IWU Classics Collaborates with Theatre to Produce a Greek Chorus: SULTAN (con't.)

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Each group was assigned the task of researching and creating either costumes, music, or properties, and were given lines to memorize. The groups each elected a choregos to produce and direct their activities. We set a two-week rehearsal schedule and a performance date in mid October. During class we worked through the Oresteia as a whole and focused on a literary and cultural study of the texts. Curt's group began designing, building, and decorating the masks, formed from life-casts of the student's faces.

We tried to be as authentic as possible, although we committed the ultimate hubris by allowing women to participate. Due to weather, we practiced and performed indoors. We decided to go for half-masks instead of full, but mask design was based on the description of the Furies in the text, Greek vase paintings and Roman mosaics. Sara created the choreography during rehearsal, and I led the students through the metrical analysis of the Greek text, which they transferred to Fagles' English translation. We all worked together to set the words to music based on a fragment from Euripides' Orestes in the corpus of ancient Greek musical papyri, and arranged for a wind player and some percussionists to accompany the choral dance. We even chose a chorus leader who would sing her verse in Greek. Megan Keach, a senior theatre major, did an amazing job learning the Greek in meter. Her solo dance moves were based, in part, on the Parthenon sculptures. The costume group decided on basic black and muslin skirts covered with bloody handprints.

The Furies

They were a very scary group of Furies in the end. The student who played Orestes said it really "freaked him out" when the chorus danced close to him and he was glad that he was wearing a mask, as he clung to the statue of Athena. Although we were not aiming for a polished final product (the process was our focus), we invited a few people to our final performance. Despite a couple of dropped lines and forgotten dance steps, the performance was amazing. Two VIPs turned up: IWU's new President, Richard Wilson, and Tim Obermiller, the Editor of the IWU Alumni Magazine. Both were awed by the performance and participated actively in the talk-back; Tim determined to do a big spread on the chorus and the Greek and Roman Studies Program for the next issue of the Magazine, which will come out in January. The chorus is also on the IWU webpage, and the Admissions Office plans to add a clip from the DVD that we made of the performance to their promotional video. So Greek and Roman Studies at IWU received a good deal of mileage out of the project!

About half of the students in our production were theatre and/or music majors or minors, but many were not. Some were Greek & Roman Studies minors, but others were from biology, math, computer science and other fields; most had never done anything like this before. On the evaluation form that I gave to my students after the project, they wrote comments such as: "This project was phenomenal," "I had a thrilling experience," and "This experience changed my life."

As for me, ditto. Not only did my understanding and appreciation of the performance practice of Greek drama deepen, but I grew to know myself and my students much better. I can't imagine ever teaching Greek drama again without such a hands-on project. Luckily, Sara and Curt feel the same way, so we are planning for next time!

If anyone is interested in planning a similar collaborative project, I'll be happy to provide more information.

The Performance

The Principals