Bakkhai Variations:
Villanova Theatre
Production History
First is a four-section narrative of the Bakkhai’s history. This play has been produced hundreds upon hundreds of times in its 24-century lineage, so the dramaturg focused on attempts to harness this story for transformation — be it for the theatrical arts or the world at large. Below that is a short breakdown of major productions I noted, not all of which are in the narrative. In time, some of these reviews will be annotated by the dramaturg.
Greeks & Romans
The last of the great Attic Greek tragedians, Euripides, died in 406 BCE. At next year’s City Dionysia, a posthumous entry in Euripides’ name featured what has now come to be known as one of his most famous plays: Bakkhai (also spelled Bacchae, Bakchai, and roughly three other similar iterations). As part of the standard tetralogy of three tragedies and a satyr play, the tragic introspection of Dionysos’ awesome power and the costs of eschewing our impulses greatly moved the Athenian audience. Despite our love for him today, Euripides tended to do very poorly in the City Dionysia; Sophocles and Aeschylus traded victories for decades. With Bakkhai headlining, though, alongside another well-known extant tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis, Euripides won one of his few first place finishes the year after his passing.
A recovered piece of pottery depicting the death of Pentheus dated to before the Bakkhai’s premiere (c.450-425 BCE).
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Once the City Dionysia faded away as a practice, versions of Euripides’ script floated around the Greek and then Roman Empire for centuries. The more gentle, animistic take on Bacchus in Roman cosmology made the Bakkhai almost incongruous with their relationship to the god of wine and revelry. As a result, there is no record of its reproduction during these times. Regardless, it was enjoyed by some other storytellers, not least of which was Ovid who recounts the narrative as Pentheus’ tragedy above all. He viscerally describes Pentheus’ death in Metamorphoses (c.8 CE).
Nietzsche & Modern Reproductions
Friedrich Nietzsche (left) and Gilbert Murray (right) — a masterclass in powerful mustaches.
After the Roman Empire, Euripides’ version mostly faded into obscurity for some time. A Greek transcript was found in the remains of Constantinople’s library after it was sacked in 1204 CE, but there is no evidence to suggest it was more than an archival copy. Fast forward to the 19th century when philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used the Bakkhai and other Greek tragedies as an exemplar for his theories in The Birth of Tragedy (1872). For more on those theories and their impact on how we still perform Greek Tragedy to this day, visit the Nietzsche & Tragedy research page on this website. Striving to recapture the bodily instincts of Dionysian ritual alongside Apollonian thought on stage not only changed the theatrical world’s perception of plays like the Bakkhai but certainly in part inspired some avant-garde movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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In 1908, Famous lover of ancient theatre Gilbert Murray penned a translation for William Poel to direct at the Royal Court Theatre in London, the first performance of the Bakkhai in English. The translation would later be published in 1911 and would serve as the standard English rendering of the Bakkhai for decades after. Murray wanted to find the Greek connection between mind and soul Nietzsche in this production, but he butted heads with Poel (read details about that in Fiona Macintosh’s essay “From the Court to the National: The Theatrical Legacy of Gilbert Murray's Bacchae”).
Despite this strife, Murray and Poel’s endeavor brought Euripides' masterpiece into the theatrical world as a mainstay of the Ancient Greek repertoire. According to the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), from 1910-1965, there would be roughly 1-3 productions a year in notable playhouses across England and the United States as well as Greece (obviously), Italy, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Japan. Murray’s production also inspired new performance stylings to tackle the Bakkhai. Examples include the Italian opera Le Baccanti by Ettore Romagnoli (1912) and a music-drama called Revelation in the Courthouse Park by Harry Partch (1961).
Dionysus in ‘69 and the new Bakkhai Renaissance
Richard Schechner's company, the Performance Group, created a site-specific adaptation of the Bakkhai “in a converted garage on Wooster Street” in 1968 New York City (Roger Greenspun’s New York Times review of the 1970 film screening). While Murray strove to capture the Greek union of thought and feeling, Schechner’s approach indulged in the purely instinctual. Greenspun describes a troupe of actors who “would by turns chant, or dance, make love, plot murder, whisper to the audience, or among themselves hold group therapy sessions.” After descending into a full-on orgy, the production would famously stir up a revolutionary fervor in the audience, throw the garage doors open, and take to the streets. This began a long and fruitful lineage of using the Bakkhai to generate social transformation. While artists have looked to this story for different purposes before and since Schechner’s 1968-69 production, this history will focus on renderings that have a similar intent to Dionysus in ‘69 going forward.
Screenshot from the Brian de Palma filming of Dionysus in ‘69 (1970)
Into the 1970s and through the ‘90s, more adherent translations did increase in theatrical visibility and broaden their geographical reach to countries like Austria, Turkey, Israel, Australia, and others, but the true explosion was in more loose adaptations. The two most prominent and revolutionary versions we will be looking at are Wole Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite (1973) and A Mouthful of Birds by Caryl Churchill and David Lan (1986). The former is much closer to the original than the latter, but both typify the ways in which this storyline can be used to express meaningful analyses of communal and personal power.
Robert Baker-White in his essay “The Politics of Ritual in Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides” details the “‘alternative’ theatrical strategies, which range from traditional African ritual to contemporary Western popular performance genres” Soyinka employs in writing his play. The Nigerian playwright saw a strong connection between Bacchanalian ritual and other forms of social subversion. In the introduction to A Communion Rite, Soyinka describes worship of deities like Dionysos as “the natural, historic process by which populist movements (religious or political) identify themselves with mythical heroes at critical moments of social upheaval … it is an outline for action, especially for groups within society who have experienced loss and deprivation” (vi-vii). This broadening of Dionysian ritual finds specificity in Soyinka’s cultural context and has inspired reproduction since its 1973 debut in England, Nigeria, and the United States.
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A Mouthful of Birds written by Caryl Churchill in collaboration with David Lan follows a deeply episodic structure. While some scenes draw more from the themes of Euripides’ tragedy than the content, the very opening episode is simply called “Dionysus Dances” and includes only one stage direction: “He is played by a man. He wears a white petticoat” (2). Aleksandra KamiÅ„ska in “Politicising Euripides: A Mouthful of Birds by Caryl Churchill and David Lan” concisely summarizes the clear political overtones of the play that contemporize this adaptation: “the empowerment of women, postcolonialism and the politics of gender” (24). The primary connective tissue between the play’s episodes to each other and the Bakkhai comes in the sequence of ‘Possession’ scenes in which different people become overtaken by the spirits of Euripides’ characters. These moments uproot these otherwise modern figures and connect their suffering to that of the Bakkhai’s victims.
Other instances exist of adapting this play for political means, including The Erpingham Camp by Joe Orton (1966), Tadashi Suzuki’s directorial adaptation (1982), and Bacchae 2.1 by Charles Mee (1993).
The Bakkhai Today
Turning into the 21st century a plethora of both performance translations and adaptations emerge. Two quite recent adaptations embody the potency this story has in our present moment. Madeleine George wrote Hurricane Diane for a 2019 production at New York Theatre Workshop. Directed by Leigh Silverman and starring acclaimed non-binary performer Becca Blackwell, this dissection of gender, class, and sexuality serves as a rallying cry for transformative environmental action. Blackwell plays an androgynously butch Dionysos, named Diane, who seduces four New Jersey housewives to abandon their sexual inhibitions and join the climate revolution. Sara Holdren of the Vulture discusses how “the play’s casual realism will eventually split apart, shattered into pieces as the story’s sense of time accelerates and expands, hurtling swiftly towards the eco-apocalypse” (review link). The delicate balance between comedy and social commentary in Hurricane Diane mirrors other attempts that weave raucousness with tragedy or ritual with impulse.
Gaga serving a monologue amidst the pastoral bash in Girls
Yale Rep collaborated with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for the 2019 premiere of his play Girls. Set in a midwestern nature preserve, what New York Times’ Ben Brantley describes as “a big, boozy bash” unfolds (review link). In this adaptation, the Dionysos equivalent, Deon, played by Nicholas L. Ashe, starts the festivities by promising the eponymous girls a celebration unlike any other. Juxtaposing club beats with pastoral beauty presents another breathtaking encapsulation of a contemporary Dionysian aesthetic. The tension arises when one of the girl’s family members arrive to break up the fun. The new Agave, Gaga, is running from her father and husband but the greatest threat comes from her son Theo, the Pentheus equivalent who Brantley calls a “a Second Amendment fanatic and white male
supremacist (of shaky masculinity, of course), who streams his wisdom via live videocasts.” As the play oscillates between a woodland club show and Euripidean tragedy, the catharsis arrives when the two fully collide. The dramaturg has a rehearsal copy of the script, if anyone is interested in reading it please contact them.
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While there are plenty more adaptations and translations to delve into, this historical narrative will follow the trajectory of two more pieces: Anne Carson’s script and Anne Bogart’s direction of Aaron Poochigian’s translation. Bogart’s SITI Company, which she founded with the aforementioned Tadashi Suzuki, took on Euripides’ play in a new production that premiered at BAM in 2018. SITI veteran Ellen Lauren embodies a Dionysus “with moussed hair and red leather pants, a female incarnation or possibly a nonbinary one” (Alexis Soloski, “Review: In This Entertaining ‘Bacchae,’ Dionysus Is a Nasty Woman”). A mixed gender chorus of all races and sizes don skirts and blazers, imagining gender presentation as more of a grab bag than a set social script. “Whether Dionysus is male or female or nonbinary,” Soloski summarizes, “the play is still about men freaking out when they discover that women can’t be controlled, that they can’t be made to stay at home, that they might have voices and desires and weaponry all their own. That they might fight back.” Inspiring runs at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles in 2018 and later the Guthrie in 2020, this production captured the imaginations of many audience members looking for a take that incorporated the recent gender revolution into its lexicon.
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This summary ends with Anne Carson’s translation for obvious reasons, but its journey also exemplifies a strong union of adaptational voice and translational rigor. Carson’s script premiered at the Almeida Theatre in 2015 under the direction of London mainstay James Macdonald. Similarly to Bogart, Macdonald insisted on a radically androgynous Dionysos. Ben Whishaw sports stubble and a beautiful flowing dress. While the chorus and others had their time to shine, the real focus of the critics was the electric sexual tension between Dionysus and Pentheus. Michael Billington of The Guardian describes how “the besuited Pentheus, meanwhile, implies that his pig-headed pragmatism conceals a deep sexual ambiguity. On first encountering the captive Dionysos, he
The chorus of Jillian Kelley’s production of Anne Carson’s translation
dwells on his white skin ‘soft to the touch’” (review link). Director Jillian Keiley later employed Carson’s text at the 2017 Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario. This production was much more interested in the chorus of maenads and the surreal nature of falling into ecstatic ritual. Megan de Roover of The Theatre Times notes the centrality of the chorus in setting “the words of the choral odes to music—a wonderful interpretation of Anne Carson’s poetry—with drum beats which evoke anything from a heartbeat to a rave. The sensual ever present Bahkkai(sic) set the pace for the production, their songs punctuating the action, their dances inviting the audience into a trance” (review link). Villanova Theatre is not alone in its interest in this text for the present moment, either. Baltimore Center Stage planned to do their own production in their 2020 season as well, but have now postponed it to September 2021; their statement can be read here.
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There are many more reviews and productions that could fit into this already lengthy historical summary. More primary documents will be linked and broken down below, but this production history only skims the surface of how different artists have used this story from over twenty-four centuries ago as a tool for radical change.
Selected Production Info & Reviews
Royal Exchange, Manchester, UK (2010)
Director: Braham Murray
Translator: Mike Poulton
Dionysus: Jotham Annan
Distinctive features: Strikingly bare, distortions of classical costuming, restrained
London Performance of Anne Carson’s adaptation (2015)
Almeida Theatre, London (2015)
Director: James Macdonald
Translator: Anne Carson
Dionysos: Ben Whishaw
Distinctive features: Premiere of Anne Carson’s version, radically androgynous Dionysus, sexually charged between Dionysus and Pentheus
Saltbox Theatre, Chicago (2015)
Director: Brian Fruits
Translator: Nicholas Rudal
Dionysus: Chas Howard
Distinctive Features: Masks, large chorus, bare staging, Dionysus played by a man of color
Oxford Greek Play, Oxford Playhouse (2017)
Director: Sean Kelly
Translator: Unclear, maybe performed in Greek??
Dionysos: Derek Mitchell, Harry Lukakis and Marcus Knight-Adams
Distinctive Features: Three actors play Dionysos, “Dionysos is not confined to the gender binary” but all three actors were men, rough physicality
Anne Carson’s at Stratford Festival, Canada (2017)
Stratford Festival, Stratford, ON (2017)
Director: Jillian Keiley
Translator: Anne Carson
Dionysos: Mac Fyfe
Distinctive features: Eroticism especially in the chorus, the “female gaze,” occasionally surreal or dream-like
SUNY Potsdam — Wole Soyinka’s Bacchae of Euripides (2017)
Director: Joshua Vink
Adaptor: Wole Soyinka
Dionysus: Unknown/unlisted
Distinctive features: Problematically predominately white cast, militant Pentheus, heavy dance influence
SITI Company @ BAM, New York (2018)
SITI Company @ the Getty Villa, Los Angeles (2018)
SITI Company @ The Guthrie, Minneapolis (2020)
Director: Anne Bogart
Translator: Aaron Poochigian
Dionysus: Ellen Lauren
Distinctive features: female & rockstar Dionysus, chorus in blazers and skirts, many genders explored throughout
UMass Amherst Theatre Department (2019)
Director: Judyie Al-Bilali
Adaptor: Wole Soyinka
Dionysus: Unknown/unlisted
Distinctive Features: Interracial cast, emphasis on colonialism and police brutality, ritual
Classical Theatre of Harlem, New York (2019)
Director: Carl Cofield
Adaptor: Brian Doerries
Dionysus: Jason C. Brown
Distinctive Features: Musical elements and big numbers/solos, metal and concrete outdoor stage, fourth wall breaking
Genesius Guild, Bettendorf, IA (2019)
Director: Patti Flaherty
Translator: Edward P. Coleridge
Dionysus: Mischa Hooker
Distinctive features: Strives for ‘traditional’ feel with togas and garlands, outdoor theatre, some unison speaking in the chorus
Director: Mark Greenfield
Adaptor: Monash University Student Theatre
Dionysus: Carissa Lee
Distinctive features: heavily devised and inspired by Dionysus in ‘69, Dionysus as a Charles Manson-like cult leader, entirely women and non-binary cast
Director: Lileana Blain-Cruz
Adaptor: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Dionysus (Deon in this adaptation): Nicholas L. Ashe
Distinctive features: Constant dance rhythms, overtly feminist revenge, set in a nature reserve
HURRICANE DIANE, New York Theatre Workshop (2019)
Director: Leigh Silverman
Adaptor: Madeleine George
Dionysus (Diane in this adaptation): Becca Blackwell
Distinctive Features: “Ecological revenge,” lesbians everywhere, set in New Jersey suburbs