When teaching plays, I can generally find a handful of students who are very willing to read parts, though I usually have to wait rather patiently to find enough students to read all the parts (and patience is not a strong suit of mine). But, of course, I want all students to participate.
I’ve found that Greek tragedies provide a good opportunity for participation. They feature a number of characters – and always have a chorus. Everyone can be in the chorus. There are some ways to approach Greek tragedies that could lead to some discussion of how the plays were themselves performed.
First, it might be useful to talk about the fact that, in ancient times, the individual characters of the play were originally performed by three actors who wore different masks. This means that actors would have played more than one role, since most of the plays have more than three characters – Antigone has seven characters and Oedipus Rex has eight, plus various guards and children. In an effort to think about how the actors might indicate the different roles, it might be useful, then, to have the students bring in props – or better yet, make masks – that signal each character. Continue reading “The Greek Chorus: Or, You Will All Have to Participate”