'Simplicity is the problem of our time. Simplicity is sticking labels on things. It should be about fluidity and confusion.' The Greek opera maker Elli Papakonstantinou , whose star has risen rapidly in recent years, presents a contemporary version of the classical tragedy 'The Bacchae' by Euripides at the Holland Festival this year. In that play from 405 BC, the wine god Dionysus (also known as Bacchos) abducts the women of Thebes because the king rejects his divine status. That king, against his better judgment and disguised as a woman, follows the Bacchae, is discovered, and is torn to pieces under the leadership of his ecstatic mother, just like the inhabitants of a mountain village that stood in his way earlier.

The production presented by Elli Papakonstantinou premiered this spring in Mulhouse, France. It is a modern take on the old piece. It is opera, but also a rave; it features pop music and a DJ. That is confusing for people expecting a classical opera. I spoke to the Greek director and asked about her motivation for this choice.

Of all the plays written since 405 BC, why did you choose Bacchae?

'I wanted to create a piece about political correctness and about what is happening in our world with micro-labeling and the MeToo movement. I am really interested in the myths. Not only in classical mythology, but also in how we continue to create such stories. That is how national myths are formed. That combination of ancient and modern myths comes together very well in the story; of the god Dionysus and what is shown in it about queerness.'

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

You should know that Euripides wrote this play after his exile from Athens. He was therefore free to comment on the Apollonian rationality that prevailed in Athens.

Apollonian rationality? With this, Elli Papakonstantinou refers to a concept by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche contrasted the Apollonian with the Dionysian, named after the Greek god Dionysus, the god of wine, ecstasy, and unbridled emotions. The Apollonian stands for clarity, order, logic, and intellectual discipline. Dionysus represents chaos, emotion, intuition, and the irrational.

Nietzsche viewed art as typically Dionysian: not all aspects of the world can be understood through mere rationality. He encourages the exploration of mystical and transcendental experiences.

Euripides felt a connection with the mystics from northern Greece. Such mystical orders still exist there. At the time, they were truly secret societies, and if you became a member, you also had to swear secrecy. They were important as an undercurrent in Greek society. They did not only emerge at the Oracle of Delphi but also represented the animalistic, uninhibited side of society. That is why I was really interested in this piece, to place it in a contemporary context.

You see political correctness as Apollonian and 'queerness' as typically Dionysian?

Yes. We learn to live with rules, corrections, and self-criticism. We internalize our feelings of guilt. In Dionysus, I see the joy of desire and longing. What happens to desire that cannot be described, that does not fit into boxes? What are the consequences of microlabeling for our freedom?

It is of course good to name things and to create new spaces for that, but I think we need to find a more fundamental way to give space to desire in our society. We need to be more open to ambiguity.

FALSE CONNECTION

So, does microlabeling—naming gender identity and (sexual) preference as specifically as possible—hinder our freedom and blind us to the big things in life?

We live in a very transparent world, in which we can let anyone into our personal lives and intrude into everyone's life. This creates a false idea that we are connected to one another. We no longer think esoterically and no longer look at ourselves. After all, man is a mystery. We are not transparent at all. We do not fit into criteria. Do we fit into a micro-label or not? This is how boundaries and duality arise in the world.

With this piece, I seek connection with a great flow of which we are all a part, so that we can continue to evolve esoterically without even having an idea of ​​what we are becoming, without necessarily fitting in anywhere.

We don't always have to feel that pressure in our society to choose a side. I am an activist too, so I know that struggle very well: I also fight for more inclusivity. But for me, it is more about the way we act and how we think about our personal development.

DON'T LOOK UP

Your plea for the Dionysian is convincing, but there is also a downside: in Bacchae, the feast in the mountains also leads to senseless violence. A village is plundered and massacred. How optimistic are you? The performance also contains a clear reference to 'Don't Look Up', the film that made an impression last year by showing how people prefer to look away at the announcement of a major disaster.

I am deliberately not referring to that specific film. It is about the development of pop culture over the last few decades. Humanity is facing a major catastrophe, and we have known that since the 1980s. Even then, such films were a mass-produced product, a part of pop culture.

I wanted to create a real pop project with Bacchae, because I also love pop music very much. I am interested in the way pop culture assimilates these stereotypes into new stories and retells the story in a more progressive way, with the aesthetic of pop.

Then I think it is really worthwhile to examine and understand all those catastrophes and all those ideas about destruction and the end, and perhaps place them in a different context. So yes, as you said: there is violence too. In Europe there is a lot of violence, but at the same time there is also a new way of living.

CONSERVATIVE AND TRADITIONAL

Culture is also about distinguishing yourself from others. You are a renowned opera director, but it is a world where there is much debate about how you perform opera, how you create opera, and how the genre is defined. There is a movement that says opera must be performed as it was written, in whatever way possible. And then there are people who modernize things. Where do you stand in all of this? I saw a multicolored performance. There was beautiful opera singing, there were raves , there were beats , there was noise .

'I love music because it is transcendental. Music can flow from one genre to another in a way that no other art can do so well. I need that for this piece, because I am interested in queerness. What is queerness? The piece raises this question. That is why my aesthetic is free. I can say that I move freely from one zone to another without thinking about how they fit together, or whether they fit together artistically: I simply flow along.'

I really wanted to raise this question for the audience. Perhaps it is sometimes appealing, perhaps it sometimes creates a kind of monstrous aesthetic grotesqueness. I didn't really wonder which category this performance would fit into. Even though everything in our industry revolves around categories.

I find it very difficult to fit into a box. But the opera world, which I love very much, is a conservative and traditional world, where the genre must be respected and reproduced.

AESTHETICS IS A POLITICAL CHOICE

'I actually love the in-between space. Aesthetics is a political choice. It is up to us to break the patterns. As soon as you break the audience's pattern of expectations, you break a pattern in the mind. That is how you create space, a grey space between certainties. That is what this piece brings.'

'I wanted to do this in a playful way. I didn't want to show real violence. That was a political choice for me: I didn't want to show violence against femininity. The piece is not about feminist violence. I wanted to break certainties and create electric shocks, but in a playful way.'

How was this received when you presented it to the actors? It is a very diverse ensemble, from real opera singers to an androgynous pop star like Ariah Lester. How did the classically trained opera singers react to your plans?

It was a challenge to bring along people from different regions, with a different perspective on art and a different way of working. They all had different expectations at different stages of the work. That offered surprises time and again. All our certainties were gone. On top of that came the strikes in Greece, which arose after the train disaster in which so many people died, so there was an extra layer of uncertainty to deal with.

Ultimately, every piece finds a method. As if we were prepared by the universe to work in such a way that we truly lost control. That is the theme: losing control to find something. It is not about foolishness or madness.

UKRAINE

'For me as an artist, that loss of control was educational, also to prevent me from burning out. I was able to connect more deeply. That wasn't my intention, but it happened. And it is not the first time. My latest work was with Ukrainian opera singers, and we were rehearsing when Russia invaded Ukraine.'

So part of the rehearsals took place in shelters, in bunkers, underground. And then they came here. That is how life intruded into art: one day eight people knocked on my door. At that point, it wasn't about art, but a matter of finding musical instruments for them, finding a place to sleep, finding something to eat. They entered our safe world, and you could feel very clearly what art means in this context and what it meant to them. That was moving, because that was all they had. They enjoyed art in moments of complete crisis. That was very important to me. My life has been putting me to the test lately.

FASCISTS

This show is about queerness. Because of your criticism of microlabeling, there is always a risk of being criticized, precisely by the queer world. The divides are stark; before you know it, you are embraced by the far right as a critic of microlabeling. How do you prepare for that?

'I am not opening a dialogue with fascists. I am opening a dialogue with my people. It is really important not to think in black and white. We must remain open to complexity and depth. Simplicity is the problem of our time. Simplicity is sticking labels on things. It must be about fluidity and confusion. This is what queerness is about: bewilderment. We must try to find a new path in life and take new steps. As a possibility, as a potential something that is present and not dead, does not look to the past and lock you into a name, but constantly changes and evolves and is constantly in dialogue with the world, which has not accepted this way of being.'