For this international co-production, Elli Papakonstantinou writes in tandem and directs a new piece after Euripides’ Bacchae with an emphasis on an all-inclusive world. 

It is a piece across the borders between genres; epistemological borders, scientific, and fictional languages; the borders of gender; the borders between languages and nationalities, those that separate humanity from animality, the living from the dead, and the borders between today and history.                       

Lacan describes Dionysus as a “surplus of jouissance”, a surplus of life. In my reading this surplus of life is queer. My piece lies in the intersection of identities and realities (humans/gods, male/female, classes etc.) Queer here relates to a way of understanding not only gendered identities but also aesthetics, politics, language, and structures of thought.

Bacchae is a piece on asymmetry and undefinability. I understand queer not as a moral but as a political notion if we believe that politics are open not only to the affairs of Man, to Marxism, to class, but to the world. Over and above us. Open to Animals, to Things. -When put in the context of today’s world, morality has to become a way that promotes the survival of all beings. 

In my process of creation, I take for the first time the challenge to co-write the piece in tandem with great thinkers from a wide range of fields such as schizoanalysis, philosophy, and poetry. This I believe is an enriching deepening experience that enfolds the otherness in its making.  

As a director, I follow the line of visuals, the line of dance and the line of music. My intention is to work in all three directions. The Bacchae that I wish to create is built on compositional risks and unfamiliar corporealities.