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).
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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
Unlike other more famous and elaborate Dionysiac sarcophagi, such as the Seasons sarcophagi and the Triumph of Dionysos in Baltimore which portray specific pivotal events in the mythos of Dionysos, this piece gives us instead a somewhat generic slice of Bacchic life(Matz, 5).
Some evaluations claim that the Dionysus appearing in The Bacchae is fairly true embodiment of the ideals of ancient Athens. He demands only worship and proper reverence for his name, two matters of honor that pervaded both the Greek tragedies and the pious society that viewed them. In other plays, Oedipus' consultations with Apollo and the many Choral appeals to Zeus reveal the Athenian respect for their gods, while Electra's need for revenge and Antigone's obligation to bury Polyneices both epitomize the themes of respect and dignity. Yet although Dionysus personifies these two motifs, his clashes with the rest of Athenian tradition seem to make him its true adversary. Dionysius distinctly opposes the usual views on gender, age, rationality and divinity, leaving the reader to wonder whether these contrasts were Euripidean attempts to illuminate specific facets of the culture itself.
The impact of female rebellion on society is illustrated as so intense that it must be stopped before it becomes overtly uncontrollable and violent. However, there is a mysticism to the fringe society of Bacchant which both tantatlizes and concerns its viewers. The Bacchae uses this ambiguity with not only female rebellion but also other attributes such as the relationship between Dionysus and Pentheus, violence, crossdressing, and others. The dual nature of The Bacchae leads it to be highly readable and rebels against conventional thinking.
Euripides’ Bacchae presents a challenge to the identity of the Athenian male citizen. The tragedy undermines masculinity and traditional gender roles by exposing their vulnerability and easy transgression, implicates Athenian ideals of rationality and self-control in the fall of Thebes’ royal household, and complicates the concept of what it means to be a citizen. With Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War looming, Euripides represents the Athenian anxiety as they faced their potential destruction and loss of their city and their identity.
The contrast between men versus women is an important opposition in both plays. The women in the Greek society have no control of their life; the men are in control (Barlow 159). In The Bacchae Dionysus underminded the Greek society point view on women and empowers them. Pentheus is furious about Dionysus; he states in this first speech to his Grandfather Cadmus and Tiresias that the women have betrayed their houses to go off into the mountains to dance to Dionysus and are committing sexual acts (Bacchae 217-224). Pentheus is offended that an “effeminate looking stranger” has come into his land and is giving freedom to the women (353). There is a binary opposition between the way Greek society and Pentheus are treating the women (men) versus the way Dionysus treats them (women).
“Euripides Bacchae”. 29 Oct. 2015. Lecture). First I will demonstrate how the empowerment of the Bacchants is seen as a threat to the rational male civilization, but becomes more desirable as the play progresses. Secondly, I will show how the seemingly beneficial powers gained through female empowerment are revealed to be destructive and violent. Finally, I will illustrate how both the civilized rational male and wild irrational female symbolically fail at the plays end, whereas the balance between male and female is triumphant.
In a modern day production of Lysistrata, a director’s role would involve the overseeing of the whole play making course and ensuring that all the cast members realize the vision of the production. This role covers all the steps of production from the interpretation of the script to the final performance. This means that the director has a say over a range of disciplines and has to have artistic vision. Lysistrata was produced in 411 B.C., at a time when Athens and Sparta had just concluded a two-decade long war and the general population was in despair. Comedies such as these were used then to communicate instructions to the people (mbc.edu). This essay will focus on the scene where Lysistrata has gathered all the women to convinces the to withhold sex from their husbands until they sign a peace treaty.
In Euripides’ play The Bacchae, the ideals that were the foundation of Greek culture were called into question. Until early 400B.C.E. Athens was a society founded upon rational thinking, individuals acting for the good of the populace, and the “ideal” society. This is what scholars commonly refer to as the Hellenic age of Greek culture. As Athens is besieged by Sparta, however, the citizens find themselves questioning the ideals that they had previously lived their lives by. Euripides’ play The Bacchae shows the underlying shift in ideology of the Greek people from Hellenic (or classical), to Hellenistic; the god character Dionysus will be the example that points to the shifting Greek ideology.
Throughout Greek and Roman mythology there are many themes, motifs, and symbols that are consistent amongst the different myths. Some of the more common ones include the abuse of mortals from the gods, the relationship between men and women, and the way in which lust operates in society. All of these are apparent in the writing style of Euripides in his text the Bacchae. This myth explores the battle between Dionysus, who has just returned dressed as a stranger, and Pentheus, who is the current ruler of the state, over the city of Thebes. As one reads this myth they will clearly identify some of the important subjects, however one detail that may not be noticed is the portrayal of Pentheus holding gender identity issues. There are many examples
Many different interpretations can be derived from themes in Euripides's The Bacchae, most of which assume that, in order to punish the women of Thebes for their impudence, the god Dionysus drove them mad. However, there is evidence to believe that another factor played into this confrontation. Because of the trend of male dominance in Greek society, women suffered in oppression and bore a social stigma which led to their own vulnerability in becoming Dionysus's target. In essence, the Thebian women practically fostered Dionysian insanity through their longing to rebel against social norms. Their debilitating conditions as women prompted them to search for a way to transfigure themselves with male qualities in order to abandon their social subordination.
Grene, D., and Lattimore, R., eds. ?The Bacchae.? Greek Tragedies: Volume 3. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1991. 195-262.
In Euripides’ tragic play, Medea, the playwright creates an undercurrent of chaos in the play upon asserting that, “the world’s great order [is being] reversed.” (Lawall, 651, line 408). The manipulation of the spectators’ emotions, which instills in them a sentiment of drama, is relative to this undertone of disorder, as opposed to being absolute. The central thesis suggests drama in the play as relative to the method of theatrical production. The three concepts of set, costumes, and acting, are tools which accentuate the drama of the play. Respectively, these three notions represent the appearance of drama on political, social, and moral levels. This essay will compare three different productions of Euripides’ melodrama, namely, the play as presented by the Jazzart Dance Theatre¹; the Culver City (California) Public Theatre²; and finally, the original ancient Greek production of the play, as it was scripted by Euripides.
The play was considered comic by the ancient Athenians because of its rhyming lyricism, its song and dance, its bawdy puns, but most of all because the notion and methods of female empowerment conceived in the play were perfectly ridiculous. Yet, as is the case in a number of Aristophanes’ plays, he has presented an intricate vision of genuine human crisis. In true, comic form Aristophanes superficially resolves the play’s conflicts celebrating the absurdity of dramatic communication. It is these loose threads that are most rife with tragedy for modern reader. By exploring an ancient perspective on female domesticity, male political and military power, rape, and efforts to maintain the integrity of the female body, we can liberate our modern dialogue.
Euripides, one of Ancient Greece’s most famous playwrights, could be considered as one of the earliest supporters of women’s rights. With plays such as Alcestis and Medea, he clearly puts an emphasis on the condition of women, and even integrates them in the Chorus of the latter play, a feat that was not often done in Ancient Greece. Throughout the years, it has been argued that the two central characters in each of those plays offer conflicting representations of women in those times, and I can safely say that I agree with that argument. I will expand on my view by pointing out an important similarity between Alcestis and Medea, followed by a key difference, and will finish it off by contrasting them with the Ancient Greek depiction of an “ideal woman.”
The Greek playwright, Euripides, is considered one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens. His individuality is attributed to the way he “pushes to the limits of what an audience can stand”. His masterpiece Medea, a fascinating classic centered on the Greek goddess Medea, is a prime example of this. During his time, Euripides was unpopular since he defied the common themes of tragedies during the 430s B.C.E. he instead introduced a nihilistic and disturbing tragedy focused on women, slaves and persons from the lower class. His mastery shines through as he guides the audience to sympathize with Medea even when she commits filicide, a seemingly horrendous act.