Seven in the Chorus, No Rake, No Wings
A school is staging a 35-minute adaptation of Antigone in the main hall at 3 p.m. on a Saturday. The stage is a raised platform 7 m wide and 5 m deep behind a proscenium opening 6 m wide, with only 1.2 m of wing space each side, no fly tower, no blackout (tall windows run along one wall), and 140 chairs on a flat, unraked floor. From about the third row back, anything below 80 cm from the stage floor is invisible, and rows eight to twelve lose the downstage floor behind other people's heads. The only entrances are a 1.5 m gap upstage centre in the back wall and the two narrow wings. The director has cast a chorus of seven students aged 14 to 16 and wants them onstage for the whole play to keep pressure on Creon. Lighting is six white fresnels on a single bar. Rehearsals happen in the same hall, two afternoons a week.
1. Where do you place the seven chorus members for most of the performance, and how do you solve the sightline problem? Justify with reference to levels, spacing and focus.
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The flat floor, not the stage, is the real constraint. With 140 unraked chairs, sightlines rise roughly 12 cm per row, so the first rows lose the floor and later rows lose the downstage area behind heads. The practical rule that follows: no important action at floor level, and no chorus member standing directly upstage of a speaking actor within 2 m.
Placement. Build a chorus wall in the two downstage corners on rostra at 20 cm and 40 cm, angled inwards about 30 degrees. Downstage corners are the only points visible from every seat on a flat floor, and the angle means each body is partly open to the audience rather than in profile. Split 3 and 3 on the rostra with the seventh as a mobile leader who steps forward for the odes and returns.
Levels. A crouching chorus at floor level simply disappears; on 40 cm they read even when seated. Keep all heads above about 1.5 m when still.
Focus. Light the chorus slightly dimmer than the principals and keep them still while Creon speaks; seven moving bodies in a 6 m opening will pull focus whatever the blocking. Accept that anything below 80 cm upstage centre is lost, and therefore never put a floor-level moment there.
2. The director insists the chorus stay onstage throughout. Argue for or against keeping them visible during Creon's private scene with Haemon, and describe what you would do instead if you reject full visibility.
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Keeping them physically present is right; keeping them equally visible is wrong. Their function is surveillance and social pressure, and that function is strongest precisely when Creon believes he is speaking privately. Remove them and you lose the play's central irony and spend time on exits that the 1.2 m wings cannot accommodate seven bodies for anyway.
But full, lit visibility during the Haemon scene creates two problems: the audience watches the reaction rather than the argument, and the chorus becomes a row of nodding heads competing with a two-hander.
Solution: presence without parity.
- Cluster the chorus upstage left on the 40 cm rostrum, backs and profiles to the audience, in a tight group rather than a line.
- Take them out of the general wash; let them sit in the edge of the beam, so faces are readable only when they turn.
- Allow one chorus member, the leader, to come downstage right and mirror Haemon's posture during his longest speech, then withdraw.
- Give them one unison sound (a single breath, a foot shift) at the moment Creon wins the argument, so their presence registers as a judgement rather than decoration.
This preserves the director's idea while protecting the scene's focus, which is what the exam rewards: a justified staging choice, not obedience to a note.