Let's Bring Back the Ancient Greek Chorus. Maybe.
The practice has gone out of fashion, but there was a time – specifically in the days of ancient Greece – when no self-respecting playwright put on a production without a prominent place for the Chorus.
This group of performers would stand behind the main action of the play and variously chant, dance, act out, or presumably make one face or another in reaction to the goings-on of the actors proper.
An endless series of reaction shots as in the movies is one way to think about it; a passel of grade school girls commenting on a schoolmate is another.
It was a surprisingly large group, numbering up to fifty people, which seems like an awfully large number of spots to fill… until you recall just how widespread and deep the human impulse is to comment on the action.
Any occasion will do it turns out. It is almost as if the point isn’t this thing that happened, but the opportunity to say something about it.
You may find talented amateurs in this field on any street corner or under the lights at any local bar and grill. There is little in the way of human action that doesn’t seem to trigger their observations and then trigger them again. We truly are a blessed people in this regard.
The point being that we should spare no pity for the casting director in these ancient productions who more likely had the problem of turning applicants away.
You can, with a little imagination, hear them grouse, these ones that were turned away, saying things like “I have a lot of interesting comments, if they had only given me the chance,” and “he never even let me show him my shocked face.”
It is a tough situation, and I suppose it is entirely possible that these fine people get together and turn themselves into a Chorus of their own and start commenting on the author, the director, the actors, even the Chorus that in fact does make it up on stage.
As to this actual Chorus, the ones who survived the audition process, they would act in unison, representing the collective judgment of society.
It is telling that they don’t seem to be chatting among themselves, this one fellow with one point of view, this other gal with another, and a third saying that they both make good points.
No, it is pretty clear that like iron filings pulled towards one pole of a magnet or other — I forget which one, which pole that is — it is pretty clear that their Individual Big Opinions will start to cluster around One Unified Big Opinion, and that it is likely not a generous one.
You do not get the sense as the heroes of the play act out their lines that any Chorus ever gathered says things like, “great line,” or “that’s a good one,” upon the utterance of some eternal truth or other.
“Never thought of it that way,” are words never chanted by any Chorus that I have ever heard of, nor even simple pleasantries such as “nice night for it, isn’t it?”
No, they are there mainly to shake their heads, wail a bit, compress their lips in a disapproving manner, and give the impression of people looking forward to a pleasing future where they say “I told you so,” to anyone who will listen.
History isn’t clear on an important point: at the end of the performance, do the members of the chorus stick with it?
In other words, having brought their critical game up to the professional level, do they determine that you can’t get too much of a good thing, and then simply follow after the actors through their everyday life, continuing with the commentary?
It is not only Greek heroes who are undone by the fashionings of fate that could use a little commentary from the peanut gallery. We all could.
In their most ordinary form, right off the showroom floor so to speak, we can think of this standard issue Chorus following us around as comprised of several copies of your Aunt Agatha — the most severe of her generation of aunts in your family — your grade school principal, the three least forgiving of the librarians manning the Fines and Penalties Desk at the local library, several members of The Harper Valley PTA, a bevy of mothers-in-law gathered more or less at random off the street, and, in short, anyone with an observant eye and a talent for disapproval.
There is no shortage in any year of the average American man’s life of events that call for a stern finger-shaking and a doleful shake of the head and a barely audible tsk-tsk.
Whenever excessive pride, hypocrisy, flagrant self-deception, and, ironically, an apparently irresistible urge to comment upon other people’s mistakes takes hold, the Chorus would spring into action with some well-chosen groaning and swaying action.
They might as one roll their eyes, or, rather theatrically, (1) put the back of their hands to their foreheads or (2), slap those same foreheads with an open palm, the universal signal of “I can’t believe someone could be so dumb!”
They will be there as you buy your first house.
While not widely known as a handyman type – in truth you’re not exactly sure which is a wrench and which is a hammer, and if one or the other were in your hand, which end should be held – you figure that it can’t be that hard to figure out.
That’s what makes this fixer-upper, as the real estate listing has it, the perfect house for you. Deep in discussions with the realtor, you at first don’t notice the Chorus behind you, swaying mournfully and looking at you aghast. They may or may not be wearing animal masks.
“Don’t be a fool, my friend, don’t be a fool! What are you thinking? They are telling you that it is a crap house! What else would fixer-upper possibly mean? They probably have to tell you for them to stay out of jail! Don’t buy it! Don’t buy it!”
Well, of course you do buy it, and have many centuries of bills afterwards to look back on what your Chorus has said at the time.
Other life events may be less dramatic, but no less deserving of commentary.
The words “you’re going out in that?” will often be uttered in a mournful manner while observing the hero put the finishing touches on his outfit for the evening, and at certain junctures in his education will find reason to chant sadly in the background, “You’re going to major in what? What do you think that is going to do for you?”
They will find cause for observations at key moments in your life’s adventure, such as the time, having warned all observers on the 4th of July of the awesome power of this one firecracker you are about to set off, so powerful that you have cleared a space at the bottom of the back yard to minimize the damage, and now, having lit it, are sprinting back up to your observation post, only to find upon closer inspection that you have left the match back there but are carrying the lit firecracker in your hand – right there, see it? Right there in your hand – well that is an occasion for the Chorus to mention that you’re supposed to leave the firecracker but take the match and not the other way around.
It is unclear from the historical record just how musical these Choruses are, but it is not beyond conjecture that your personal Chorus should observe your weight loss program and feel drawn to comment, with one of them pulling out a harmonica, and the others shifting into a traditional blues rendering:
Bathroom Scale Blues
Po’ boy, he gettin’ heavy, gettin’ heavy as a stone
Po’ boy, he gettin’ heavy, gettin’ heavy as a stone
Fool boy, he should know better, got to leave that beer alone.
Got to leave that beer alone, fool boy,
Got to leave that beer alone,
It’s that beer that makes you heavy, makes you heavy as a stone.
‘Don’t take my beer away,’ he says, and almost starts to cry,
‘Don’t take my beer away,’ he says, and almost start to cry,
But the numbers on the scale near reach up to the sky.
He jump up on the scales, the scales do weep and moan,
He jump up on the scales, the scales do weep and moan,
They cry ’oh Lord have mercy, why can’t he leave us alone?’
Got to leave that beer alone, fool boy,
Got to leave that beer alone,
It’s that beer that makes you heavy, makes you heavy as a stone.
And so on.
This is America though, this is capitalism, and the customer rules, so it wouldn’t be long before Custom Choruses hit the market, which allow you to carefully calibrate their reaction to this or that piece of nonsense you’ve gotten up to.
It is unlikely that your average consumer is going to modify the Chorus package so that it is even more disapproving.
Almost certainly he will turn the dials as far to the left as possible until they are free-spinning in their groove, lowering the judgementalism to the point where it can be said to not really exist at all.
At the point of your most flagrant errors, your most groaning failures of judgment, these fine people, The Custom Chorus, are always looking the other way, or talking about something else altogether.
They are adept at being out of the room or down the hall at these junctures and look blandly on at your most spectacular disasters, and chat immediately about the local baseball team or the state of the stock market.
As your errors take hold and race through the kindling of your various mis-estimations, lazy conclusions, faulty reasonings, and rabid self-approval, until your life and reputation flame up into a blaze that can be seen for miles around, they are apt to be murmuring among themselves about the latest movie at the theater complex, or the new restaurant across town.
They might at the most look your way and say, “did you say something?” but that is about it. This epic and colorful downfall not only is removed from the balance sheet, it never makes it onto the balance sheet in the first place.
They generally give the impression of people whose position is that it’s your life, but don’t come crying to them when it all falls apart.
Which is fair enough.
The best market forecasts predict that this will be a popular item.
