Elli Papakonstantinou makes the myth of Dionysos her own, giving us a queer version of the play where the question of gender is synonymous with freedom. Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae is more relevant than ever in this hybrid piece combining theatre, dance, new media, original music and live visual effects. An exciting new immersive experience by one of the leading artists on the international scene.

The piece begins in a politically correct world with suffocating gender labels under the banner of freedom of expression. A meteor called Dionysus is expected to collide and destroy the earth, but when Dionysus arrives, he instead calls for the fulfillment of everyone’s deepest desires… 

For the creators of The Bacchae, the idea of queer is more than a set of personal preferences. It is an opportunity to look at the world in a new way. Papakonstantinou delves into the famous Greek tragedy about Dionysus (God of wine and pleasure) and uses it to cross all kinds of borders. Text-based theatre segues into musical theatre, opera and dance as a result of her working with (opera) singers, including composer and performer Ariah Lester, while an interactive sound design brings on stage a seismograph that registers the earth’s and dancers’ vibrations and transforms the stage into a musical instrument: it is the pulse of the cosmos.                    

Director’s Note

As a director, I follow the flows of text, live music, video art and dance insearch of a new performative language. This piece lies at the intersection of these flows: queer is a new aesthetic; here I embrace pop, kitsch and high art celebrating diversity: I wish that my audience moves from the mind to the senses and is moved by the perplexity and ambiguity of desire and sexuality. As sexuality and desire cannot be programmed or corrected, in my piece class struggle, politics and aesthetic folly merge into a vortex: Dionysiac life itself.