While Bakkhai Variations will consist of a reading of Anne Carson’s version and five additional digital productions, Villanova Theatre viewed as a singular event that we are curating to be experienced sequentially and in conversation with itself.

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Supervising Director for Bakkhai Variations, James Ijames, has this to say in describing the overarching vision for the culminating experience for those involved in and consuming this project as a whole:

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 What we are hoping to do with the Bakkhai Variations is create a continuum between what we planned for the season and what we can accomplish given the restraints of Covid 19 safety measures. However, I'm hoping to take this further in exploring the liveness and theatrical possibilities of producing dramatic storytelling beautifully, sensitively and with a stronger magnifying glass on not only the performances, which will no doubt be more intimate, but also on the themes of the plays and the larger mythology that surround the idea of Dionysus. How do we engage with abandon, sensuality, blood, and fury inside of a world that has tilted fully into an Apollonian, reason/science based reality that is life and death? I want these "variations" to be an artifact of how we looked at Anne Carson's Bakkhai, looked at the world and made something that honored both of those realities. 

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We hope to expand upon and being to answer some of these questions this fall, and we look forward to including you in that conversation.