Modern audiences see the chorus as an emblematic yet static element of ancient Greek drama, whose reflective songs puncture the action. This is the first book to look beyond these odes to the group's complex and varied roles as actors and physical performers. It argues that the chorus' flexibility and interactive nature has been occluded by the desire from Aristotle onwards to assign the group a single formal role. It presents four choreographies that ancient playwrights employed across tragedy, satyr play, and comedy: fragmentation, augmentation, interruption, and interactivity. By illustrating how the chorus was split, augmented, interrupted, and placed in dialogue, this book shows how dramatists experimented with the chorus' configuration and continual presence. The multiple self-reflexive ways in which ancient dramatists staged the group confirms that the chorus was not only a nimble dramatic instrument, but also a laboratory for experimenting with a range of dramatic possibilities.

‘An impressively researched work of scholarship, displaying deep familiarity with primary texts and mastery over an extensive bibliography, this book presents itself as a groundbreaking study of the chorus in Greek tragedy, one that provides ‘an alternative framework for understanding this complex collectivity’.’

Rush Rehm Source: Arion

‘A welcome reevaluation of the tragic chorus and a compelling argument that the playwrights deployed it in various ways and developed its possibilities throughout the classical period. … Recommended.’

P. E. Ojennus Source: Choice