“The Bacchae” by Euripides
Direction: Aris Biniaris
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Time & Date
Information
Tickets
Full price: 5, 7, 15, 20, 24 €
Reduced, Friend & Groups 5-9 people: 12, 16, 19 €
Groups 10+ people: 11, 14, 17 €
Νneighborhood residents: 7 €
People with disabilities & Unemployed: 5 €
Companions: 10 €
Group ticket reservations at groupsales@onassis.org
General
No performances on Mondays-Tuesdays
At weekends 24-25 March and 31 March-1 April 2018 with English surtitles.
Duration
70 minutes
Introduction
"The Bacchae" by Euripides. Ancient tragedy as a rock show. The director Aris Biniaris plugs the “Bacchae” into the mains and puts the divine Dionysus in front of the mic.
Photo © Nick Knight
When rock music electrifies Euripides' words, when punk plugs the myth of the “Bacchae” into the mains, then Dionysus the great, the divine, will sing. Making his Onassis Stegi debut, Aris Biniaris turns the clash between Pentheus the king and Dionysus the god into an angry hymn to the division of the human soul into logic and instinct.
A fan of on-stage interaction between music and drama and a dedicated scholar of ancient tragedy, the director dares couple the subversive power of rock to the violent tragedy of the "Bacchae" in a production which sets out to work all our senses up into a frenzy.
In an arid, seismic landscape, a band of select performers—accompanied by two musicians—are invited to reflect through music and theater on the relationship between freedom and dogma, isolation and creativity.
With a career that started out with a psychedelic reading of Giannis Skarimbas' "The Divine He-Goat" and culminated with his maiden appearance at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus with Aeschylus' "Persians", Aris Biniaris has spent recent years seeking out those corners of the theatrical repertoire that set out to illuminate issues relating to personal freedom, social dogmatism and historical memory.
Active at a time when Greek society seems stuck in a rut and unable to move on, Biniaris has settled on a work that deals with precisely these matters: "Pentheus ends up being ripped limb from limb because of his avowed and continued defiance of the god. Still, at the same time, the Dionysian life-giving, life-bearing force, the innate power of the nature of things, is never simply going to retire into the background. It is how we, as a society, choose to align ourselves with this life force that will determine our ultimate convergence or inevitable demise".
In “The Bacchae”, Euripides tells the story of Dionysus’ descent on the city of Thebes in order to impose the rites of his worship. King Pentheus refuses to recognize this new god, and is subjected to his wrath. Driven mad by the god’s power, he suffers a horrible death at the top of Mount Cithaeron, with his own mother, Agave – herself carried off in ecstasy – committing the terrible crime. Dionysus, his religious rites now established, announces the terrible fate that has befallen the royal family.
According to Yorgos Himonas – on whose Modern Greek translation this staging of “The Bacchae” is based – this tragedy by Euripides “ends strangely”. Faced with people’s grief over his terrible vengeance, the god stands silent, appears “deus sine machina – a helpless god”. Himonas writes: “Euripides, who pioneered the deus ex machina device, here takes things to their other extreme: he creates a deus sine machina – a helpless god. Dionysus stands alone at the far back of the stage, unsure of himself, almost frightened. The final words he whispers are an inarticulate kind of an apology: ‘I’m not to blame for all this. Someone other decided it – and a long time ago too.’ Intimating Zeus. And the pain inflicted on audiences of ‘The Bacchae’ for the torment suffered by humankind is suddenly transformed into pity for this pathetic, cowardly god who caused it all.”
Aris Biniaris first directed “The Bacchae” in the winter of 2010, for the theater space at Bios. Using materials drawn from traditional Greek folk music, he focused on the use of natural instruments and the voices of the actors, which lent the performance a religious air.
Landmark productions in this artist’s directorial career include the works “The Holy Goat” (Bios, 2011) and “The Year ’21” (Athens & Epidaurus Festival, 2014), through which he introduced a music concert-like form of theatrical narration, where the sound, rhythm, and musicality of the spoken word, alongside the technique of the actors, together provide the vehicle through which viewer-listeners can understand and dynamically perceive the concepts driving each work.
Friday 23 March
After performance talk with Aris Biniaris
Moderated by Grigoris Ioannidis, theater critic
Credits
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