left, and after reciting the second strophe exited exactly as she just returned, stage left of the tent. The chorus member stage left of the tent opening resumed with the following antistrophe (lines 933-942) and then followed the preceding chorus member off stage left of the tent, and then the final chorus member crosses downstage right from her former post right of the tent opening now to the rock, concluding with the epode (lines 943-952) and finally exiting off the right side of the tent.

All this blocking—but not choreography—provided Hecuba an open playing area for her tense agon and stichomythia with Polymestor (lines 953-1022), certainly to heighten the conflict between the two. Bereft of the comfort of her other Trojan captive women, Hecuba must contend with the Thracian king herself, which gives a certain allure to her entrapment. A single chorus member did return to the stage from the tent to see only the final moments of the scene, and it was this lone captive women, not the full complement, which witnessed the impending horror for Polymestor and his sons.

However, it was not this individual, but the other chorus members who proclaimed the next lines (1023-1034), reentering from around either side of the tent, the grim recitation rendered incomprehensible by virtue of their presence behind the tent backstage and not watching the Thracian being led to his undoing. Having not witnessed Polymestor and his accompanying sons enter the tent, unaware of the vengeance about to be enacted, what then would impel the chorus members one by one to utter with such conviction such dire words:

As though you stumbled in the surf,

Hurled from high ambition down,

Trapped, thrashing in terror in the swirling tow

And the water closing overhead until you drown,

And now you know, life is held on loan.

The price of life is death.

Those who take a life repay it with their own,

Justice and the gods accept the loan at last.

The gleam of gold misled you.

You took the final turn

Where the bitter road bears off and runs downhill to death.

Hands which never held a sword shall wrench your twisted life away.

(“Hecuba,” 1:17:24-1:18:08)

The motivation is unclear, for Hecuba did not share her plans of dreadful vengeance with the chorus, nor was the chorus present to view Polymestor and his sons going into the tent. When the Thracian king’s screams do reach them, the chorus bafflingly reacts with ignorance to the “horror” in the tent although they only predicted it seconds earlier. This fragmenting of chorus members, parceling out lines of the odes, and detachment from the principal actors as evidenced in this description is illustrative of the treatment of the chorus as a whole in this performance.

The chorus of the 2007 Hecuba was fractured into individuals, robbed of their own lines, prohibited from song and dance, and worked into a piecemeal framing for

Hecuba. If the preceding analysis were not suggestive enough, this final anecdote will serve as a summation. After the chorus’ exit, and after the unfortunate added scene of

Agamemnon and Cassandra, the actors gathered for their curtain call before the applauding audience. First up for recognition were the two young boys cast as the mute sons of Polymestor, and next to take their bow was the chorus. Acknowledge before the

“bit” parts of Polydorus and Polyxena, before the gratuitously added character of

Cassandra, the members of the chorus enjoyed the ignoble position held just above two young boys whose contributions were primarily lying still as corpses for half of a scene.

Luby, in his pre-show address, alluded to the empathy this tragedy intended to raise towards contemporary women who are unfortunately enslaved in the present day. Be that as it may, the captive Trojan women who comprised the chorus of Hecuba were afforded little opportunity for elevation, redemption, or inspiration.

For this production of Hecuba, the chorus was underserved and marginalized by director Barbara (who, evidence suggests, directed just this one play for Gorilla Theatre

Productions). This was a chorus following more what Rodosthenous advocated, and by representing these vulnerable women individual human beings, and ones with no development or exposition at that, the audience was less able to empathize with them in their plight. They became unnamed, unknown hangers-on instead of either compelling individuals with distinct personal hardships or a sympathetic sisterhood formed by necessity of their situation. If nothing else, the chorus of this Hecuba served as a counterpoint to the individualized chorus; lacking any kind of real background in the script itself, the chorus can too easily become a bland collection of performers monotonously emoting mythological allusions and platitudes.

Gorilla Theatre Productions’ The Persians [2010]

Gorilla Theatre Productions would take a hiatus for the 2008 summer Greek show. The front page to the company’s website mentioned several factors: fewer grants and donations “due to the state of the economy,” the increase in travel expenses, and “recent severe weather” (“Gorilla”). This same release, however, promised the company was

“already making plans to be back next year with a fully staged production,” which was

The Birds of Aristophanes in 2009. The subsequent year, and to return to the issue of the

American chorus of Greek tragedy, Gorilla Theatre Productions produced Aeschylus’

The Persians, featuring several changes, generally for the better.

With this site change, and with Luby as the director, The Persians provided a vastly different take on the chorus. The chorus of councilmen were reduced to two old men, and they wore the same black berets, desert-camouflage fatigues, and black military dress boots as uniforms. Slung about each’s shoulder was an assault rifle, apparently an

AK-47, further intimating their militaristic background. Their gray hair stuck out from their berets, and they wore medium-length, trimmed beards. The more portly of the two advisers acted as a kind of pseudo-coryphaeus, generally leading his compatriot in their marching about the steps and taking a more direct and interactive part in the later dialogue with the principle characters. The stage was devoid of any scenery or set props except for the gray granite tomb of “Darius Padshah,” in the center of the intermediate landing, and taking a clearly central location for the stage and the narrative.

Their entrance and opening song was only spoken, but it was accompanied by live musicians providing a Middle-Eastern sounding underscoring. The duo marched in on the

36 intermediate landing from stage right, reinforcing the militaristic aspect of their role, and they patrolled back and forth on the landing with their ode. While they did not sing, and sometimes delivered their lines in a chant more or less in rhythm with the accompaniment. At certain moments the two would trade sections of the lines; in one particularly effective choreography, one would recite the names of the various Persian warriors, taking a single step down the southern stairs with each, and then the other mirrored his movement and lines. Even though it was only these two in the chorus, they created a strong sense of cohesion in their blocking. Whether patrolling left and right on the landing or on the cement nearest the audience, crisscrossing in “X’s” along the steps, or framing and pointing the audience’s attention to the tomb with diagonal crosses, they established a clear and united pattern and relationship.

The Queen Mother Atossa then entered in a wheelchair from stage right, wearing an abaya and an al-amira veil. Upon her entrance, the chorus, now at the bottom of the stairs and closest to the audience turn to her (see Figure 6). The chorus of two ascended the steps to converse with the Queen Mother, always vertically below her, somewhere on the steps, and cheated out to the audience when responding. This blocking created the direct focus on the Queen Mother, instantly subordinating the military-adviser chorus, and served as a strong example of non-verbal storytelling. This geometry, a triangle with

Atossa at the apex, was further refined with the appearance of the Messenger, who entered from stage right at the ground near the audience. The triangle then became a diamond: Atossa still at the apex, the chorus in the middle, and the Messenger at the

Figure 6. Set of The Persians. Chorus bottom, pseudo-coryphaeus bottom right, Atossa center, mute Queen’s guard left. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. bottom. Complementing this image, the Messenger’s costume was the same desert- camouflage fatigues as the chorus, and although she wore a black hijab to their berets, she was further reduced in status by being barefoot. The Messenger first addressed and crossed to the pseudo-coryphaeus (positioned as the stage left point of the diamond), then later turned to the Queen Mother to deliver her report, during which the chorus sits on the steps. Her account delivered, the Messenger kneels; the chorus does likewise. Being dismissed by Atossa, the Messenger rises and exits stage right on the landing, an area ostensibly representing the palace at Susa. The chorus rises for its few lines in reply (515-

516), and then immediately kneel again for the Queen’s exit to the palace stage right.

The chorus continued their recitation (lines 532-597) in their marching, patrolling, essentially realistic patterns as before. Sometimes speaking in unison, sometimes trading 38 lines back and forth, some gestures of grief were added as the chorus wound up and down the steps linearly. On the Queen’s return for the summoning of Darius’ ghost, positioning her wheelchair immediately next to the tomb, a striking change occurred. She stood to make the preparations, and then rolled her wheelchair back, and the chorus crossed to her diagonally, having ended their ode on the periphery of the stairs left and right, still maintaining the subordinating position below her from before. Now, however, bidden to join her (line 619), the chorus assumed an equal position on the landing, and stepped on either side of the tomb to frame it, taking now sprigs of burning incense in raised (see

Figure 7). The musicians struck up again, and the chorus swayed, and sings their next lines, “Queen of the Persians/Into the chambers/Libations pour!/Thus highly imploring/… We offer prayers!” (“The Persians”). They walked a slow clockwise circle around the tomb, spinning as they went, in a marked contrast to the linear marching earlier. This served to signal the imminent raising of the ghost of Darius, the shifted geometrical procession/dancing and the sudden song denoting the change from the modern and realistic to the ancient and supernatural.

For Darius’ shade did rise from the tomb, but not in any costume befitting the vaguely 21st century aesthetic of the other characters’ clothing. He wore a sun-like mask, dressed in a black and dark brown robe, and was clearly visiting from some other realm.

Unsurprisingly, the chorus prostrated themselves before the spirit, falling to the steps, and fearful to look directly at the ghost. Backing away, the chorus resumed a lower space on the stairs, and after reuniting with Atossa briefly in her wheelchair on the stage right

Figure 7. The chorus summons the ghost of Darius. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. landing, the ghost of Darius descended to the middle of the steps. The chorus was still unable to look upon the shade and could only whimper “ai-ai’s” at some of its harsh words (see Figure 8). Only once did the chorus deign to stand and speak to the shade directly, for the brief exchange from lines 787-799. The pseudo-coryphaeus stood first,

“To what end, my Lord Darius, dost thou mark on this. How could we, the Persian

People, fair the best?” “Never to lead an expedition to the land of Greece…. For Grecian soil is their ally.” The shade replied. “What dost thou intend by this?” inquired the second chorus member, who then stands himself, lower than the shade and the pseudo- coryphaeus stage left. Their exchange continued like this until the shade announced that very few Persians would return home, leading the chorus to collapse on the steps once more and cry aloud at mention of the Persian sacrilege of Greek temples.

Figure 8. The Ghost of Darius addresses the chorus. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. His message delivered, the ghost of Darius consoled Atossa one final time and then returned to his tomb. The Queen soon exited, and the chorus descended from the steps near the landing down to the cement floor by the audience. Hands raised with palms up, they lamented the loss of Persian life, announced again the names of those lost in the invasion. The music resumed, and the chorus delivered in a Sprechstimme of the many conquered islands of the Mediterranean. Suddenly, they found themselves on the same level as the returned, ruined Xerxes, who entered from stage right. Wearing forest- camouflage, shirtless, dusty, bloody, carrying a scimitar and tear-stained eyes, Xerxes responded to the chorus’ several questions, but the two did not bow to the king for some time. Xerxes began to ascend the steps, in the direction of the palace, and the chorus dogged him, asking of the various Persian warriors, giving the king pause. The chorus

41 maintained the same kind of lowered position on the steps, but it was far different from their treatment of Atossa and of the ghost of Darius. Beginning their final song of lamentation, Xerxes and the chorus did not exit to the palace but continued up the stairs, past the tomb of “Darius Padshah,” and all the way up to the door of the Nelson-Atkins

Museum. Xerxes and the secondary chorus member disappeared behind the central columns. The pseudo-coryphaeus turned full front to the audience, wailed again with hands raised, and exited behind the columns, ending the performance.

This chorus, diminished in numbers as it was, developed and delivered a much more fully realized performance than that of the Hecuba. The similar costumes; patrolling and marching choreography juxtaposed to the circular, spinning dance of the summoning; the intermittent but effective singing and Sprechstimme; the position between the audience and the principle actors; all these choices provided a satisfying theatrical experience. While certain lines were delivered individually, and while this two- person chorus lacked the kind of authority a larger group might have offered, this was a purposefully and intentionally developed and integrated choral experience. With only two members, this chorus of councilmen achieved a stronger unity than the vaguely-drawn individuals of the previous year’s Hecuba. By this simple choice, Luby additionally empowered the chorus to reach a more presentational moment in the summoning of

Darius’ ghost; in fact, had Luby attempted to individualize the chorus, the raising of the shade would likely have been more ludicrous given the otherwise representational approach earlier. All told, this smaller, authoritative collective succeeded, which is more aligned to Goldhill’s take on the chorus.

Gorilla Theatre Productions’ The Seven Against Thebes [2011]

Gorilla Theatre Productions’ twentieth Greek show, Aeschylus’ The Seven Against

Thebes, was directed by one Ernest Williams, and featured its first video-recorded ‘full- sized’ chorus: fifteen women; adolescent, adult, elderly; costumed in blouses, skirts, slacks, dresses, robes; their hair loose, braided, or covered by scarves; a variety of body shapes, sizes, and shades. Their costumes evoked a modern, vaguely Middle Eastern setting, perhaps in a sort of callback to The Persians. They represented the women of

Thebes, besieged by Polyneices and his allies from Argos, imploring the brash Eteocles to heed their words and not to take up arms against his own brother. The larger number of chorus members allowed for greater flexibility in their composition: as a full chorus, two hemi-choruses, pairs and trios, and individually. Their geometry and choreography on the steps of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, were frequently angular, often in a regular or inverted triangle or in open chevrons. The chorus was led by a true coryphaeus, an older woman covered completely in black by way of a niqab and abaya, relying on a staff for negotiating the steps, usually apart from the chorus’ movement, and who often spoke directly to the principle characters. The scenery included a modest platform in the middle of the steps and eight small pedestals on the upper half of the stairs past the landing.

These were the location of mute actors, representing the statues of the deities to whom the chorus prays and cling with a battle imminent. Given the larger size of this particular chorus, a more thorough analysis of their blocking and the permutations of their arrangements is required, even at the risk of sinking into minutiae.

The chorus first entered frantically after Eteocles’ opening speech. They scurried on to the steps, clustering in pairs or trios, and shouting their lines individually over the din of war outside the city walls. They eventually sorted themselves into a sort of loose

‘M’ or jagged line (see Figure 9) and gazed off stage left as one chorus member shouted,

“A signal! A messenger! A voiceless sign, our doom is imminent! Listen, the uproar is coming closer!” (“Seven” 10:45-10:52). The chorus shrieked their next lines over one another, adding to the cacophony, and rearranged themselves into an inverted triangle on the steps. In a panic, bleating out lines 86-103, with the final “Spare us!” delivered arms out with palms facing up in prayer, the chorus was soon admonished by the coryphaeus, joined now by underscoring by the live musicians, “What are you doing? Will you betray your own ancient homeland, and dishonor Ares, the ancient lord of this land?” (11:25-

11:38). The chorus slowly rotated to face upstage, to the empty pedestals, and as it began to call upon the protective deities of Thebes, it split itself into hemi-choruses—a convention used repeatedly in this performance. As the chorus, whether in unison or as halves, called upon Ares and Zeus, two mute actors entered and crossed to the pedestals on the upper stairs, as did the actors for the remaining deities: Pallas Athena, Poseidon,

Cypris, Apollo, Artemis, and Hera. Their ode completed, the chorus rushed up to the pedestals and mute actors, falling on their knees, gather two or three to each ‘statue.’

They remained here until Eteocles’ return and admonishment of the chorus at line 181.

Figure 9. The chorus of The Seven Against Thebes. Screenshot from video recording “The Seven Against Thebes,” uploaded to YouTube by afishnc. His reproach was contended first by several chorus members individually, as though he were defeating each one’s objections or interjections in turn. The coryphaeus assumed the dialogue from approximately line 256, as if she were a more capable speaker for the exchange. The chorus remained seated or kneeling by the statues until Eteocles’ command before his exit at line 287. Mournfully, the chorus left the statues and returned to their area on the lower steps, delivering the next few lines individually as they descended. They sat on the stairs, again in pairs or trios, as if in consoling conversation, until around line 310, when several members of the chorus stood to deliver their individual lines. One of these individuals, the chorus member showing her pregnancy, called out, “O Gods, let naked fear possess our foes! Hurl disaster upon the men outside our walls!” (24:00-24:07), which served to embolden the rest of the chorus to stand and reunite. In one of the few circular formations, the chorus rose, joined hands in a circle, 45 and entreated the gods in unison, “O hear our voices, grant our prayers. Aiii!” (24:20-

24:47). This moment proved fleeting and underdeveloped, however, as the chorus soon dropped hands and continued the ode, unaccompanied by music, without dancing. This circle was quickly dissolved, and the chorus rearranged themselves into three sections of five members: two chevrons on the upstage left and right stairs and an arcing line downstage center. The coryphaeus, near the stop of the stairs, apparently had some difficulty joining the downstage line with her abaya and found herself upstaged by another chorus member wearing a similar costume, also leaving a conspicuous space in the arc. Nevertheless, the two chevrons inverted themselves, descended the steps, and finished near the audience at the bottom to create a large ‘W’ formation. Here the chorus remained, statue-like, and completed their ode.

A musical flourish announced the entrance of the Herald, stage left from the landing, and two individual chorus members assumed the lines of ‘Hemi-chorion Α’

(369-371) and ‘Hemi-chorion Β’ (372-374). The rest of the chorus, coryphaeus included, scattered themselves around the lower steps and sat for the long dialogue between the

Herald and Eteocles. The former noted the Argive attacker and the latter announced the

Theban defender, who summarily entered from the landing stage right, crossed, and exited stage left (see Figure 10). All the while, the chorus sat demurely on the steps.

After each of the first six defenders were dispatched, a small portion of the chorus stood and watched the warrior enter and exit. Upon his departure, the handful of chorus members would then turn full front to the audience, recite their short response, and then

Figure 10. The Herald addresses the chorus in a dress rehearsal for The Seven Against Thebes. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. seat themselves again (see Table 2). While this choice kept the chorus somewhat involved and relevant to the extended exchange between Eteocles and the Herald, the execution became predictable, and without any defined relationship or stakes to the six

Theban warriors, the chorus’ benedictions began to ring false or disingenuous. It is also possible, however, that the rote choral responses to the first six defenders was to set up the stronger reaction to Eteocles’ decision to station himself at the final gate, the one his own brother Polyneices was assaulting.

Towards the end of Eteocles’ speech, finding himself at the bottom of the steps on the cement base, the chorus began to stand one by one, silently but noticeably registering

Table 2. The Gates, Attackers, Defenders, and Lines of Choral Responses of The Seven Against Thebes.

Gate Attacker Defender Lines of Choral Response Proetid Tydeus Melanippus 417-421 Electran Capaneus Polyphontes 452-456 Neistan Eteoclus Megareus 481-485 Onca Athena Hippomedon Hyperbius 521-525 Northern Parthenopaeus Actor 563-567 Homoloid Amphiaraus Lasthenes 626-630 “Highest” Polyneices Eteocles 677-682 their objection to his own appointment at the last gate. The coryphaeus, near the top of the stairs with her black attire and walking stick, first responded to him, descending halfway down the steps. As Eteocles took off his business suit and donned his panoply with the assistance of two attendants, full intent on meeting his brother, the ensuing stichomythia (lines 686-719) came from individual chorus members, their many, reasonable objections readily defeated by the young ruler, able to confound each retort while simultaneously affixing his greaves. As a final show of Eteocles’ supremacy over the chorus, which he had defeated utterly in their rhetorical exchange, the now fully- equipped prince marched directly through the steps, cleaving the chorus, and off to the final gate. This moment could have been made even stronger, having the scattered chorus members coalesce in one final attempt to block Eteocles physically, yet its effect was potent all the same. On his exit, the musicians started their accompaniment again, and the chorus watched their leader depart on the landing stage left, crossing to form a pyramid with rows of 5-4-3-2-1, the coryphaeus at the top, facing the façade of the Nelson-Atkins

Museum of Art.

The subsequent ode (lines 720-791) was physically static but vocally crescendoing. Supplemented by the musicians, first the coryphaeus rotated to deliver the first few lines. The row beneath her then did likewise, and now the three women recited.

This pattern repeated until the full force of fifteen voices proclaimed, “Now, a sin of long-ago comes cynically with a vengeance to the third generation” (“Seven” 59:08-

59:17). The chorus slowly compressed this pyramid over the next lines, flattening into a long horizontal row, “That sin, like a sea, brings waves of evil. As one wave sinks, another rises higher, triple-crested, crashing ‘round the city’s stern, in between a narrow defense stretches no wider than a thickness of a wall” (59:48-1:00:10). From this line, the chorus inverted its pyramid, five of its members remaining at the one step, the other ten cascading down, then six, then three, then two, then the coryphaeus, closest to the audience almost exactly where Eteocles was armed minutes before. Nearing the conclusion of the ode, canned sound effects of battle played from the speakers, and the coryphaeus had to fight over the artificial din before the cue ended. The chorus finished the ode with another ululation, cut off by the leisurely entrance of a Messenger from the landing stage left.

This choreography afforded the chorus a change to reestablish themselves after their long passivity during the dialogue between Eteocles and the Herald. The pyramid and its dynamic inversion offered an aesthetic bit of movement, but one largely devoid of any additional symbolic meaning. Particularly with the metaphor of the “waves of evil… triple-crested,” one hoped for something like the three chevrons utilized earlier.

Similarly, considering the musical accompaniment and the physical cohesion of the

49 chorus, this particular ode might have benefited most from its lines being sung rather than simply recited. As a sort of emotional climax, with the battle raging just outside the city walls, some sort of heightened delivery seemed appropriate. The jarring artificiality of the battle sound effects acted as an obstacle for the chorus to negotiate in its ode, which might have served as a metaphor for the actual fighting, and a sudden, deadly silence could have indicated the end of the battle and the brothers’ fall.

Eager for news of the battle, the chorus rushed around him, forming a sort of oval, with the coryphaeus standing off to the side right, separate. With his announcement that the city is safe, the chorus responded with uncharacteristic frivolity, some giggling, others with small leaps. This was particularly incongruous given the severity the chorus first displayed and was made even more so with his revelation in the next breath than the brothers Eteocles and Polyneices were slain by each other. For the levity just seconds earlier, the chorus was now aghast, rushing around the Messenger and transforming their line at 805, “Who? What did you say? I am out of my mind with fear of your report,”9 into undeterminable, horrified adlibbing. The remaining three-line exchange between the

Messenger and the chorus before his more detailed account was picked up by the one pregnant chorus member, which offered a clever juxtaposition which might have benefitted from a little more intentionality: the deaths of Eteocles and Polyneices, themselves born from an ill-omened pairing, against the promise and hope of new life for

Thebes (both the city and this individual chorus member). This choice, however, possibly only served to undercut the greater collective anguish at the two’s deaths. While it may

9 Xo. τίνες; τί δ᾽ εἶπας; παραφρονῶ φόβῳ λόγου. Smyth’s translation. 50 have been that the other members of the chorus were too shocked to respond, to have the one chorus member (and not the coryphaeus!) react so strongly to the realization of the

“prophecy” from the choral ode just a few minutes prior. Goldhill (79) identified the necessity of imbuing the chorus with the ability to enact swift, strong emotional and tonal changes, recalling the chorus of the Euripidean Electra as a specific example (more on

Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Elektra below), yet to have an anonymous chorus member respond now in such an individualized, potent manner here lacked an attention to detail.

The Messenger departed, his announcement delivered, and the chorus trudged up to the top few stairs. Arranging themselves into two equal horizontal lines, one a few steps below the other, they addressed the audience with the strophe lines 822-832. The chorus scurried up the final steps, to the upstage portion of the intermediate landing, as the corpses of Eteocles and Polyneices were conveyed on stretchers, brought down the stairs, and set on the cement near the audience. This slow, solemn procession allowed the chorus to put on blood-red veils to conclude their ode (three of the fifteen had black veils: the coryphaeus and another chorus member, who both were wearing black niqab and abaya prior, and the pregnant chorus member) and they formed first one horizontal line, and then transitioned into a wide, shallow arc. They pantomimed the mourning ritual of beating the chest with a closed fist (which they did rhythmically but not in unison) and ululated as punctuation. Alternatingly speaking in unison or in pairs or individually, the chorus stepped down from the landing to form two small, inverted pyramids pointing down the steps, which now functioned as hemi-choruses. The coryphaeus stood between

51 them, proving pivotal for the imminent entrance of Ismene and Antigone from either side on the landing.

In the closing moments of The Seven Against Thebes, the two sisters split the chorus as they crossed to their brothers’ corpses, Ismene between the stage right pyramid and coryphaeus, Antigone the stage left pyramid. This is well before their lines beginning at 957, and the delaying of their dirge offered an appreciable tension. Tension also because the lines identifying the sisters and announcing their intentions (861 to 874) were cut, so the audience had no indicators who these two young women were or what they were doing. By the time the two girls arrived at their brothers’ corpses, the chorus partially followed them down the stairs, dissolving their pyramids and standing in a loose, symmetrical, vaguely geometric position, the coryphaeus standing on the modest platform center (see Figure 11), ending their ode with a wailing, extended, undulating

“Aii!” The sisters exchanged their grievous laments, the full chorus reciting lines 977-

978 and shortly again 991-993. The chorus remained here through the final exchange and the entrance of a Messenger, bearing Creon’s decree, in what many consider to be the ending added to a revival of Seven Against Thebes after the popularity of Sophocles’

Antigone. This mostly misses our discussion of the chorus, even more so since its members only stand silently under their veils during the exchange, yet the ending of this

Seven Against Thebes was curiously altered further.

At the Messenger’s exit, the pregnant chorus member removed her veil, and commenced with line 1063 onward, descending to the body of Polyneices, as close to him

52 as Antigone, and then crossed around Eteocles’ corpse. Another chorus member took off her veil, and mirrored the previous blocking, crossing down to Eteocles, and circling

Figure 11. The Theban princesses mourn their fallen brothers. Ismene (left) and Antigone (right) mourn their brothers Eteocles (bottom left) and Polyneices (bottom right) in front of the chorus during a dress rehearsal. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. around Polyneices. These two chorus members displayed some connection to the brothers, not established previously, and followed behind the brothers as they were taken away on their stretchers by several men, who carried the bodies up the stairs again and then off stage: Eteocles right to the palace, Polyneices left outside the city. During this last procession, those in the chorus also removed their veils, reciting the last lines in hemi-choruses, one half exiting with Eteocles, the other with Polyneices. The coryphaeus remained for a moment at her platform and stepped out of her niqab and abaya, her grey-

53 brown hair loose and wearing a maroon dress. Given the last words, a section seemingly partially transposed from lines 1060-1062 and part invented by the adaptor, she mournfully uttered the following before exiting herself up the stairs:

O ray of sunshine, most beautiful that ever shone on the city of the seven gates,

seven men matched seven warriors, gave Zeus their final tribute, all but that pair

of wretched men born of one father and one mother, too, who set their swords

against each other and died a common death. Generations of men are like the

leaves, in winter the winds blow them down to earth. Ah, you Fury, now you can

boast, you evil spirit of vengeance, you ruin of the house, who has brought down

the house of Oedipus root and branch. (1:20:24-1:21:30)

What of the chorus of The Seven Against Thebes and Williams’ interpretation of it? On the one hand, to populate the chorus with its full complement of fifteen performers is to be commended. This number afforded the choreography to engage with a variety of geometric shapes and divisions, lines, chevrons, triangles, pyramids, chevrons, circles, ovals, scattered points, and to explore the variance of the authority from a united chorus, to competing hemi-choruses, to clustered pairs and trios, all the way to the lone coryphaeus. On the other hand, such potential often appeared overwhelming and lacked a clear delineation or symbolism (cf. the two-member chorus of The Persians, above).

Rather than imbuing the various groupings with any symbolic meaning or as a supplement to either the action or the dialogue of the script, these seemed more compelled by necessity of giving the chorus something to do. Additionally, such blocking and geometric arrangements are not the same as “dancing,” and a full-sized chorus such

54 as this one only provided intermittent swaying or hollow gestures of grief is a serious misgiving. Treacherous as it may have been to have so many performers crossing up and down the concrete steps of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, especially so for the older coryphaeus who was often offered a hand of support in addition to her staff, to have so many bodies, in an assortment of shapes, sizes, and costumes, stand stationary in neatly- arrayed lines and arcs was another unrealized potential.

Frustratingly absent in this chorus was any kind of musicality, especially considering the live musicians and opportunities for a variety of songs. Clearly this chorus had a vocal presence, as evidenced by their sheer numbers and their frequent, powerful ululations. Whether a prayer to the Olympians to protect their city, a cry against the approaching Argives, or a dirge for Eteocles and Polyneices, the opportunities for singing were relegated to the kind of forced declarations and resultant “abominable slurring” that McDonald identified. Even an inexpert singing (or an intentionally inexpert singing, given the duress under which the chorus finds itself) would have been preferable and provided a fuller experience for the chorus and the audience alike. Just one, intentional song would have been a powerful moment, emphasizing a poignant event of the play—likely the dirge—and elevating the chorus to something beyond a collection of distressed, declamatory Theban women.

Of the three case studies presented thus far, the chorus of The Seven Against

Thebes provides the best synthesis of Goldhill’s and Rodosthenous’ ideas. ‘Full-sized,’ in complementing costumes, and able to explore and present a range of emotions, this chorus also featured several ‘individuals,’ notably the coryphaeus and the pregnant

55 chorus-member. For the latter, at least, her surprisingly closeness to the royal family toward the end of the play was not fully established prior, which made her single reactions to the deaths of Eteocles and Polyneices confusing. Without any support from the script to establish or contrive some particular intimacy to the brothers, some nonverbal storytelling might have sufficed in its stead. The fact that she was pregnant, too, had the potential for some profound symbolism (i.e., regarding the need to replace so many recently slain Theban men), but this too was not fully developed nor explored. As with the chorus of the Hecuba, and counter to Rodosthenous and McDonald, a trend is beginning to arise that the treatment of the chorus as individuals is a fraught endeavor.

Unless the choice receives substantial attention, which director Williams did not provide in this specific case, it too often engenders a vagueness or imprecision that undercuts the chorus and the performance as a whole.

Gorilla Theatre Productions’ The Suppliant Maidens [2012]

Following The Seven Against Thebes, and making some improvements its treatment of the chorus, The Suppliant Maidens was Gorilla Theatre Productions’ twenty-first Greek show, against on the steps of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and again directed by Luby.

Once thought to be one of Aeschylus’ earliest tragedies, and now considered one of his last, The Suppliant Maidens (sometimes shortened to Maids in Gorilla Theatre

Productions’ material) leans heavily on the eponymous chorus, which features a lengthy introductory song by the fifty daughters of Danaus, fleeing their Egyptian male cousins bent on marrying them.

It was surprising and to some disappointment, then, to find Gorilla Theatre

Productions’ chorus featuring only seven, recalling the fifteen-member chorus from the previous year. This number was an odd choice, if one will forgive the wordplay. This chorus, as was the case with previous ones, was frequently subdivided into hemi-choruses and pairs and trios, yet as it lacked any kind of regular coryphaeus, these divisions’ irregularities were noticeable enough to upset or unbalance the mise-en-scène of its odes.

Compared to the precisely balanced hemi-choruses of The Seven Against Thebes (two groups of seven with a separate coryphaeus) or earlier of Hecuba (two groups of three without a coryphaeus), these Danaïdes couldn’t help but appear lop-sided in their hemi- choruses of three-and-four. In other instances, as when supplicating Pelasgus or rejoicing with Danaus, similarly uneven choral divisions of two-and-five or two-two-and-three created peculiar stage compositions. It was only in arrangements of the entire group, in straight lines, curving arcs, or in a cluster when the chorus seemed cohesive and whole. A detail from the chorus’ costumes forms a tentative hypothesis for this ‘odd’ chorus number: of the seven members, three pairs shared the same color of fabric for their dresses (red, white, and a light blue) and a single member wore a dark green dress (see

Figure 12). Might there once have been an eighth chorus member, or was the intention from the outset to feature a chorus resistant to easy, discrete subdivisions?

The costuming of the chorus warrants its own focused analysis. Returning to

Figure 12 (below), this chorus was a particularly colorful one in its costuming clearly

(stereotypically?) evoking Ancient Egypt. More than the previous Greek tragedies, the costuming of The Suppliant Maidens decidedly conjures a long-ago and mythic setting

Figure 12. The chorus of The Suppliant Maidens under the protection of Argive soldiers, on the steps of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. and a more presentational approach to the performance. For instance, complementing the chorus’ colorful dresses, gold lamé and begemmed adornments, replete with Eyes of

Horus on the usekh collar, suggested the splendor of palatial life if not a harrowing escape by sea. Along with the other costumes, particularly of the Herald and sons of

Aegyptus, these were superficial indicators of ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Greek’ for the audience.

Lacking the downtrodden rugged costumes of Hecuba, the modern battle fatigues of The

Persians, or the purposefully anachronistic attire of The Seven Against Thebes, The

Suppliant Maidens found themselves in the difficult position of handling a tragic subject in cartoonish trappings, a foible which was reiterated in other aspects.

There is one aspect to be commended, that this production utilized half-masks for all its actors and chorus (save the Argive soldiers, who wore Corinthian-style plumed helmets). Gorilla Theatre Productions had used masks in its earlier tragedies and more regularly in its Greek comedies, and that they returned to this convention again warrants some acknowledgement. There was a noticeable difference in the ages of the chorus members (ranging from mid-teens to fifty years or older), and the half-masks assisted in depicting the chorus more uniformly and thus believably as sisters. That said, these masks—variously paired with Egyptian headdresses, crowns, and black wigs—finished the type of caricature which the costumes began and cut against any notion that these were young maidens in terrified flight from a heated pursuit.

The only piece of scenery was a short rehearsal block made up to look like a stone and placed in the center of the intermediate landing area. This served primarily as a

‘speaking-place’ for Danaus and later King Pelasgus of Argos, although in at least one instance the chorus ‘danced’ around this modest set piece almost as if it were a thymele

(see Figure 13). Returning to the idea of stereotype or caricature, the chorus spun and stepped around the stone, heads fixed, and with arms, elbows, and wrists held at angles certainly alluding to Egyptian reliefs or paintings (or more cynically to the song “Walk

Like an Egyptian” by The Bangles). The choral passage they recited for this dance, lines

524-555, references the Danaïdes’ ancestry from Io, a recalling of their Greek heritage and return to their “ancient mother’s footsteps,”10 so the choreography which reinforced a

10 Xo. παλαιὸν, δ᾽ εἰς ἴχνος μετέσταν/ματέρος (lines 538-539) 59 clichéd Egyptian aesthetic was puzzling. Such cultural shorthands abounded in this performance and unfortunately to its detriment.

Figure 13. The Danaïdes dance on the intermediate landing. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. In many regards this chorus was like that of the previous year’s The Seven Against

Thebes, and that both The Seven Against Thebes and The Suppliant Maidens have choruses of women beseeching the city and its ruler for protection from the violence of advancing men make the comparison not wholly absurd. The treatment of these choruses was similar in their crisscrossing navigating of the steps; choral passages alternatingly declared individually, in lopsided hemi-choruses, or in unison; use of frequent ululations; and lack of singing despite the underscoring of live music. However, while the former’s chorus had its rough edges smoothed by the vocal and spatial power of a ‘full’ chorus, the

60 latter’s smaller number was less successful in hiding any mistakes. Additionally, the variety of body shapes and sizes shown by the chorus’ composition lent some verisimilitude to the idea of an entire town’s stratified population being subject to hostile threat, whereas the assortment of bodies necessitated a homogenization by means of ludicrous costuming to suggest any semblance of relation among the choral performers.

Another key difference between these scripts is that the Theban women are already within the safety of the city walls and never encounter the besieging Argive armies while the Danaïdes are temporary arrested by the sons of Aegyptus. Consequently, the threat the invading men pose is respectively unrealized and realized, hidden and displayed for the audience, and in the case of The Suppliant Maidens, it yet further detracted from the overall experience.

The chorus’ rejoicing at the news of Pelasgus and the city of Argos’ protection was cut short by the arrival of its Egyptian pursuers, and the moment bordered on melodramatic slapstick. From its uneven hemi-choruses of three-and-four, the chorus scattered about the steps as the musicians produced a cacophony of trumpet blasts, drumming, and cymbal crashes. This announced the arrival of three Egyptian cousins, dressed in equally ridiculous and stereotypical garb, who bounded up to the chorus, scimitars in hand. The Herald followed languidly with a sword of his own and holding a jug, from which he drew conspicuous mouthfuls during each choral response to his taunts. At this, the chorus simply sat on the steps, without any resistance, but also without any truly forceful compulsion by their captors (see Figure 14). Although in a passage just prior to the Egyptians’ arrival the chorus stated that “no Ares is in them,” one is dubious

61 of the apparent ease with which the daughters are surrounded and defeated. Some show of force, even a slight one, might have lent better credence to the actual menace posed by these men—counting one ‘boy’ perhaps ten years old.

Figure 14. The Danaïdes arrested by their cousins and the Herald. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. In short, the chorus of The Suppliant Maidens was one of Gorilla Theatre

Productions’ least ‘effective.’ Hampered by smaller numbers, constrained by stereotypes of Ancient Egypt, and resigned to repeat previous techniques rather than innovate or experiment, the chorus-members ultimately enjoyed little room to shine in a script which features it in a central, and eponymous, role. Their choreography was much the same lines, angles, arcs, and circles as in previous performances, and the few times they actually danced, it was in the same caricatured manner as subtle as its costumes. The

62 actual number of choral performers resisted the kinds of neat divisions as found in earlier tragedies like Hecuba and The Seven Against Thebes, and while there might have been some symbolic significance to this decision, the final presentation was visually uneven.

This chorus was by far the low point of these final tragedies, so the sooner to continue to the last tragedy (and at least of the video-recorded tragedies, the best realized) the better.

Gorilla Theatre Productions’ “Final” Greek Show: Elektra [2014]

The ambitious project of Gorilla Theatre Productions, to stage “all thirty-three [sic]

Greek shows” would be brought to a premature end with its 23rd production, Elektra by

Euripides, which became their final show. This version, adapted and directed by longtime collaborator James Dean Carter,11 once again was staged on the southern steps of Nelson-

Atkins Museum of Art, a fitting location given the company’s history. It was here that

GTP staged its first performances of Greek drama, and after relocating to the Wheeler

Amphitheater at Theis Park for the intermediate years, it was here they returned for the last few shows. It is appropriate, then, that for this final performance, and barring a few inconsistencies, the chorus of Argive women utilized here presented a richly complex interpretation which interplayed between the religiosity and hospitality of the cultures of

Classical Greece and The American South.

In keeping with the sparse scenery of its previous tragedies, the set of the Elektra was a simple shack erected from corrugated steel, acting as the share-cropper farmer’s

11 Carter had earlier directed Agamemnon [2003] and Libation Bearers [2004] and may have completed Gorilla Theatre Productions’ take on the Oresteia with The Eumenides [2005]. It is possible he also adapted those works, as he did for the 2014 Elektra. 63 hut, and a pedestal featuring a bust, presumably of Agamemnon, for his tomb. This scenery, along with the productions’ costumes and the actors’ vocal affectations evoked the American South during the 1930s, in what appeared to be simultaneous nods to

Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra and Lee Breuer’s The Gospel at Colonus.

The five-member chorus reflected this by way of their depiction of Southern ladies in their Sunday finery: dresses, white gloves, pearls, and clutching gospels or perhaps hymnals (see Figure 15).

Figure 15. The chorus of Elektra consoles the titular princess. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. This costuming was a refreshing return from the cartoonish Egyptian Suppliant

Maidens, and while the actual number of choral performers was still small and odd- numbered, they were deployed in a much more robust portrayal here. This chorus featured a coryphaeus (bottom center of Figure 15), who could neatly step aside for

64 interacting with the principle characters and create two sets of pairs or could rejoin the group and create simple choreography or geometric figures. Compared to the seven- member chorus of The Suppliant Maidens, which was frustratingly caught somewhere in the middle of too-small and too-large, this of the Elektra made for a compact, intimate group who could alternate between frivolous gossip and somber contemplation. Goldhill, in his How To Stage Greek Tragedy Today, mentions this chorus specifically as the exemplar for the question “How can collectivity and a shift of expressiveness during the odes be incorporated into a contemporary staging?” (55). The challenge of framing the chorus as something that can both carry the authority of the collective and be agile for quickly swinging emotional responses is difficult, and Carter’s solution here was an informed one, empowering the chorus with the institutional influence of the church paired with a levity falling well short of comedy and as a result the entire production benefitted.

From its delayed entrance, the chorus immediately set its lighter tone which would become a strong counterpoint to the severity of the plot. After the opening speeches and dialogues by the farmer, Electra, and Orestes, the chorus entered on the cement landing near the audience from stage left, babbling and gossiping and crossing to the disheveled Electra at stage right. The juxtaposition was remarkable: the princess wearing rags and barefoot, grimly resigned; the chorus wearing their best, gratingly silly.

As the daughter of Agamemnon rebuked the chorus, that she cannot accompany them on to the festival given her lowered status, one of the members responded,

Our Goddess is great, Elektra. Come now, and borrow some of my clothes, a fine

beautifully woven gown, and a golden necklace. Oh, how the feast will enjoy your

presence! Tears alone will not defeat your enemies, Elektra, but honoring the gods

will! Prayers to the gods, not sighs, and success will come to you! (“Elektra”

16:22-16:48)

This elicited rounds of “Yes, ma’am!,” “That’s right!,” and “Praise be!” from the other chorus members, as the coryphaeus wiped a tear (or dirt?) away from the princess’ cheek. This group of young women was immediately warm, congenial, and familiar to both the characters onstage and the audience. During Electra’s impassioned response, for example, the coryphaeus reached a consoling hand to her arm in support, only to recoil shortly after at the mention of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus “in a bed stained full of my father’s blood,” now fanning her face and emitting an unpleasant “Ugh.” At the discovery of the hidden Orestes (around line 215), Elektra bade the chorus escape, which entailed scurrying back off stage left and sidling against the wall near the base of the steps. The chorus, however, still reacted vocally with relief and joy at the brother’s revelation and stepped halfway up the stairs with requests for more information (lines 296-299) and once again with genuine optimism about fate’s apparent turn towards justice (lines 401-

403). Equally parts sympathy, authority, and frivolity, this chorus was imbued with a special blend of the collectivity which Goldhill advocates and an individuality more aligned to Rodosthenous’ predilection.

This led next to the first choral song, for which the chorus arranged itself in a wide, shallow ‘W’ nearly the full width of the stairs, opened the hymnals, and sang to

66 accompaniment of an electric organ and oboe (see Figure 16). Another ostensible allusion to The Gospel at Colonus, this pared down delivery resisted too easy a comparison.

Beyond merely the fewer performers, the music itself was markedly closer to a droning, vaguely ‘exotic’ dirge than a rollicking black church service. This seemed a misstep, understanding first the general setting of an early- to mid-20th century American South and second the previously established musical purview. For in the pre-show music, composer Pat Conway established a fitting aurality of Americana, including excerpts from Elder Joseph Brackett’s “Simple Gifts.” This same song was sung by the farmer with his entrance at the very start of the performance, so to shift the musical landscape so drastically with this first choral song was a detriment to establishing the world of this play by cutting across the musical landscape just sung moments earlier.

Less egregious was the restrained choreography of this section. For most of the song, the chorus stood stationary, glancing down at their books for assistance with the lyrics. The only ‘dancing’ was simple descents down the steps: first by the two members wearing blue and pink to deepen the ‘W’; then by the coryphaeus in center, bringing with her that same pair to the bottom of the steps; and finally, the last two members on the outer points to form a horizontal line. While not visually stunning by any means, this choreography broke up the monotony of the stationary chorus, also more than one chorus member needed some effort to walk down the steps in her heels and not tumble down.

The especially wide arrangement could have emphasized the chorus’ small number, yet it was composed just so that it filled the space without seeming too sparse. Having finished, the chorus simply split to either side of the stairs, two leaving stage right and three stage

Figure 16. The chorus sings the first passage. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. left, remaining onstage albeit in the periphery for the important recognition scene next.

With the entrance of the old man, return of Elektra and Orestes, and final reunion of the siblings, the chorus first spoke its lines from its position in the margin but soon joined the three actors for a striking stage composition. Resolved to find vengeance by killing Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, the three principles fell to their knees, raised their arms, and implored the deities before their undertaking. The chorus rushed back to the steps from either side and combined with the actors to create a remarkable pattern, clasping their hands around their hymnals and gazing skyward (see Figure 17).

Figure 17. Elektra, the Old Man, Orestes, and the chorus intreat the deities. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page. Before the steps and façade of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, this powerful tableau initiated the second, and significantly more impactful, choral song. This music channeled the kind of soulful church gospel intimated at the beginning, and the chorus sang individually with vibrato and bluesy embellishments at the end of each musical phrase.

After the first strophe, a percussionist shuffled along the meter with a tambourine, and the five members of the chorus swayed and stepped in place. With the music taking a sudden double-time, the chorus collapsed in a tight ‘V’ and clapped the off-beats for a few energetic bars. The return to the slower tempo also brought the chorus back to its

‘W’ shape, this time more compact than in its first song, and the last, quiet reflection was

69 interrupted by a man’s cries offstage. All considered, this choral passage was greatly improved from the preceding, although one wonders if the contrast was too great.

For the following narrative, the chorus-members wondered individually at the source of the noise, some dashing up a few steps to the source stage left by the landing.

Bidding Elektra to return from the shack, the chorus positioned itself below it on the steps right. While this visually cluttered the stage, it naturally followed that the chorus would be loath to approach the area where something terrible was happening. Elektra’s entrance and crossing to the top center of the steps partially counter-balanced the scene, which was remedied further by her braving the stage left area, reestablishing the contrast of the more brazen individual and the more traditionalist collective. When responding to the

Messenger’s report of Aegisthus’ death (an announcement oddly antithetical to the gravity of the situation given the Messenger’s folksy pattering and pratfall tumbling down the last few steps), the chorus maintained a propriety befitting a group of well-to- do, dignified churchgoers. Their reply was less bloodlust and vengeance and more befitting an “Hallelujah!,” “Amen!,” or “God is great!” yet they did not neglect the more

‘fire-and-brimstone’ qualities of the Protestant Christian framing they borrowed. As the other four chorus members crossed to meet the Messenger by the tomb of Agamemnon, the coryphaeus stationed herself down center, near the audience, proclaiming her words,

“We won’t stop our dance, so loved by the Muses. Now our first kings shall rule again, having justly destroyed this evil lot!” (1:06:40-1:06:54). As the corpse of Aegisthus was brought forward, a figure beneath a bloody sheet borne on a stretcher, the chorus’ macabre joy (and even applause) underpinned the funerary march played by the

70 keyboardist on the organ. The whole affair produced an unsettling mixture of joyous relief and grisly righteousness, which lingered for the arrival of Clytemnestra soon after.

This chorus, initially reviled by the sounds of manslaughter, now acted with a gleeful complicity, welcoming Clytemnestra. They remained in the upstage left corner, close to the tomb, and reproached the Argive Queen “If a woman is wise, she will always forgive her husband. And I personally treat with disdain any woman who does not think so” (1:20:25-1:20:38). Supporting Elektra’s indictment of her mother, another chorus member added on, “I know, because I can see that some people are happy in their marriages, and others are not” (1:24:00-1:24:09). If unable to enact the revenge themselves, this chorus was contented to supply whatever verbal barbs they were able, maintaining the congenial composure of stereotypical Southern hospitality with superficially warm welcomes and snide rejoinders. This carried over to the final choral song, which returned to the indistinctly foreign style of music as the first. Hymnals opened again, the chorus sang piteously and wound its way down the steps to the cement landing at the bottom. This shorter song was likewise cut short by screaming, from

Clytemnestra now, and the chorus now showed a pittance of remorse at their prior virtue.

As the two corpses were wielded out again, one of the chorus members cried, “There is, nor ever was, a house more wretched than that of the house of Tantalus” (line 1175-

1176), and the chorus resigned itself back to the walls of the stairs extreme stage left. For the following exchange between the siblings and the chorus, individual chorus members spoke with words variously reproachful, sympathetic, and fatalistic. Then announcing the arrival of the Dioskouroi, dressed in purple-and-white peplos and himation, the chorus

71 was aghast at the brothers’ news of Helen’s eidolon in Troy and that Helen and Menelaus were returning from Egypt. At the very end, with Orestes’ flight to Athens and the departure of the Dioskouroi, the chorus crossed down center, taking up the same energetic, ad-libbed gossiping that marked their entrance. The coryphaeus, having now noted the audience before her, brought the chorus to a stop, and the five recited in unison,

“Good-bye, blessed is the human who lived happily without the weight of suffering”

(lines 1357-1359) with the cheer befitting an after-congregation social and exited up either side of the stairs to the underscore of the church organ.

This last iteration of the chorus, although Luby and company may not have realized it at the time, was one of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ more completely realized ones and certainly the best integrated of the final five tragedies of which we have video recordings. In light of its smaller size, the chorus of five women produced a physical and vocal presence which demanded an equal share of both the audience’s attention and the narrative influence. Even when their singing was not fully polished, or on-key, the conviction of the choral voices carried it well enough, for what is a Southern church choir if not rambunctious? All considered, the chorus of Elektra was one of the best, and while it surely drew some inspiration from other theatrical models like Mourning Becomes

Electra and The Gospel at Colonus, it did so without being utterly derivative.

With Carter as the director, who surely benefited also on account of adapting the script himself, this Elektra’s chorus was another adroit synthesis of the advice from

Goldhill and Rodosthenous. A medium-sized chorus, whose costuming found a balance between uniformity (for example, wearing identical choir robes, which while found in

72 certain black church settings, might have been too on the nose here) and idiosyncrasy.

The pearl necklaces, white gloves, and hymnals carried by all the members unified them, as well as their shared piety, and connotated the authority of a congregation, but their distinct attire and personalities created memorable, personable individuals.

Gorilla Theatre Productions soon closed after its 2014 Elektra, and while it no longer maintains its own website (http://www.gorillatheatre.org), it is still active on its

Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Gorilla-Theatre-Productions-119657699600/) by posting information about auditions, other performance events in the Kansas City area, and hosting galleries of production photos. David Luby Brisco was at one time listed as the “Theatre Department Chair at the Paseo Academy of the [sic] Fine and Performing

Arts” (“David”), although the Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts’ website does not list any information on his current employment status after the year 2017 (“Paseo”).

In other posts on the Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Facebook page, Luby has mentioned health issues, which may have contributed to the theater company’s folding. While its goal to perform all the extant drama of Classical Greece was unrealized, Gorilla Theatre

Productions produced an impressive corpus spanning twenty-four years.

From that corpus, a detail of the greater American chorus of Greek tragedy emerges, some two dozen tesserae to add to the larger mosaic. These choruses were generally, though not universally nor uniformly, reduced in number, often a product with multiple divisors, to afford a variety of subdivisions and groupings. Generally, a coryphaeus led these groups (even if there were only one other, as was the case in The

Persians), although any one individual chorus-member might speak individually in dialogue with the principle characters or to recite or sing a portion of an ode. That any one chorus might sing was just as likely as not, even considering the overwhelming benefit such songs created for the performance. Choreography was limited to ambulatory curvilinear or geometric formations, and any dancing proper was restrained to spinning or swaying with arms and hands raised. The choruses trended away from using masks over time,12 once featured prominently in the earliest tragedies and last employed for 2001’s

The Trojan Women. Concerns of the chorus’ relationship to the performance space or area varied greatly from script to script. Those which centered on the chorus (i.e., The

Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, and The Suppliant Maidens) kept it onstage and visible for the entire performance, while others (i.e., Hecuba and Elektra) sometimes removed or marginalized it from the stage for more suspenseful or intimate dramatic moments between the actors. Using the southern stairs of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of

Art as a makeshift orchestra lent a powerful verticality and framing to the chorus, unless it simply sat on the steps during longer exchanges among the principle characters; it is unfortunate that there are no available recordings of other tragedies at Wheeler

Amphitheater to allow a more detailed comparison in lieu of the one Hecuba.

As a final note, these Gorilla Theatre Productions choruses maintained identities between the total collectivity advocated by Goldhill and the complete individuality exposed by Rodosthenous: having no names of their own, yet responding to a common

12 An important caveat to this is the Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Greek comedies, which utilized masks for their choruses up through 2009’s The Birds. Its last comedy, 2013’s The Knights, opted for exaggerated false mustaches and goggles, if those accoutrements qualify as masks. 74 address; not only arguing amongst themselves as much as with the principle characters, but also coalescing into a homogenous unit; identifiable by distinctive costuming, yet sharing a prevailing, unifying style. The choruses of The Persians, The Seven Against

Thebes, and Elektra which achieved a balance of the collective and the individual, the emotive and the narrative, presentational and representation were their best realized and contributed the most to their productions. In this way, Gorilla Theatre Productions synthesized an American chorus for Greek tragedy which was sustained for sixteen performances over twenty-three years.

Chapter 3. The Greek Tragedies of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon

Formation and History of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon

Keith Scales was born in London in 1943, and in 1970 he moved with his newly-wed wife, Rebecca Becker, to her home state of Oregon. Having no formal education past the age of sixteen, Scales began his theatrical career after attending acting classes which

Becker recommended (Shurgot 350). Starting a theatrical career that would include over

200 acting roles and more than 100 directing credits, Scales would become an integral component of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon from 1993 to 2009 (Lucariello).

Scales would adapt and direct fourteen tragedies and two comedies (see Table 3) during his tenure as the company’s Artistic Director and was assisted regularly by two main contributors. Becker, Scales’ wife, frequently served as the choreographer or musical composer for these productions, and contributor John Vergin both wrote original music and appeared onstage as the “Chorus Leader” in a number of performances. Compared to

Luby, who traded off directorial duties with numerous other artists and did not himself

(apparently) write of the translations for Gorilla Theatre Productions’ tragedies, Scales was positioned strongly to oversee a robust production by means of his adapting/translating, directing, frequent design and construction of the set, and coordinating and collaborating with a ‘stable’ of choreographers and composers. If these were not enough alone, Scales also intended to produce a theatrical experience attuned and informed by the conventions of Classical Greek drama. 76

Table 3. The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s Performances and Chorus Size by Year

Year Playwright Title Chorus Size 1986 Sophocles Oedipus ? 1993 Euripides Iphigenia in Aulis ? 1994 Aeschylus Agamemnon 7 1995 Aeschylus Libation Bearers 9 1996 Aeschylus The Furies 7 1997 Euripides Iphigenia in the Temple of the Taurians 7 1998 Sophocles Oedipus 9 1999 Sophocles Antigone 6 2000 Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 6 2001 Euripides The Bacchae 6 2002 Aristophanes Birds 9 2003 Euripides Medea 7 2004 Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 7 2005 Sophocles Alcestis 7 2006 Euripides Orestes 7 2007 Aristophanes Peace ? 2008 Sophocles Antigone 7 2009* Euripides Trojan Women 5 2010* Sophocles Oedipus the King 9 2011** Euripides Iphigenia in Tauris 3 2012** Euripides Helen 3 2013*** Sophocles Electra ?

* Directed by Elizabeth Huffman, interim Artistic Director for The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon. ** Touring productions by the Leonidas and Eftychia Loizides Theatre Company, hosted by The Classical Greek Theatre of Oregon. *** Production cancelled before performance (Another tour of Loizides’?).

The company described itself on its website’s home page as “[a] theatrical laboratory for the presentation and study of ancient Greek drama” (Classic), and in its

“About” section listed the following “conventions” which its “productions maintain[ed]”:

• Singing, dancing Choruses. • Period costumes based on ancient Greek vase-paintings. • Performances (typically eleven over a three week period) given outdoors, by daylight.

• Original music and new English versions of the texts are created for each new production. • Plays are performed in a sequence that illuminates the myths they express. (“About”)

That these conventions are “maintained” suggests an endeavor to replicate or continue the theatrical practices of Classical Greece, and while laudable, there are immediately noticeable anachronisms or inconsistencies. “Singing and dancing choruses” is fair enough (though as Table 4 indicates, the number of chorus-members of Scales’ productions was inconsistent with the number traditionally found in the tragic choruses of

Classical Greece), but the suggestion of using “period costumes based on ancient Greek vase-paintings” is a tenuous position.13 Performances outdoors with the benefit of natural daylight is agreeable, but the “typically eleven [performances] over a three week period” does not coincide with what we know of City Dionysia festival’s practices. The practice of composing “original music” is commendable, as is the “new English versions” that

Scales penned (though, to be pedantic, clearly the original texts were not in English), but the vague phrase of “plays performed in a sequence which illuminates the myths they express” is in need of some illumination itself. These conventions, and the commitment to them, illustrate the earnestness of reproducing Greek drama that is both educational and entertaining which Scales brought to the company, which places it in a fair position for comparison to what Luby intended for his Kansas City group.

Clearly, this was an ambition and personal undertaking for Scales and The Classic

Greek Theatre of Oregon. After the year 2000, “symposia, lectures, and film programs”

13 For the complicated relationship between extrapolating Greek theater practices from pottery-painting, see Taplin’s Pots & Plays (2007), Green’s review of Taplin (2007), and C. Billing (2008). 78 supplemented the annual theatrical performances, and the following year witnessed the first touring performances to universities (“About”). As opposed to Luby and Gorilla

Theatre Productions, there was no established goal of producing the full corpus of extant

Greek drama; indeed, several tragedies were repeated, often with new directors coming and going (e.g., Oedipus/Oedipus the King in 1986, 1998, and 2010; Iphigenia in the

Temple of the Taurians/Iphigenia in Tauris in 1997 and 2011; and Antigone in 1999 and

2008). Another contrast is the comparatively smaller interest in Greek comedy (Gorilla’s six comedies to Oregon’s two) and exclusivity of performing Greek drama (Gorilla

Theatre Productions produced plays from other theatrical genres), although strictly speaking this inquiry pertains only to these companies’ Greek tragedies.

The Venues of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon

The primary performance space for The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon was the Barry

Cerf memorial theatre and garden area, more commonly Cerf Amphitheater, located on the grounds of Reed College in Portland. Originally constructed in 1936, and then rebuilt in 1988, it was named for Barry Cerf, a professor of comparative literature at Reed

College from 1926 to 1941, who “was instrumental in developing Reed’s humanities courses and was active in community music and theatre programs” (“Cerf”). Just south of

Reed Lake, the 600-seat amphitheater faces north-east and is settled amid a dense section of trees and underground (see Figures 18 and 19) and uses the natural slope of the land down to the lakefront as opposed to that of a hill. Tiers of wooden benches enclose the

79 semi-circular “orchestra,” which is enringed by a simple wooden fence, and the floor of the venue is natural turf.

Coincidentally, as with Theis Park’s Wheeler Amphitheater in Kansas City, the background to the space has a water feature, and with the abundance of shade trees and seclusion from highway traffic, it has some advantages over Wheeler, creating a quieter, more intimate, contemplative environment. It has the regular elevated and sloped seating area as a theatron analogue and, also like Wheeler Amphitheater, a walking path that could ostensibly function as parodoi/eisodoi. These side entrances, however, certainly were utilized in the tragedies which Scales directed (which was not the case for Gorilla

Theatre Productions’ Hecuba, at least), in a manner of which Ley and Goldhill would later write approvingly in their respective books.

Figure 18. Cerf Amphitheater. Photo courtesy of Reed College. 80

Figure 19. Aerial view of Cerf Amphitheater, with Reed Lake. Image from Google Maps. Compared to the two venues of Gorilla Theatre Productions, Cerf Amphitheater is much closer to Wheeler Amphitheater than the exterior of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, perhaps unsurprisingly, and even provides several advantages over the Kansas City performance space. First, its seating area is at a greater slope, which allows a less- obstructed view for each individual spectator, and its isolation from traffic, being nestled within the campus of Reed College, affords the audience to attend to the performance with fewer distractions. One might further suggest that the natural background—the surrounding forest greenery and nearby Reed Lake—would align more with the ordered beauty (κόσμος) of the ‘ambient extrapersonal’ space which Meineck asserts is crucial to the reception of Greek drama. In some regards this is true, and Cerf Amphitheater is a prime performance space, yet all its apparent advantages are not so firm. First, Cerf

Amphitheater is still located on relatively flat land, even while its seating area is on a deeper slope. The horizon is still comparatively limited, and the furthest a spectator might hope to see past the chorus, actors, and skene is the other side of Reed Lake. The chorus- actors-skene-city-mountain-sea-sky visual procession, like what Meineck described as the view from the Theatre of Dionysus, is similarly absent, or at least weakened. Second, while it is true that the ‘ambient extrapersonal’ space at Cerf Amphitheater is not blocked by something so colossal as the façade of an art museum, that same space is choked by the (over)abundance of nearby foliage, creating a suffocated and suffocating effect.

The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon also performed at nearby indoor venues, like the Performance or Recital spaces Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall or the

University of Puget Sound’s Schneebeck Concert Hall, especially after the company began to tour its performances as universities in 2001. At the risk of excluding a more rounded understanding of the chorus in these performances by these directors, for the purpose of a more direct comparison to Gorilla Theatre Productions’ exclusively outdoor performances, how those choruses were translated to an interior space needs be omitted.

None the less, that the tragedies after the year 2001 were also directed with the goal of later performance in interior spaces might also contribute to how they were played outside.

The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s Earlier Tragedies by Keith Scales, 1986 to 1998

While in some regards The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s company website has been less maintained than Gorilla Theatre Productions’, one large and helpful distinction is the

82 existence of cast lists for more of its performances. While this prevents a direct analysis of how the chorus was presented in the actual plays, other notable patterns emerge from these lists which illustrate how Scales and his collaborators were thinking about the chorus. First, there is much less variability in the size of the actual choruses, which had anywhere from six to nine members, with an average size of 7.2, and median and mode of 7. These numbers suggest a much more consistent approach to chorus size, surely due to the regularity of Scales’ direction, than that of Gorilla Theatre Productions’ extremes14

(i.e., the two-member chorus of The Persians and the fifteen-member chorus of The

Seven Against Thebes). The only times the choruses of The Classic Greek Theatre of

Oregon shrunk more were in performances either by a new director (Elizabeth Huffman) or when hosting a touring production (Leonidas Loizides), both instances addressed below. For Scales at least, the default was a comparatively medium-sized chorus.

Second, these choruses were often led by a coryphaeus, which was often musical composer John Vergin (in Agamemnon, The Furies, and Antigone) or the choreographer

Sandy Shaner (Oedipus). While other productions featured a separate performer as the coryphaeus, the general inclusion of either the composer or choreographer suggests a more integrated treatment of the chorus; instead of a discrete unit by itself, the chorus being led by someone with a more specialized position in the production staff provides a more aligned usage of the chorus within the entire performance. Rather than a vestige or margin, the chorus is re-centered in this way.

14 The choruses of Gorilla Theatre Productions had average sizes of 6.7, with a median and mode of 6. While these values at first blush appear close to those of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, the variability of sizes ranged is certainly due to the larger number of directors featured (including Luby, Beth Marshall, Kate Sinnett Beaver, James Dean Carter, Barbara ?, and Ernest Williams, at least). 83

The earliest available photographic evidence of The Classic Greek Theatre of

Oregon’s tragedies begins with its 1994 Agamemnon. From the few pictures available of this chorus of old men, one sees similarities to the chorus of Gorilla Theatre Productions’

Hecuba. The medium-sized chorus of seven (including composer cum coryphaeus John

Vergin) was costumed in similar ruddy-brown robes, shoulder-length greasy grey hair, and walking sticks (see Figure 20), signifying a loose collection within a group as opposed to a strict uniformity. In this picture, the chorus-members cluster around one another, presumably wary of the Argive queen’s pronouncement of joy at her husband’s return, and in this and other photographs, they tend to remain in and around the small

“orchestra” nearer the audience. Here the chorus is stationed more proximal to the audience, as was the case with many of the Gorilla Theatre Productions’ performances and against the alleged marginalization either to the wings or to the back which Goldhill suggested. While it appears that some of the chorus-members’ mouths are open, suggesting a response in unison or at least with multiple voices, so is Clytemnestra’s, which confounds making anything beyond a conjecture as to how this particular chorus spoke. For if it spoke or sang primarily in unison, it would align closer to Goldhill’s conception, but if it traded lines and responded individually to one another as well as to the main actors, it would be closer to what Rodosthenous and McDonald recommend.

Figure 20. The chorus of Agamemnon looks on Clytemnestra. Photo courtesy of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s website. The apparent stationary position of the chorus in this instance in betrayed in Figure 21, which depicts one of the chorus-members in a vigorous dance before the returned

Agamemnon. He raises, or perhaps swings, his walking stick above his head, and seems to growl out a choral line. Reinvigorated at the return of his king, who watches the chorus from the meager ramp downstage of the skene, the chorus assumes the authority of the center “orchestra” and an ostensible return to the status quo. This appears to show the choreography as something beyond mere ‘blocking’ or marching into various geometric, curvilinear formations.

Figure 21. Detail of a chorus-member dancing before Agamemnon. Photo courtesy of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s website. The final photograph of this 1994 production illustrates the emotional range which Goldhill rightly assigns to the chorus. Here, the chorus encircles Cassandra, who kneels and speaks her final proclamation of the murder of Agamemnon in his house, and its performers strike sympathetic, weakened, fearful poses (see Figure 22). Half lying down, and leaning on their staves for support, the chorus-members are muted and solemn in opposition to the exuberance they displayed just moments ago. In addition to the emotive responsiveness crucial to the chorus, here one also notices the trace of geometric shapes (in this instance specifically, the half-circle) in which these American choruses so frequently station themselves. Here the chorus acts a frame to Cassandra, similarly in

Luby’s Hecuba, by forming a perimeter to the principle actor as she delivers a long speech.

Figure 22. The chorus encircles Cassandra. Photo courtesy of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s website. It is no far stretch to conclude that the chorus of Agamemnon was typical for the other

Greek tragedies produced by Scales and The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon. Though fewer photographs of the other performances are available, the ones that are show an even treatment of the chorus, further reinforced by the relatively stable choral sizes and regular use of a doubled composer- or choreographer-coryphaeus. What little photographic evidence found in two photographs from 1998’s Oedipus, show comparable instantiations of the chorus.

For the 1998 Oedipus, two pictures align with the vision of the chorus presented earlier in the 1994 Agamemnon with one notable difference. The mixed chorus of nine men and women represent the citizens of Thebes, which is one of the few times the chorus is depicted as heterogeneously male and female in these cases. Unmasked, they wear coordinating costumes of either a dark chiton for the men or a peplos for the 87 women, and while they all wear himatia, the coryphaeus wears a lighter-colored himation to set himself apart from the others’ (see Figure 23). They assume more rectilinear formations, making a ‘V’ around the modest steps to the Theban palace, or in diagonal lines as hemi-choruses when being addressed by Oedipus (see Figure 24). Both photographs portray static compositions, compared to the movement of the chorus- member in Agamemnon of Figure 21, and it is equally difficult to discern how they are speaking or singing their parts as was the case in Figure 20. The groupings of the chorus in these two photographs suggest responses in unison or as hemi-choruses, whereas one might anticipate a single chorus member splintering off from the group for individual lines.

Figure 23. The chorus of Oedipus, with the coryphaeus standing on the palace steps. Photo courtesy of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s website. One also notices the lack of masks in these choruses, as well as for the actors. As

The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s website listed a “singing, dancing chorus” and

“period costumes based on ancient Greek vase-paintings” among the conventions it 88

Figure 24. The chorus listens to Oedipus. Photo courtesy of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s website. sought to maintain in these new versions, the absence of masks (at least in these productions) suggests an interesting hypothesis. Recalling Rodosthenous’ assertion, that a modern production’s chorus should be shown as a group of individuals since “choruses

[1] no longer talk, dress and move in the same way, [2] do not wear masks and [3] do not speak in unison,” Scales seemed only to preclude masks in these productions for a modern American audience, apparently feeling confident that the spectators would more easily accept a chorus which talked (or sang) and moved (or danced) in a manner evocative of Classical Greek drama and which spoke in unison before one which was masked. Maybe the differences were not as pronounced as Rodosthenous suggested, for

Scales and The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s productions appear shockingly stable over nearly two decades and fourteen tragedies.

Based on these photographs from Agamemnon and Oedipus, it appears that

Scales’ usage of the chorus aligned more closely to Goldhill’s interpretations: a collective

(albeit reduced in number from the Classic Greek tragic chorus), wielding the authority of tradition, and able to express a range of emotions over the course of the tragedy. That

Scales also relied on the expertise of the music composer and/or choreographer in deploying the chorus, not to mention including that individual as the onstage coryphaeus in several of the productions, suggests a greater consideration given to this ‘problem’ of the chorus. Lastly, the consistency of Scales as both the director and the script adaptor for so many of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s tragedies permits a stability of theatrical form and function which would further solidify how these choruses were used.

The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s Later Tragedies by Keith Scales: Bacchae [2001], Medea [2003], Prometheus Bound [2004], Orestes [2006], and Antigone [2008]

As Scales continued his work with The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, as well as his creative partnerships with Becker, Shaner, Vergin, and others, into the 21st century, the choruses of these tragedies were robustly developed within stable parameters from year to year, solidifying the ‘conventions’ presented in the earlier performances. First, the size of the chorus seems to be fixed at seven strong, with remarkably few exceptions. Second, the chorus was enhanced by novel choreography and original lyrics and music to sing and often was ‘lead’ by that same choreographer or composer in performance. Third, the chorus enjoyed the liberty to explore and express a range of emotional responses within 90 the scripts. These ‘standardized’ choral treatments paradoxically, and smartly, allowed the vastly different choruses of each tragedy to differentiate themselves. Whereas Gorilla

Theatre Productions experimented with choral size, structure, and composition from production to production, The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon allowed the choruses of

Maenads, Oceanides, and mortal women and men to speak, sing, and dance for themselves. By examining performance photographs, courtesy of Becker, one notices the careful, considered attention given to the tragic choruses of The Classic Greek Theatre of

Oregon under the final years of Scales’ leadership.

Consider the titular chorus of Bacchae, directed by Scales in 2001, featuring the choreography of Sandy Shaner (who also appeared as a chorus-member), and musical compositions of John Vergin. The set was designed (also by Scales) as discrete areas of a down-center platform, a pair of columns upstage left, and the façade of the palace upstage right. This arrangement allowed a greater view of the natural landscape of Reed Lake, which emphasized not just the aesthetics and majesty of the countryside (and Dionysus) but also its power to divide and destroy the manmade architecture as shown at the tragedy’s conclusion. In this way also, the vegetation suffusing the ‘ambient extrapersonal’ space as detailed by Meineck reinforced the action and theme of the script, a wise decision by Scales and his production team.

The six-member chorus of women—one of the few times Scales would deviate from a chorus of seven—wore scarlet robes and leopard-skin mantles (especially bright against the greenery of Cerf Amphitheater and Reed Lake), complete with thyrsi and foliaged crowns (see Figure 25). Painted symbols and designs marked their faces, and

Figure 25. Collage of the chorus from Bacchae (2001). From top, clockwise: the chorus at the thymele, the chorus with Pentheus and Dionysus, the chorus with Dionysus. Photos courtesy of Rebecca J. Becker.

their hair hung wildly and only just contained. One of the more active choruses from Greek tragedies, and frenzied in their worship of Dionysus, Shaner’s choreography enabled these Maenads to be likewise frenetic: scampering this way and that, manically spinning and twirling, striking defiant poses. They served as a foil to the Theban king

Pentheus in just about every aspect: collective (in both number and authority), female,

‘barbarian,’ brightly-costumed, pious, expressive to his singular (with the same dual meanings), male, ‘civilized,’ drab, impious, repressive. The chorus of Maenads was additionally unbound to any one region of the performance space and partook in the physical action onstage and between the principle characters without confinement to/within the orchestra. This instantiation of the chorus of Bacchae aligned almost exactly with what Goldhill would advocate, as would the majority of choruses produced by The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon.

In a marked contrast to the chorus of Bacchae, the chorus of the next tragedy for

The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, the women of Corinth in Euripides’ Medea, provided a stately, dignified presence onstage. Rebecca J. Becker pulled double-duty as both choreographer and musical composer for this production. The set, designed by

Scales and Stephen Kelsey, was the imposing front of the Corinthian palace, now covering the view of Reed Lake, with short steps leading to a central door and colonnade

(see Figure 26). A small Corinthian column with a sacrificial bowl stood in as a thymele, and what would have been the orchestra space was left to the bare turf. The palace of

Corinth dominated the performance area, in harmony with its centrality to the events of the play, and its prominence was reinforced by the costume of Corinthian women.

Figure 26. Collage of the chorus of Medea (2003). From top, clockwise: the chorus at the palace façade, the chorus with Jason, a hemi-chorus on the stage left façade. Photos courtesy of Rebecca J. Becker.

The costumes worn by this seven-member chorus were light blue peploi and dark blue and purple himatia. These were completed with simple diadems, various pieces of jewelry, and the hair worn up. This appearance complemented the costume of Jason, who wore shining armor and a dark blue himation himself, aligning the chorus to the city-state and all its social and moral respectabilities. As solemn and refined as their costumes, so too was the general affect of this chorus. It surveyed the action onstage with an apparently proper detachment, and typically stayed together as a single group. The chorus did, however, at least split once into halves, the hemi-choruses stationing themselves on either side of the colonnade. Much more restrained, certainly when compared to the chorus of Maenads, these Corinthian women appeared to move, sing, and dance in customary, proper forms, even in their most emotional moments (see Figure 27). Himatia now drawn over their heads, and to the accompaniment of a drum which one of them held, this chorus struck symbolic and expressive gestures which were still restraint and propriety in their foreboding final ode (lines 1251-1272). Anticipating the murder of the sons, the chorus averts their eyes in a solemn pose, depicting a fortitude betraying the impending sense of doom. This striking gesture—the resolve in the face of horror, to avert one’s eyes but not flee—was a powerful moment which Becker commendably bestowed to the chorus.

The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon next produced Aeschylus’ Prometheus

Bound for its 2004 tragedy, and created yet another memorable, informed version of the chorus, here the daughters of Oceanus. Becker would return once more as both the choreographer and composer for this tragedy, which would be her final production in

Figure 27. The Corinthian women avert their eyes in their final ode. Photo courtesy of Rebecca J. Becker. either of those capacities. Scales’ set design was a black cliff with a spiraling ramp upwards and a single megalith at the top to which Prometheus was chained at both wrists.

Placed centrally, it afforded a prime view of Reed Lake and the greenery beside it while also allowing for a sufficient orchestra-like area downstage. Somewhat clashing with the setting of the tragedy, yet in keeping with Classic Greek staging conventions, a thymele of a small Corinthian column and empty bowl was placed down-center, not unlike those thymeles of the previous tragedies. Much like the ‘standardized’ choral techniques of The

Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, its set designs were remarkably steady for the features they regularly utilized: the thymele, the use of the parodoi/eisodoi for entrances and exits, and detailed sets (at least as opposed to Gorilla Theatre Productions’ trend towards

96 minimalist sets at the end of the company’s run). Clearly, as Ley and Goldhill would argue, the relationship between the chorus and the playing space—particularly the orchestra—is a vital consideration for directors of Greek drama, and Scales was successful in leveraging his double position of adaptor-director (and frequently triple role of set-designer) in realizing these performances.

The Oceanides themselves were a chorus of seven members, and they added a fittingly graceful, otherworldly element to the production. In long gowns of light blue and white (like the foam rising from the waters below), with girdles of seaweed, and vibrant, swirling full-faced makeup, these seven women ambled up from the stage left parodos, stepping in unison and singing to Prometheus (see Figure 28). Thus far, at least as attested in the available evidence, this was the most extensive use of makeup by a Classic

Greek Theatre of Oregon chorus, and its use evoked the masks used in traditional Greek drama. While the chorus of Bacchae also used face paint, theirs was certainly more of a framing or accent than the fully painted faces of the Oceanides, whose identical designs depicted a single cresting wave rising before a dark blue sky. Their onstage blocking and dancing supported this interpretation, whether whirling with joined hands in an eddy or ascending the ramp to Prometheus like a wave breaking against the cliffs.

From an audio recording of this chorus’ singing (again, translated by Scales but here provided by Becker), the music in integrated with the chorus’ appearance and movement in performance. With their parodos, the seven Oceanides announce their arrival to Prometheus, in haunting melody to an ethereal musical accompaniment:

Figure 28. Collage of the chorus of Prometheus Bound (2004). From top, clockwise: the chorus near the thymele, the chorus ‘crashes’ against the cliffs, the chorus’ parodos. Photos courtesy of Rebecca J. Becker.

No need to be afraid!

We flew here as your friends,

happy to make the journey.

The instant our father consented

we soared here on the winds!

We heard the clang of iron

echoing in our cave,

and we flew to you,

barefoot

but unashamed. (Becker)

This section was sung at times in both unison and often branching off in powerful harmonies, typically at the end of its musical passages. Lacking video to compare this chorus’ dancing to its song, Becker wrote that the “[the chorus members] were never quite completely still. Even in their stillest moments, they were very, very subtly rippling, so it gave the effect of seeing them underwater,” the result being “truly lovely and otherworldly” (“Two Audio Excerpts”).

For the 2006 Orestes by Euripides, Scales brought on Andrea Harmon as the choreographer for this tragedy and commissioned local singer/songwriter Sarah Dougher to write the choral music. This would be Harmon’s and Dougher’s first and last tragedy for The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, and the entire endeavor seemed to contrast from the types of tragedies produced so far without any apparent intent to do so. Indeed,

Scales appeared to have given it the same kind of treatment as the previous shows, with

99 the “production… designed after the famous ‘cyclopean’ walls and giant Lion Gate of

Bronze Age Mycenae” (their emphasis) and that the “costumes [would] not be ‘classical,’ but from the era of the Trojan War, based on the latest evidence available” (“Current”).

The chorus of Argive women, in spite of their treatment wholly ‘standardized’ by The

Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s conventions (see Figure 29) nonetheless struck Alison

Hallett, writing in her review for the Portland Mercury, as “sound[ing] at times like a lesbian folk collective,” even if the end result was to “add a tremendous amount to the production” (Hallett). These “arrangements are by turns humorous and affecting, and when combined with Andrea Harmon's silly, dance-hall choreography, they solidify the chorus' effectiveness” according to Hallett, although just what precisely the chorus ‘adds’ or why it is ‘effective’ is not explicitly written.

Despite what Hallett’s descriptions of “lesbian folk collective” and “dance-hall choreography” might indicate, the chorus of Orestes seems to continue the sort of treatment it had been given in prior productions. For Hallett, who admitted in her review entertaining the idea of leaving during intermission, Scales’ Orestes was less tragedy and more a “production… between melodrama and farce,” and the result “a surprisingly fresh, clever piece.” Hallett delighted in the “cheek and charm” of this “expertly steer[ed]” performance, which betrays the consistent approach to the Greek tragedies above. Perhaps this is due to Harmon’s and Dougher’s contributions, as opposed to the previous work of other choreographers and composers, but in spite of Scales’ commitment to ‘maintain’ certain theatrical conventions, this Orestes appeared in some ways to be an exception to the prior corpus.

100

Figure 29. Collage of the chorus of Orestes (2006). Top: the chorus and Electra (right) near Orestes (lying). Bottom: the chorus in expressive gesture. Photos courtesy of Rebecca J. Becker.

101

After the production of Aristophanes’ Peace in 2007 (as mentioned above, only the second Greek comedy produced for The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon), Scales’ final tragedy was 2008’s Antigone. This was to be Scales’ final tragedy for the company, and he collaborated with Jeffrey Levy and John Vergin as choreographer and composer, respectively. The costumes are aligned with those used in the earlier works, and a promotional website from The University of Puget Sound (where Antigone would be performed after its outdoor run at Cerf Amphitheater) repeats the intent for “costumes… designed after images found on ancient Greek vases” (“Classic”). This is one of the few male-only choruses found in extant Greek tragedy, and the only which produced by The

Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon within the scope of this inquiry.

The men of the chorus all wore yellow chitons with purple himatia and headbands

(see Figure 30), but the coryphaeus, a relatively infrequent convention for these last tragedies, was differentiated from the rest by virtue of his orange chiton. Each carried a thick, twisted walking stick, ostensibly to define them as a chorus of elders from Thebes, despite the clear youth of many of the chorus-members. These elders appeared similar to the chorus of the Medea some five years earlier: stately, prudent, and subservient to the king—in this case Creon. Yet, and in line with the text, the chorus does admire

Antigone’s piety and devotion to her brother; the chorus acknowledged the Theban princess by kneeling and raising their walking staves. None of the photographs depict this chorus as particularly emotionally expressive, though compared to the choruses of the

Bacchae or the Prometheus Bound that is not too surprising. This is a suitably contemplatively chorus, or at least it appears as such in the available evidence.

102

Figure 30. Collage of the chorus of Antigone (2008). From top, clockwise: the chorus turns to Creon, the chorus (and coryphaeus in orange), the chorus kneels before Antigone. Photos courtesy of Rebecca J. Becker.

103

This Antigone, which had been directed nearly ten years earlier in 1999, would be

Scales’ last tragedy for The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon. He and his wife, Rebecca

Becker, would move to Arkansas after Antigone, a move which Mary-Kay Gamel noted in her chapter “Greek Drama on the U.S. West Coast” for The Oxford Handbook of

Greek Drama in the Americas would leave the company “in some disarray” (Gamel 637).

Scales’ legacy of “a sustained body of Greek drama,” with its attention to the maintenance of certain theatrical conventions—including the use of the chorus—has benefitted not only the residents of Portland, but also those aspiring directors of Greek tragedy who seek another, complementary model of deploying the chorus to the one already established by Luby. Whereas Gorilla Theatre Productions experimented with various forms of the chorus, ranging between the dichotomy of Goldhill’s collective and

Rodosthenous’ individuals, Scales and The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon generally aligned with Goldhill’s recommendations for a reduced chorus.

The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s tragedies by Elizabeth Huffman: Trojan Women [2009] and Oedipus the King [2010]

With Scales’ departure from The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, Elizabeth Huffman accepted the role of Interim Artistic Director for the company and would direct their next tragedy, Trojan Women, in 2009. Huffman’s previous experiences included major positions on both the U.S. East and West Coast: as co-Artistic Director for The Beacon

Project in New York City [1985-1990], Artistic Coordinator for The Classical Theatre

Lab in Los Angeles [1997-2003], and Founder and Artistic Director for ICAP Theatre

Company also in Los Angeles [2005-2008] (“Artistic”). During her time with The 104

Classical Theatre Lab, she directed and acted in another production of The Trojan Women in a double-bill with Iphigenia in Aulis, directed by Carlos Carrasco (“Trojan/Iphigenia”).

Huffman collaborated with Susan Hurley as the musical composer and listed Olivia

Gaugain as the choreographer, and it was with Hurley that Huffman directed Trojan

Women in Portland.

Using a script from Scales, Huffman would create a chorus with much of the same sensibilities as her predecessor: a “singing, dancing chorus” of five, who wore costumes, make-up, and masks inspired by “the style depicted on ancient frescos” like those from the ancient Minoan culture on Crete (“Trojan”). However, Huffman elected to portray this chorus with two faces, “one their own… and the other a neutral mask worn on the back of their head” (see Figure 31). This was to “[allow] the women to hide the depth of their grief and pain from the conquerers [sic] who were enslaving them, much as a burka does,” and Huffman wrote that this decision “[gave] the production a fascinating look into a distant culture.”

The logic of Huffman’s choice is difficult to follow, for what is known of the

Minoan, Mycenean, or Archaic-Greek cultures does not include the use of wearing masks on the back of the head, nor is precisely how masks worn in this manner are analogous to a burqa. All the same, the effect is unnerving and powerful (see Figure 32). Other actors within the production utilized masks, variously also worn on the back of the head or on the front of the face, and while for Richard Wattenberg in his review for The Oregonian, the result was “disturbingly evocative, … one might ask whether the actors could not

105

Figure 31. The chorus of Trojan Women, in make-up recalling Minoan frescoes. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Huffman’s professional website. have achieved similar effects with their own suggestively painted faces” (‘Trojan

Women’). He also noted “a five-woman chorus singing its lines to Susan Hurley's often melancholic but appropriate original music [supporting] the production's almost overwhelmingly seamless tone of lamentation” but neglected to mention any choral dancing. In the seemingly one-note tone of this production, the chorus of Trojan Women apparently did not provide the same kind of emotional range as found in other Greek tragedies, yet its performance was well-integrated to the larger work and stands out as a powerful, ethereal exemplar of what the chorus can bring to a production.

Even with a new director, The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon produced a chorus for Trojan Women that followed several conventions set by Scales: a reduced number, singing and dancing, kept in a central area in close proximity to the audience,

106 and benefitting from special consideration provided by a choreographer and a composer.

Huffman’s unorthodox use of masks might not have been a first for the company, and rationale as to their symbolism might want for more explanation, but the result was critically praised and visually striking all the same.

Figure 32. The masks worn by the chorus on the back of the head. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Huffman’s professional website. Huffman’s next tragedy went in a drastically different direction, and one wonders if such a change was precipitated by her use of a translation from someone other than

Scales. For the 2010 season, Huffman directed a version of Oedipus The King which

“[fused] ancient Greek theatre forms with Japanese Kabuki, Noh and Butoh elements to illuminate through a unique blend of cultures the universal themes of blind fate, destiny

107 and enlightenment” (“Oedipus”). The script from Diskin Clay and Stephen Berg’s15 1988 translation for Oxford University Press does not in and of itself present the play in such a cultural fusion, so that distance from the translator could have empowered Huffman for the undertaking. Working with Larry Kominz, listed as the head of Japanese Studies at

Portland State University, as well as butoh choreographer Mizu Desierto and “Japanese dancer” Diana Hinatsu, Huffman reunited with composer Susan Hurley and brought on board Portland Taiko for musical accompaniment. With this production, Huffman also recalled the practice of an all-male cast of three actors for the main characters, an artistic decision unattested to either Scales before her or to Luby and Gorilla Theatre Productions in Kansas City. This choice further incorporated the Classic Greek and Traditional

Japanese theaters, as both used only male actors in their respective genres16.

In a publicity piece for The Oregonian, Huffman clarified the reasoning for this decision to Kate Loftesness. The idea came to Huffman, who “inherited Scales' choice of

‘Oedipus, the King’ as this summer's tragedy,” during a walk in Portland’s Japanese

Gardens, and she related “I thought, ‘What would happen if the perfection of this world were destroyed?’ Once it came into my consciousness, I just couldn't get rid of it”

(Loftesness). Huffman intended to “[maintain] all of the key tenets of classical Greek theater: an all-male cast, high kothornoi platform shoes, masks, a singing and dancing chorus and high theatricality” (emphases mine). As with the ‘maintained conventions’ listed on The Classic Theatre of Oregon’s website from above, this list does specify “a

15 Huffman’s website misattributes the script of Oedipus The King to “Disken Clay & Steven Berg.” 16 While kabuki was created by a female dancer, Izumo no Ozuni, in 1603, by 1629 women were banned from performing. For Huffman’s Oedipus The King, the role of Jocasta was played by Michael Lopez, who doubled also as Tiresias and the Shepherd, in a sort of onnagata sensibility. 108 singing and dancing chorus” as a ‘key tenet’ (irrespective of other questions concerning what tenets it excludes as well as includes in the exhaustive “all”).

Remaining at Cerf Amphitheater, this production’s set would retain several key elements from the other tragedies—modest steps leading to the palace, a central entrance, and an “orchestra” for the chorus—with colors and architecture from a traditional

Japanese aesthetic. The façade of the Theban palace is the bright red and colonnade of a torii gate. The “orchestra” is a Japanese rock garden (karesansui), where the “Peasant

Chorus” regularly stationed itself (see Figure 33). Interesting, and again without specific prompting from Clay’s and Berg’s translation, Huffman elected to divide the chorus into

‘Peasant’ and ‘Elder’ hemi-choruses, adding a single ‘Chorus Leader’ to the ‘Elder’ group. The former wore costumes of dark brown, roughspun garments and kasa hats befitting agricultural labor and were masked, and Huffman’s website lists five members to this group17. The latter had black and red costumes reminiscent of the complex sotukai attire, complete with kanmuri headwear, and stilted geta sandals (see Figure 34). In lieu of masks, this ‘Elder Chorus’ wore long, grey beards and a hint of red make-up at the eyes, a nod to the kumadori face paint used in kabuki. Huffman’s website for Oedipus

The King lists three members of the ‘Elder Chorus’ and a ‘Chorus Leader,’ whom one reviewer included in this hemi-chorus. The result is a nearly balanced ensemble with strikingly different performance styles.

17 Two of the five were double-cast as Antigone and Ismene, while the other three were listed only under ‘Peasant Chorus.’ 109

Figure 33. The ‘Peasant Chorus’ from Oedipus The King in the “Zen garden of a mythical Theban court.” Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Huffman’s professional website. Again reviewing Huffman’s take on Greek tragedy, Richard Wattenberg wrote for

The Oregonian:

Here, the chorus of four elegantly clad in red and black to match the equally

elegant set (designed by Torie Van Horne) dance and move in a dignified,

disciplined, erect manner suggestive of Noh. The choral odes and the speeches by

the Chorus Leader (Jonah Weston) all are sung or spoken in a similarly solemn

fashion. Nodding in the direction of Butoh, the supernumeraries, representing

peasants, wear brown, coarse costumes and employ a more grotesque movement

idiom. (‘Oedipus the King’)

Was the ‘Elder Chorus’ the true chorus, then, with its “disciplined” choreography and solemn singing, and the ‘Peasant Chorus’ mere “supernumeraries” with their butoh dance 110 and full-faced masks, hindering clear vocal articulation and projection? Or is the distinction one made only by the reviewer? Whatever the case, Wattenberg noted the delineation of Japanese performance style with the various social status of characters and choruses, yet the distinction was not always so clear nor consistent.

Figure 34. Detail of the ‘Elder Chorus’ from Oedipus The King, showing two of the four members. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Huffman’s professional website. As evidenced by the two hemi-choruses and further established in the principle characters, Huffman and the production team often elected for a blending of traditional and more contemporary Japanese performance arts: the masks of noh, the makeup and headdresses of kabuki, and sequences of butoh dance. In general, it appeared that those characters of higher status (e.g., Oedipus, Jocasta, the ‘Elder Chorus’) were depicted with kabuki-inspired designs like kumadori and those of a lower status (e.g., the Corinthian messenger, the Servant, the ‘Peasant Chorus’) were usually linked with noh or butoh conventions like masks and certain dances (see Figure 35). The use of noh conventions 111 was the most plastic of the three performance styles. Wattenberg complimented the

‘Elder Chorus’ for its “dignified, disciplined, erect manner” of movement and dance

“suggestive” of noh, and the pairing of this performance mode with the higher-status hemi-chorus, yet the make-up they wore (albeit subtle) stemmed from the ‘unbalanced’ kabuki tradition.

Figure 35. Detail of the ‘Peasant Chorus’ in a butoh dance sequence. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Huffman’s professional website. Likewise, the ‘Peasant Chorus’ were masked in a noh style, but their movement and dance was ‘grotesque’ in the butoh manner. Huffman’s delineation of these two groups by utilizing one Japanese style or the other, and presumably with guidance from Kominz, might have produced an “occasionally… clashing hodgepodge of Japanese performance styles” by Wattenberg’s assessment. However, the final product assumed “an otherworldly sensibility” in centering on the central character of Oedipus, and these

112 sometimes-clashing performance styles ultimately aided “to distance [the audience] from the action so [they] can see it more clearly.” While that may have been an issue for the principle characters, the hemi-choruses benefitted from more rigid alignment either with noh for the ‘Elder Chorus’ or butoh for the ‘Peasant Chorus.’

These styles were, for Huffman, a means more than an end, for her aim was “not attempting to recreate Kabuki, Noh or Greek” but rather “attempting to create [a] mythical world for this production that happens to be Thebes and happens to have this story happening to its people and this family” (Loftesness). The mythical basis for this play left Huffman “a little bit more free to interpret that world that you wish to create,” and it was with this hybridization she felt best able to tell the Oedipus myth and utilize the chorus. Huffman seemed to follow the advice offered in Graham Ley’s The

Theatricality of Greek Tragedy, that one might expect to discover more about Greek drama if one abandons certain preconceptions or analogies to it, whether she was aware of his book or not.

Despite her evident success with these two performances, and the ambitious goals shared with Kate Loftesness in her interview for Oedipus The King, Huffman left The

Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon and has listed a new artistic directorship of Chain

Reaction Theatre as “currently in the development stage” (“Artistic”). Despite the promising start, this would lead to the “disarray” which Gamel noted above. Instead of producing its own tragedy in 2011, The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon would host a touring production of Iphigenia in Tauris by the Cypriot producer and director Leonidas

Loizides and starring Athenian-born Eftychia Loizides (née Papadopoulou) in the title

113 role. Similarly, the Leonidas and Eftychia Loizides Theatre Company would return in

2012 with a touring performance of its next work, Helen, which featured Eftychia in the lead role. Both of these performances utilized a three-member chorus, unmasked, which sang and danced, but since they were developed by a non-American director, as well as for an off-Broadway opening, they lie outside the focus of this inquiry.

It seemed that 2013 would see another stop of a touring Loizides tragedy, this time of Sophocles’ Electra, but a webpage for Reed College lists that the performance, which would have run from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1, was cancelled (“Events”). The Reed

College “Events” page does not state explicitly that this performance was courtesy of the

Leonidas and Eftychia Loizides Theatre Company, but a webpage for Western

Connecticut State University notes a Sept. 24 performance of Electra directed by and starring Eftychia Loizides at its Ives Concert Hall on the Midtown Campus in Danbury

(“Loizides”). Whether that was the same production or not, the cancellation of Electra brought what appears to be the final, anticlimactic end to The Classic Greek Theatre of

Oregon. With Scales in Arkansas, Huffman with (or working on) a new company, and no further hosting of any tours, the company’s legacy was brought to an abrupt end.

What then of the choruses of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon? Without the same quantity and quality of data to be had by Gorilla Theatre Productions, it is difficult to make any sure comments. What is available, however, suggests a stable interpretation of the chorus buttressed by the long tenure and artistic vision of a director-adaptor in collaboration with a perennial team of musical composers and dance choreographers.

114

This, along with the stated intention to uphold certain conventions from Classic Greek drama, solidified and standardized the “singing, dancing chorus” featured in these tragedies, the kind of chorus akin to, and in many ways anticipating, what Goldhill advocated in How To Stage Greek Tragedy Today. These reduced choruses of The

Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon were given a collective and authoritative identity, empowered to display a variety of emotional responses, and sang original music and danced a devised choreography while also being led by either the composer or choreographer doubling as a ‘chorus leader’ or coryphaeus. While some evidence suggests that these choruses might have been subject to the same kind of geometric fixing as was frequent in the Gorilla Theatre Productions’ tragedies, the central core of Scales,

Vergin, and Becker as adaptor-director, composer, and choreographer respectively enabled not only the chorus to receive a sustained, intentional development over the company’s two decades but also the entire Greek tragedy production as well.

That is not to suggest that these choruses were completely static in their deployment. The instances when Scales worked with other contributors, for instance in the 2006 Orestes with Sarah Dougher and Andrea Harmon, brought innovation with mixed results to the chorus, as evidenced in Hallett’s review. Interim Artistic Director

Elizabeth Huffman, while in some ways beholden to Scales by the use of his script for

Trojan Women and his recommendation of directing Oedipus The King, brought her own, fresh perspective to the chorus. In partnering with composer Susan Hurley and collaborating with new choreographers Olivia Gaugain, Mizu Desierto, and Diana

Hinatsu, Huffman oversaw such unorthodox choral techniques as masks worn on the

115 back of the head and fusing the performance traditions of Classical Greek and Japanese kabuki, noh, and butoh in order to explore these tragedies (and their choruses) in an unexpected way.

116

Chapter 4. Conclusion

The premise of this thesis is that American directors of Greek tragedy would be best served in their treatment of the chorus by finding and implementing a middle path between what Simon Goldhill recommends in his book How To Direct Greek Tragedy

Today and what George Rodosthenous advocates in his book Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy. Goldhill writes that the chorus should be afforded three main points:

Rodosthenous, and later McDonald in the chapter supplied to his book, contends that the modern chorus is best treated and presented “as individual human beings” (13). What the future director of Greek tragedy would learn from the cases of Gorilla Theatre

Productions and The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, two American companies with sustained legacies of performances of Greek tragedy, is that a chorus can successfully add a memorable and powerful dramatic effect without being “reduced” in number and significance.

From the years 1986 to 2014, Gorilla Theatre Productions and The Classic Greek

Theatre of Oregon produced a combined thirty-five Greek tragedies, and under the leadership of David Brisco Luby and Keith Scales, respectively, they provided the artists

117 and audiences of their communities a wide array of Greek drama performances. If it were not enough to commend Luby and Scales—as well as other contributing directors like

Williams, Carter, and Huffman—for the sheer volume of their work, special acknowledgement should be given for their dedication to preserve and present the chorus of these plays as an integrated, integral component. This is due in no small part to the contributions of musical composers (like Conway, Southerland, and Vergin) and dance choreographers (like Borel, Shaner, and Becker) in order to deliver a “singing, dancing” chorus for each production. Despite the many “problems” which a chorus presents to a modern director, and resisting the simple solution of eliminating the chorus in part or in whole, these companies maintained and reinterpreted the special role which this seemingly outdated theatrical convention brought to the audiences of Classical Greece for modern American ones.

As evidenced generally in the Gorilla Theatre Productions’ choruses, and more regularly with those of The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, these modern directors tended towards Goldhill’s recommendations over Rodosthenous’ suggestions, and it would appear ultimately for the better. An audience brings certain preconceptions with it when attending the theater (or when engaging in any artform, more broadly), and an audience primed for watching a Greek tragedy has certain expectations of the production’s fidelity to the source material, culture, and performance conventions— inaccurate or misconceived as those expectations may be. It would seem then that included among those expectations or preconceptions a multi-member chorus which sang and danced, even if by singing it merely recited its lines in unison and by dancing it

118 ambled along vague geometric patterns or swayed in place. Gorilla Theatre Productions began by channeling the masked tradition and gradually abandoned that convention over time (at least with its tragedies).

To enumerate the cultural differences between Greece in the 5th century B.C.E. and American in the 21st century C.E. is an obvious and unproductive point, which I mention here only as it renders Rodosthenous’ justification to reinvent the chorus as separate individuals because they “no longer talk, dress and move in the same way” overly simplistic. For the corollary is true also, that modern sensibilities of the individual were not written into choral passages or action. The chorus members, be they twelve or fifteen, do not have individual names nor identities beyond a plural label, and to force the chorus through a Stanislavski-esque system of contriving given circumstances, inner monologues, or motivations is as anachronistic as draping the chorus in loose fabrics and directing it to emote at the modern audience. This is not to suggest that an individualized chorus, or even a chorus of one, cannot be successful and fully realized; Findlay’s

Antigone and the many examples of Continental directors highlighted by McDonald show this. Indeed, an academic inquiry into “the Greek chorus of one” seems a tantalizing direction for scholarship.

Similarly, another area which was neglected in this research was the choruses of the nine comedies produced by the Kansas City and Portland companies. Photographs of the Gorilla Theatre Productions’ comedies depict fancifully costumed choruses of birds, clouds, frogs, wasps, and knights, and one also wonders how Luby and the other directors might have interpreted the parabases of these works. Masks were much more regularly

119 used in comedies, too, and that whimsical element is ripe for analysis. The sizes of these choruses generally were larger than those of the tragedies, perhaps following the double- chorus convention of comedies; one wonders if Scales, who was so often employing tragic choruses between six to eight members strong, would have kept a similar number or increased (or even decreased!) it for his Birds and Peace. A companion piece to

Foley’s Re-imagining Greek Tragedy on the American Stage, Goldhill’s How To Stage

Greek Tragedy Today, or Rodosthenous’ Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy which deals with Greek comedy would be a welcomed contribution for modern scholars and directors.

What then of the American choruses of Greek tragedy? From these two companies, a general picture emerges, showing a mindfulness of traditional choral conventions and deployments, a selected fidelity to them, and a willingness to adapt or innovate within certain limits. A special consideration, too, was given to the performance space, aligning with Goldhill’s and Ley’s linking of the orchestra to the chorus. The chorus itself was rarely the ‘traditional’ size of twelve or fifteen members, on average six or seven, and sometimes as few as two or three, and usually featured a coryphaeus. The chorus performers regularly matched age and gender with the identity of the chorus in the script (e.g., young women, old men), and they wore similar-but-not-identical costumes which helped to distinguish them from the principle actors. Singing proper was relatively sparse and saved for moments of heighten emotion or dramatic tension; more often the chorus declaimed lines individually, in small assortments, as hemi-choruses, or in unison.

Dancing was understated, simple swaying in place or gesturing with the hands and arms

120 and walking around their designated performance area either in curvilinear arrangements or forming geometric shapes. The chorus would often interact with the principle actors as well as amongst itself: physically by consoling, holding, touching, and supporting; verbally by dialoguing, supplicating, reassuring, and grieving.

Future directors of Greek tragedy would do well by examining the models presented by David Brisco Luby’s Gorilla Theatre Productions and Keith Scales’ The

Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon for using the chorus. Both directors appear to anticipate

Simon Goldhill’s proposals for keeping the collective authority and imbuing an emotional range for the choral passages more than Rodosthenous’ and McDonald’s prescriptions to treat the chorus as individuals, yet they also frequently and successfully achieved a balance between the extremes of this (false) dichotomy18. While both companies are not presently active, their prolonged experience with producing Classic

Greek tragedies for a modern American audience has provided a wealth of examples to inform and advise future directors.

18 At the risk of sounding trite, such balanced approaches recall popular Classical Greek aphorisms advocating moderation, the most well-known being μηδὲν ἂγαν, “nothing in/to excess.” Perhaps it is applicable in creating tragic choruses, too. 121

Bibliography

“About.” Gorilla Theatre Productions, https://www.facebook.com/pg/Gorilla-Theatre-

Productions-119657699600/about/?ref=page_internal.

“About Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon.” Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon,

https://web.archive.org/web/20061115022134fw_/http://classicgreektheatre.tripod

.com/id17.htm.

Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two

volumes. 1. Seven Against Thebes. Translation by Herbert Weir Smyth.

Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926.

“Artistic Director.” Elizabeth Huffman, https://www.elizabethhuffman.com/artistic-

directing.

Becker, Rebecca J. “Prometheus – Live Performance – Selection from First Choral Ode –

Parados [sic] – Entrance of the Daughters of the Ocean.” 2004, mp3 file.

---. “Two Audio Excerpts with Lyrics.” Received by Josh Streeter, 22 March 2019.

Billings, Joshua, Felix Budelmann, and Fiona Macintosh, editors. Choruses, Ancient &

Modern. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.

“Cerf Amphitheatre.” Reed College,

https://www.reed.edu/facilities_services/buildings/cerf-ampitheatre.html.

Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon,

https://web.archive.org/web/20040803135448fw_/http://classicgreektheatre.tripod

.com/index.htm.

122

“Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon presents Sophocles' Antigone.” The University of

Puget Sound, 22 Sept 2008, https://www.pugetsound.edu/news-and-

events/campus-news/details/121/.

“Current Season.” The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon,

https://web.archive.org/web/20061115022152fw_/http://classicgreektheatre.tripod

.com/id19.htm.

“David Luby.” Edmodo, https://www.edmodo.com/profile/35563423.

“Elektra by Euripides.” YouTube, uploaded by afishnc, 30 June 2014,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk3nCgecg6s&index=2&list=PLkU0C0ZxZ

0hiO70qX4nEC9P5AumPkYfpg&t=0s.

“Events at Reed.” Reed College. https://www.reed.edu/events/posts/2013-14/greek-

theatre.html.

Foley, Helene P. Re-imagining Greek Tragedy on the American Stage. Berkeley,

University of California Press, 2012.

“Frank A. Theis Park.” Google Maps,

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Frank+A.+Theis+Park/@39.0403303,-

94.5814342,18a,35y,172.27h,77.72t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x87c0ef944b4c

e891:0x36b306a26accec65!8m2!3d39.040782!4d-94.5811169?hl=en.

Gamel, Mary-Kay. “Greek Drama on the U.S. West Coast.” The Oxford Handbook of

Greek Drama in the Americas, edited by Kathryn Bosher, Fiona Macintosh,

Justine McConnell, and Patrice Rankine, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015.

123

Goldhill, Simon. How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today. Chicago, University of Chicago

Press, 2007.

---. Reading Greek Tragedy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986.

“Gorilla Theatre Productions.” Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Gorilla-Theatre-

Productions-119657699600/.

“Gorilla Theatre Productions.” Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 14 May 2008,

https://web.archive.org/web/20080514034858/http://www.gorillatheatre.org/

Hall, Edith. The Theatrical Cast of Athens. New York, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Hallett, Alison. “Orestes.” Portland Mercury, 12 Oct 2006,

https://www.portlandmercury.com/theater/orestes/Content?oid=71164.

Hartigan, Karelisa. Greek Tragedy on the American Stage: Ancient Drama in the

Commercial Theater, 1882-1994. Westport, Greenwood Press, 1995.

“Hecuba - Gorilla Theatre's 2007 Production.” YouTube, uploaded by afishnc, 25 June

2011,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7xk_KbERBA&index=7&list=PLkU0C0Z

xZ0hiO70qX4nEC9P5AumPkYfpg&t=0s.

Higgins, Charlotte. “Death Becomes Her: How Juliette Binoche and Ivo Van Hove

Remade Antigone.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 18 Feb. 2015,

www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/feb/18/juliette-binoche-ivo-van-hove-antigone.

Lee, Don. “Shakespeare in the Ozarks finds artistic director, fresh vision for future.”

Lovely County Citizen, 3 June 2009,

https://www.lovelycitizen.com/story/1544600.html.

124

Ley, Graham. The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy: Playing Space and Chorus. Chicago,

University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Loftesness, Kate. “‘Oedipus’ production uses fusion of Greek and Japanese to make its

point.” The Oregonian, 5 Sept 2010,

https://www.oregonlive.com/performance/2010/09/oedipus_production_uses_fusi

on.html

“Loizides Theatre Group to stage ‘Electra’ Sept. 24 at WCSU.” Western Connecticut

State University, http://www.wcsu.edu/newsevents/ElectraatWCSU.asp.

Lucariello, Kathryn. “Bringing Baker back.” Carroll County News, 17 July 2012,

https://www.carrollconews.com/story/1871370.html.

McDonald, Marianne. “American Directorial Perspectives: Independence Day Meets

Greek Tragedy.” Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and

Directorial Visions, edited by George Rodosthenous, London, Bloomsbury

Metheun Drama, 2017.

Macintosh, Fiona, Pantelis Michelakis, Edith Hall, & Oliver Taplin, editors. Agamemnon

in Performance 458 BC to AD 2004. New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Meineck, Peter. Theatrocracy: Greek Drama, Cognition, and the Imperative for Theatre.

New York City, Routledge 2018.

“Oedipus The King.” Elizabeth Huffman, https://www.elizabethhuffman.com/oedipus-

the-king.

“The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.” Google Maps,

https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Nelson-

125

Atkins+Museum+of+Art/@39.0443333,-

94.5815497,153a,35y,52.07h/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x87c0efeadd9f2045:0

x2b569169f9c6c4c5!8m2!3d39.0449678!4d-94.5809233?hl=en

“Paseo Grad Program.” Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts, 18 May 2017,

https://www.kcpublicschools.org/cms/lib6/MO01001840/Centricity/Domain/12/P

aseo%20Grad%20Program.pdf.

“The Persians - Gorilla Theatre's 19th Greek Show.” YouTube, uploaded by afishnc, 8

July 2011,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHsyep5rIBg&index=4&list=PLkU0C0ZxZ

0hiO70qX4nEC9P5AumPkYfpg&t=0s.

Rodosthenous, George. “Introduction: The Contemporary Director in Greek Tragedy.”

Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy: Auteurship and Directorial

Visions, edited by George Rodosthenous, London, Bloomsbury Metheun Drama,

2017.

Saltz, Rachel. “Some Violence from Euripides’ Hard Rock Period.” The New York Times,

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/theater/reviews/08rock.html. Accessed 12

November 2018.

“The Seven Against Thebes.” YouTube, uploaded by afishnc, 15 July 2011,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRx0dBo00Z8.

Shurgot, Michael, editor. North American Players of Shakespeare: A Book of Interviews.

Newark, University of Delaware Press, 2007.

Silk, M.S., editor. Tragedy and the Tragic. Oxford University Press, 1996.

126

“Suppliant Maidens - opening (partial).” YouTube, uploaded by afishnc, 1 July 2012,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR4uDndwgf0&index=9&list=PLkU0C0ZxZ

0hiO70qX4nEC9P5AumPkYfpg&t=0s.

“Trojan Women” Elizabeth Huffman, https://www.elizabethhuffman.com/the-trojan-

women.

“Trojan Women/Iphignia [sic] in Aulis” Elizabeth Huffman,

https://www.elizabethhuffman.com/twiphighenia-in-aulis.

Wattenberg, Richard. “Review: Director Elizabeth Huffman offers engaging ‘Trojan

Women.’” The Oregonian, 13 Sept 2009,

https://www.oregonlive.com/performance/2009/09/review_director_elizabeth_huf

f.html.

---. “Theater review: Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon's 'Oedipus the King' fuses East,

West.” The Oregonian, 12 Sept 2010,

https://www.oregonlive.com/performance/2010/09/theater_review_classic_greek_

t.html.

Wiles, David. Greek Theatre Performance. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,

2000.

---. Tragedy in Athens. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Wilson, Peter. The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia. Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 2003.

127

Appendix A. Gorilla Theatre Productions’ Greek Tragedies

Year: 1991 Playwright: Euripides Title: Medea Director: ? Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: ? Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Year: 1993 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Antigone Director: Beth Marshall Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: ? Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Year: 1994 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Oedipus Rex Director: Kate Sinnett Beaver Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: ? Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Year: 1995 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Oedipus at Colonus Director: Kate Sinnett Beaver Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: Rick Gentry Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

128

Year: 1997 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: Prometheus Bound Director: David Brisco Luby Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: Debbie Borel Composer: Joey Myers Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Year: 1999 Playwright: Euripides Title: The Bacchae Director: David Brisco Luby Adaptor/Translator: McKee Lee? Choreographer: Debbie Borel Composer: Kevin Elmore Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Year: 2000 Playwright: Euripides Title: Helen Director: David Brisco Luby Adaptor/Translator: Sam Hughes Choreographer: Debbie Borel Composer: Kevin Elmore Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Year: 2001 Playwright: Euripides Title: The Trojan Women Director: David Brisco Luby Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: Sally Crawford Composer: Alonzo Conway Venue: Wheeler Amphitheater, Theis Park

Year: 2003 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: Agamemnon Director: James Dean Carter Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: Daniel Doss Venue: Wheeler Amphitheater, Theis Park 129

Year: 2004 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: The Libation Bearers Director: James Dean Carter Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: Daniel Doss Venue: Wheeler Amphitheater, Theis Park

Year: 2005 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: The Eumenides Director: James Dean Carter Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: ? Venue: Wheeler Amphitheater, Theis Park

Year: 2007 Playwright: Euripides Title: Hecuba Director: Barbara ___? Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: ? Venue: Wheeler Amphitheater, Theis Park

Year: 2010 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: The Persians Director: David Brisco Luby Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: Mark Southerland Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Year: 2011 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: The Seven Against Thebes Director: Ernest Williams Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: Mark Southerland Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 130

Year: 2012 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: The Suppliant Maidens Director: David Brisco Luby Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: Latra Wilson Composer: Beau Bledsoe Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Year: 2014 Playwright: Euripides Title: Elektra Director: James Dean Carter Adaptor/Translator: James Dean Carter Choreographer: ? Composer: Pat Conway Venue: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

NB: Gorilla Theatre Productions performed seven Greek comedies of Aristophanes: Lysistrata [1992], The Poet & The Women [1996], The Frogs [1998], The Clouds [2002], The Wasps [2006], The Birds [2009], and The Knights [2013].

131

Appendix B. The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon’s Greek Tragedies

Year: 1986 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Oedipus Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Peter Montgomery Choreographer: Susan Evans Composer: Susan Evans Venue: Northwest Service Center Auditorium

Year: 1993 Playwright: Euripides Title: Iphigenia in Aulis Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Joan Gunness Composer: ? Venue: “Outdoor amphitheatre” Reed College

Year: 1994 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: Agamemnon Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Peter Montgomery Choreographer: Rebecca Becker Composer: Phil Neumann and John Vergin Venue: Lincoln Hall Auditorium

Year: 1995 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: Libation Bearers Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Rebecca Becker Composer: John Vergin Venue: Cerf Amphitheater; Lincoln Hall Auditorium

132

Year: 1996 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: The Furies Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales and Peter Montgomery Choreographer: Rebecca Becker Composer: John Vergin Venue: Lincoln Hall Auditorium

Year: 1997 Playwright: Euripides Title: Iphigenia in the Temple of the Taurians Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales and Peter Montgomery Choreographer: Rebecca Becker Composer: John Vergin Venue: Cerf Amphitheater

Year: 1998 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Oedipus Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Sandy Shaner Composer: John Vergin Venue: Cerf Amphitheater

Year: 1999 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Antigone Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales and Peter Montgomery Choreographer: Rebecca Becker Composer: John Vergin Venue: Cerf Amphitheater

Year: 2000 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Oedipus at Colonus Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Rebecca Becker Composer: John Vergin Venue: Cerf Amphitheater 133

Year: 2001 Playwright: Euripides Title: Bacchae Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Sandy Shaner Composer: John Vergin Venue: Cerf Amphitheater

Year: 2003 Playwright: Euripides Title: Medea Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Rebecca Becker Composer: Rebecca Becker Venue: Cerf Amphitheater; Lincoln Concert & Recital Halls

Year: 2004 Playwright: Aeschylus Title: Prometheus Bound Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Rebecca Becker Composer: Rebecca Becker Venue: Cerf Amphitheater; Lincoln Recital Halls

Year: 2005 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Alcestis Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Christine Calfas Composer: Rebecca Becker Venue: ?

Year: 2006 Playwright: Euripides Title: Orestes Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Andrea Harmon Composer: Sarah Dougher Venue: Cerf Amphitheater; Portland’s “West End” 134

Year: 2008 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Antigone Director: Keith Scales Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Jeffrey Levy Composer: John Vergin Venue: Schneebeck Concert Hall, University of Puget Sound

Year: 2009 Playwright: Euripides Title: Trojan Women Director: Elizabeth Huffman Adaptor/Translator: Keith Scales Choreographer: Stephanie Seaman Composer: Susan Hurley Venue: Cerf Amphitheater

Year: 2010 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Oedipus the King Director: Elizabeth Huffman Adaptor/Translator: Diskin Clay and Stephen Berg Choreographer: Diana Hinatsu and Mizu Desierto Composer: Susan Hurley Venue: Cerf Amphitheater

Year: 2011 Playwright: Euripides Title: Iphigenia in Tauris* Director: Leonidas Loizides Adaptor/Translator: Louis Markos Choreographer: ? Composer: Neophytos Stratis Venue: Cerf Amphitheater

Year: 2012 Playwright: Euripides Title: Helen* Director: Eftychia Loizides Adaptor/Translator: Louis Markos Choreographer: ? Composer: ? Venue: Cerf Amphitheater 135

Year: 2013 Playwright: Sophocles Title: Electra** Director: ? Adaptor/Translator: ? Choreographer: ? Composer: ? Venue: Cerf Amphitheater

* Touring productions by the Leonidas and Eftychia Loizides Theatre Company hosted by The Classical Greek Theatre of Oregon

** Production cancelled before performance. Also a touring production by Leonidas and Eftychia Loizides Theatre Company?

NB: The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon produced two Greek Comedies of Aristophanes: Birds [2002] and Peace [2007]. Both were directed and translated by artistic director Keith Scales.

136