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Modern interpretations

Binary divisions of the Self and the Other

In The Bacchae, Dionysus is the protagonist; furthermore, he embodies aspects of both, the Self (for example, part Greek god and male) and the Other (of Asian descent and effeminate in character). When Pentheus unknowingly talks of Dionysus, he describes him as ‘some Asian foreigner, masquerading as a priest…too womanish to be a proper man’. So he insults his ethnicity, appearance, manliness and even his higher godly status.

The Bacchae can be said to enact a clash between two opposing ethnic groups; Greek and Asian. Cadmus tries to dissuade Pentheus from his quest into the unknown, urging him to not to stray from the safe sanctuary that is home: ‘Dwell within the temple of our beliefs, not in the wilderness that lies beyond’. Pentheus is adamant on hunting the impostor, who is actually Dionysus in disguise, declaring: ‘He’ll soon regret the day he brought his filthy foreign practices to our city in the West’. He later interrogates Dionysus: ‘Where are you from?’; ‘Why then bring your practices to my home?’ These foreign practices are especially threatening as they threaten to corrupt all the womenfolk, sending them into frenzied worship practices; Pentheus: ‘…this foreigner who dares infect our women's minds and bodies and our beds’. Bacchae is an occasion when some women revolted against male authority and broke the bonds tying them to their clear and narrowly defined domestic sphere within a patriarchal society.

The Theater as the Other

To be gazed upon by the mask of Dionysus is to cross the threshold between sanity and madness, between the real and unreal. When an actor put on his mask at the festival of Dionysus he marked an irruption into the heart of public life of a mode of being totally alien to the everyday world of the city. In The Bacchae an actor must assume the mask of Dionysus himself; the god himself is the protagonist. Both actors and audiences must join their fate with Dionysus and allow themselves to be taken into the imaginative world of ‘the other’ in theatrical illusion. When Dionysus goes against such accepted polarizations, he is questioning human perceptions of reality and what we see in the world; namely, a fundamentally empirical method is a weak tool, when compared to the unlimited illusion of the theater. He subverts these binaries and turns hierarchy on its head – he allows women to question the supremacy of men, but then punishes them by sending them mad - he contradicts himself, as he himself is contradictory in his nature (he is symbolized by giant phallus but his masculinity is compromised by his long hair, delicate beauty and decorative clothing; he is worshiped in the wild hillside but is central to an important and organized cult in the heart of the city; he blurs the division between comedy and tragedy).

Dramatic versions

Joe Orton's play The Erpingham Camp (television broadcast 27 June 1966; opened at the Royal Court Theatre on 6 June 1967) relocates The Bacchae to a British Butlin's-style holiday camp. An author's note at the beginning of the text of the play states that: "[n]o attempt must be made to reproduce the various locales in a naturalistic manner. A small, permanent set of Erpingham's office is set on a high level. The rest of the stage is an unlocalised area. Changes of scene are suggested by lighting and banners after the manner of the Royal Shakespeare Company's productions of Shakespeare's histories."^[3]

In 1970 Brian de Palma filmed Richard Schechner's dramatic re-envisioning of the work, Dionysus in '69, in a converted garage.^[4]

Wole Soyinka adapted the play as The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite with the British Royal National Theatre in London in 1972, incorporating a second chorus of slaves to mirror the civil unrest in his native Nigeria.

Caryl Churchill and David Lan used the play as the basis of their 1986 dance-theatre hybrid A Mouthful of Birds.

Famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman directed the Bacchae three times: as an opera (1991) for the Royal Swedish Opera, as a TV-film (1993) for Sveriges Television and as a staged play (1996) for the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. These three versions received great acclaim amidst some mixed reviews. ^[5]

Brad Mays directed his own adaptation of the play at the Complex in Los Angeles in 1997, where it broke all box office records and was nominated for three LA Weekly Theater Awards^[6] : for Best Direction, Best Musical Score and Best Production Design. Because the production featured several scenes with levels of violence and nudity rare for even the most experimental of theater pieces, it was widely discussed in print^[7], and even videotaped for the Lincoln Center's Billy Rose Collection in NYC^[8]. The production was eventually fashioned into an independent feature film ^[9] which, interestingly, featured Will Shepherd^[10] — the Pentheus of Richard Schechner's Dionysus in '69 — in the role of Cadmus.

The Bacchae 2.1, a theatrical adaptation set in modern times, was written by Charles Mee and first performed in 1993.^[11]

In 2007 David Greig wrote an adaptation of The Bacchae for the National Theater of Scotland starring Alan Cumming as Dionysus, with ten soul-singing followers in place of the traditional Greek chorus. A critically-praised run at New York's Lincoln Center Rose Theater followed the show's premiere in Scotland.^[12]

Luigi Lo Cascio 's multimedia adaptation La Caccia (The Hunt) won the Biglietto d' Oro del Teatro prize in 2008. The free adaptation combines live theater with animations by Nicola Console and Desideria Rayner's video projections. A revised 2009 version is currently on tour and features original music by Andrea Rocca .

Operatic versions

Harry Partch composed an opera based on The Bacchae titled Revelation in the Courthouse Park. It was first performed in 1960, and a recording was released in 1987.

Another opera based on The Bacchae, called The Bassarids, was composed in 1965 by Hans Werner Henze. The libretto was by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman.

Musical versions

In Summer 2009, the Public Theater (of New York City) produced a version of "The Bacchae" with music by Philip Glass.