6th @ Penn Theatre Presents

THE BACCHAE

By Euripides

Translated by Dr. Marianne McDonald

Produced by 6th @ Penn Theatre

November 24 - December 23, 2006
Thur Fri Sat 8:00pm / Sun 2:00pm

6th @ Penn Theatre
3704 6th Avenue
San Diego, CA 92103

Marianne McDonald (Translator) is Professor of Theatre and Classics in the Department of Theatre at UCSD, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. A recipient of many national and international awards, including a Patté award from KPBS, Order of the Phoenix Award form Greece, Golden Aeschylus Award from Italy, a Billie for Artist of the Year from San Diego Playbill (2004) and San Diego Critics Circle for Best New Play for 2005 for and then he met a woodcutter (2005: after Noh, directed by George Ye for Zen Productions). She has also written many articles and books including: Euripides in Cinema: The Heart Made Visible (Centrum Press, 1983), Ancient Sun, Modern Light: Greek Drama on the Modern Stage (Columbia University Press, 1992), Sing Sorrow: Classics, History and Heroines in Opera (Greenwood, 2001), Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedies (Methuen, 2002), and The Living Art of Greek Tragedy (Indiana University Press, 2003). She has translated and written versions of many Greek tragedies which are regularly performed throughout the world: her Sophocles’ Antigone was directed by Athol Fugard in Ireland (1999) and went on to Austria and Greece; her version of Euripides’ The Trojan Women was directed by Seret Scott at the Old Globe Theater (2000); performed translations: Euripides’ Children of Heracles (2003) and Sophocles’ Antigone (2005 dir. Delicia Turner Sonnenberg); Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus (dir. George Ye, 2003-04); Euripides’ Hecuba, (dir. Esther Emery, 2004); Sophocles’ Ajax (dir. Forrest Aylsworth 2006); Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis and Bacchae (dir. Douglas Lay, 2006); Versions: Medea, Queen of Colchester (dir. Kirsten Brandt, (2003); The Ally Way (after Alcestis, dir. Robert Salerno, 2004); and Iphigenia at Aulis (Douglas Lay, 2006); with Athol Fugard: Medea—The Beginning and Jason—The End, readings in Ireland, South Africa, and California (2006)

http://www.mmcdonald.info.

Cat McEvilly (Stage Manager)

Vincent Sneeden (Set Design/Construction

Mitchel Simkovski (Light Design)

Eusevio Cordoba (Sound Design)

Paul Savage (Official Photographer/Grapics Design) www.savages4hire.com

The chorus of bacchantes say: 

Unbridled tongues
And lawless lunacy
End in disaster.
But peace
And a sensible life                                                                             
Keep a ship on course,
And sustain the homes of men.
Although dwelling far above us,
The heavenly gods
Still see what men do.
Cleverness alone is not wisdom!
 
------Euripides’ Bacchae, ll. 386-401  -  Trans. Marianne McDonald

Bacchae: Fanaticism and Sweet Vengeance 

            Dionysus is told by a mortal at the end of the play that he should not indulge his passions the way men do. This play shows violence carried too far and is reminiscent of the religious wars that still rage in our world today: Christian vs. Moslem (US vs. Iraq); Jew vs. Moslem (Israel vs. Palestine); and Protestant vs. Catholic (Northern Ireland).

Dionysus is a god to be reckoned with. He is a god of the theatre, transformation, wine and freedom: he appeals to the ordinary man. Everyone must make his or her peace with him, otherwise one can be literally blown or torn apart.

            Pentheus is secretly fascinated by what he claims is repulsive. Dionysus gains his power over Pentheus by manipulating Pentheus’s own inner desires. Dionysus is a director who stages "The Death of Pentheus."

            Dionysus is called both most gentle towards men and most fierce. He is like an animal with his tame and wild side. Somehow a thriving city (polis) has to tame and integrate Dionysus. Theatre itself is a way of integrating the passions into the life of a city.

            Euripides was one of the three great playwrights who wrote in ancient Greece, and this, was his last play. He was sick of a war nearing its end, but he died first. In Athens at this time the conservatives were out for power and not willing to settle for peace when it was offered. There were also opportunistic individuals out for self-promotion. One can easily trace these figures in the Bacchae. Athens after the war will be dismembered as dramatically as Pentheus. By the end of the play, Pentheus gains tragic wisdom and repents, but it is too late. Learning too late is another frequent theme in Greek tragedy.

Conversely, at the end of the play, one feels that the god Dionysus has learned nothing, but the human beings’ growth in wisdom has rendered them morally superior to the god. Dionysus has wreaked his vengeance on a sex-mad adolescent and a mother who gossiped too much. Are the extremes his vengeance reached justified? Or does the play in fact urge compromise and understanding that all people are part of one world and should learn how to live together in peace with respect for each other?

                                                Marianne McDonald, Ph.D., MRIA

'Bacchae' packs powerful punch in a tight space

Gruesome tragedy executed smartly by a young cast

By Michael L. Greenwald November 27, 2006

'You punish us too much,” moans a victim of Dionysus' unbridled wrath in Euripides' “The Bacchae.” Though written about 405 B.C., the line could just as easily be uttered by a mother in Baghdad, a widow in Gaza or a refugee after Katrina.

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DATEBOOK

"The Bacchae" Through Dec. 23; Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday 2 p.m.; Tickets: $20-$23; (619) 688-9210 or www.6thatpenn.com6th @ Penn Theatre; 3704 6th Ave., Hillcrest

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Continuing its ongoing commitment to staging Greek drama as a commentary on contemporary issues, the 6th @ Penn Theatre confronts the most enigmatic and disturbing of Greek tragedies. Using Marianne McDonald's actor-friendly translation, a cast of 10, led by Douglas Lay's knowledgeable direction, infuses “The Bacchae” with urgency.

Remarkably, they do it in a space that does not seem especially conducive to a drama fraught with large passions, violence and horror. Euripides wrote for an outdoor theater, holding some 15,000 spectators, in which human destiny was played out with the cosmos itself as backdrop. However, the very proximity of audience to actor in the 49-seat theater contributes to the impact of the play. There is no “aesthetic distance” here, only human suffering, live and uncomfortably close.

“The Bacchae” was first performed at the Theater of Dionysus, named for the god of wine, creativity and irrationality. His worshippers, according to Aristotle, performed ecstatic rites honoring the god, the progenitor of drama. “The Bacchae” is the only tragedy we possess in which Dionysus (or Bacchus) plays a central role. And what a role he plays as he causes a mother, Agave, and her crazed companions (the Bacchae) to dismember her son, Pentheus, because they doubt his divinity. Talk about a god of wrath!

The play's genius is that it asks more questions than it answers. Is it Euripides' validation of the pettiness of gods who “kill us for their sport”? Or is it his repudiation – written in his 90th year amid the destruction of Athens during its war with Sparta – of his earlier heresies? We don't know. “The Bacchae” continues to ask questions of 21st-century audiences. When does religious zealotry become destructive fanaticism? Are torture and death justifiable to stifle dissent? May those in power – gods or men – resort to unlimited force to advance their cause, to protect their turf?

Though Greek plays were produced with minimal scenery, Lay situates the action in a dense forest, skillfully created by Vincent Sneddon to give the tiny space more depth. Lay's program note explains that Dionysus is the force of nature “in all its elemental aspects, around us as well as within us.” If Dionysus is horrifically destructive, then so are we, for we have cast him in our image.

Whereas Euripides wrote for a chorus of 15, Lay of necessity relies on three women in the tiny space. They invoke other prominent mythical threesomes: the Moirai, the sisters of Fate and Macbeth's witches. This omnipresent trio – Leti Carranza, Melissa Hamilton, Shondra Mirelle (what a voice!) – are the production's backbone and its strength as they dispel any notion that a Greek chorus must be dull.

The mostly young cast handles McDonald's speakable verse admirably. Although technically too young to play Cadmus, Agave's father, Rhys Green delivers the production's most commanding performance, especially as he laments the death of his grandson. Bonnie Stone's Agave, who enters cradling her son's bloody head, is genuinely moving, whether trying to convince us that the skull is that of a lion or recoiling in horror at the realization that she murdered her son. Daniel Heath looks right for Dionysus, properly arrogant, self-absorbed, though perhaps too concerned with striking poses. That he looks like Nijinsky in “The Afternoon with the Fawn” is not inappropriate: the Dionysian archetype is deeply embedded in our culture. Nijinsky's controversial dance itself was a remnant of the orgiastic rites depicted in Euripides' play.

Casting the youthful Kevin Koppmann-Gue as the tragic hero, Pentheus, is a risk-reward proposition. While rightfully callow in his fumbling, stubborn attempts at leadership – he bans Dionysian worship in Thebes because his mother gossips that the god is only a mortal – Koppmann-Gue's actions seem more petulant than arrogant. Shakespeare talks about “the clash of mighty opposites,” a requisite for tragedy, but this Pentheus emerges mostly as a spoiled brat. Thus Dionysus' horrific vengeance seems disproportionately petty, but that may be precisely Euripides' point.

As two young soldiers (Jonathan Allen and Alberto Alvarado) describe in ghastly detail Dionysus' mayhem, first on the palace at Thebes, the theater literally shakes, thanks to Eusevio Cordoba's ominous sound design. The soldiers later recount Pentheus' savage dismemberment in Greek drama's most horrific passage. They – and McDonald's translation – command our full attention.

Though “The Bacchae” is hardly holiday fare, the opportunity to witness a well-conceived production of this masterpiece is too rare to pass up, whatever the season.

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Michael L. Greenwald, a professor of theater at Texas A&M University, is a free-lance writer.