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reverse and maintain their original position. Still advocating compliance with
Law, they emerge on the side of Good. Finally, their age no longer contributes
to frailty, but to wisdom.
Thus the chorus may personify, clarify, magnify, subdue, transpose, inter-
pret, retell, frame, or give perspective to the narrative action. Chorus members
may fill in “holes” in the narrative, offer commentary, foreshadow the action,
and reflect the action by re-enacting it in other modalities. The chorus may act
as an intervening layer that protects the audience from incidents too horrifying
to directly experience, such as the multiple deaths in
Antigone
(Friedlander &
Strohecker 1995). In that awful tale, the chorus are the only survivors.
Tired of Giving In: An initial prototype
United States history offers a latter-day Antigone in the figure of Rosa Parks,
a Black woman who refused to give her seat to a White man on a segregated
public bus.
1
The time was 1955, the place was Montgomery, Alabama, and the
event became a milestone in the American Civil Rights Movement.
One widely distributed textbook version of this story describes Parks, who
was41yearsoldatthetime,asanagingwomanwhowassotiredaftera
long day at work that she didn't want to give up her seat (Kohl 1995; Mayer
1995). This telling neutralizes her act of civil disobedience. Parks has addressed
the misrepresentation by asserting, “The only tired I was, was tired of giving
in” (Parks & Haskins). We emphasize her statement through the title of our
retelling,
Tired of Giving In
(TOGI) (Brooks 1996; Strohecker 1996; Strohecker
1997 a, b).
Some versions of the story do acknowledge Parks for her courageous act
but over-emphasize its individual nature. Many members of Montgomery's
Black community had experienced discrimination, particularly on public
transportation, and many had resisted in one way or another. The commu-
nity was well organized through a network of churches and the efforts of ded-
icated activists. By 1955, members of the NAACP and other local groups were
waiting for a legal case that could serve as a test of the segregation laws.
2
They
nearly found one several months before the Parks incident, when a teenaged
girl named Claudette Colvin was arrested for the same offense. However, be-
cause Colvin had resisted the police and was expecting a child out of wedlock,
community strategists felt that her case would not be able to withstand the
publicity associated with a trial of such importance (Blackside 1987; Robinson
1987). They decided to wait.
