Barbette Meats The Bacchae

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barbette meats the Bacchae
The Bacchae is a play that has universally interesting and socially applicable themes. With the release of movie adaptions of The Great Gatsby and a fascination amongst the general public with gang culture and other aspects of the era, Staging The Bacchae in a 1920s New York is good way to bring new audiences to the theatre. Written by Euripides in 405 BC, The Bacchae has entranced audiences since its opening, winning the City Dionysian festival Competition on its premier. The play touches on cornerstone aspects of human nature and the balance in man between rationality and civilisation (personified in Pentheus), and the more primal; lust, sensuality, and longing for self gratification (personified by Dionysus). …show more content…

To maintain the androgynous, youthful appearance of Dionysus but still give the character an air of power, his image needs to be reinvented. In this production, Dionysus’ image is based on the vaudevillian performer Barbette. Barbette was an American female impersonator who worked extensively in the vaudevillian theatres of America, and later Paris, during the 1920’s and 30’s. Young and clean shaven, with the fashionable pin curled bob and makeup, Dionysus is a lean figure dressed in a well fitting suit and authentic fedora or bowler hat. The male air is still present however, he is just feminine enough to be considered androgynous against the aesthetic of the time. Pentheus in this production takes the roll of the new leader of the cites police force, burdened with maintaing order in the city and previously willing to overlook the violations of prohibition in order to maintain peace. He holds rationality and order as essential aspects of running a society and his high personal standards are seen in how he presents himself, always impeccably dressed in the appropriate style of the time. The Maenads and Bacchae are a group of flappers. In the original staging of The Bacchae, they were presented in fawn skins, carrying musical instruments and thyrsi. In the 1920s, the birth of the Jazz age saw the birth of a breed of young middle class females who opposed gender roles of the victorian era, dressed in short dressed and bobbed their hair. The Bacchantes take the roll of the chorus in the play. In this production, they sing their parts in the new popular jazz style of the time. The mountain has been relocated to central park and the city centre a speakeasy bar in the vicinity of the Police

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