The Greeks Figured It All Out
I’m often asked about why we as a collective focus on hip hop.
Hip hop is new, but theater is really old. Usually I talk about how theater originally started as stories told in spoken word over instruments. The original plays were hip hop plays, just in Greek. We are not breaking from traditional theater with our hip hop focus, but instead, returning to the roots.
Classical Theater
I didn’t make any other connections with the Ancient Greeks, but then the other day I was reading a book on theater history and came upon the following passage:
“The dithyrambs, songs honoring the god Dionysius, were, according to Aristotle, the precursors of classical Greek tragedy, and although these became literary compositions as time passed, they began as improvised ecstatic expressions by the poet-actor who led the dithyrambic chorus, speaking the lines inspired as the god entered his body.”
— Theatre: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions Book 402) by Marvin Carlson
The Greek Chorus was Hip Hop
I hope you are realizing the same thing now that I was then – at least I think you should.
It’s not just hip hop as a form that was alive way back then – even if the content of the modern form arose from a specific set of cultural conditions. I can’t think of a better description of today’s freestyle than “improvised ecstatic expressions”.
The next time you watch two rappers battle it out, imagine you are in the Lyceum in class with Aristotle, as he demonstrates in The Poetics.