BACCHAE

The originality of the performance examines and reveals the relationship between ancient theatre and the complex gender culture of the 21st century; and so the narrative focus of the Bacchae, while respecting the Euripidean text which so shook the Athenian souls, rereads the themes of folly and social disorder in the name of a deity who seems to want to break the patrilineal succession of the Greek Olympus. Throughout the whole play a doubt lingers: is Dionysus truly a woman? Yes, despite all the critical reconstructions which have written about the various faces of Dionysus, who also possesses a strong feminine character, here the God changes sex. Without a doubt, it is Dionisia who manifests herself to the city of Thebes of Cadmus and Pentheus; it is Dionisia who guides the women to the Kithairon Mountain, where madness equals the collapse of the laws of men which govern the city. And it’s from the Kithairon Mountain, symbol of feminist struggles, that a horde of Bacchae rushes through the public to rebel against the violence caused by men.

While Euripides at the end of his tragic voyage didn’t answer the question of whether the origin of Chaos was the Gods, or the disorder of life was an effect of divine will, here the disorder is a return to order, to the equality of the sexes. And since it is a tragedy, the epiphany of Dionisia who appears from above, suspended together with her acrobatic Bacchae, happens through the symbolic death of Pentheus, the man who imprisons those women who revolt against the laws of inequality. The disorder of rebellion, the despair of the flesh, these will be the catharsis through which Order is achieved.

It’s impossible not to mention the powerful scenography which animates the evenings in the Greek theatre of Siracusa. It tells us what the words have left unsaid: the spirit of Dionysius which crashes into that of Apollo. The eternal fight between irrational and rational finds its solution with the victory of the world of women!