Alessandra Migliara (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
At the beginning of the adaptation of Euripides’ Bacchae performed by La fura dels Baus and directed by Carlus Padrissa (Siracusa, Italy, 2021), Dionysus introduces himself as “mujera, hija, hermana, guerrera, compañera”. Indeed, throughout the performance, Dionysus, who was played by a young actress, appears to be a companion to the other bacchants, a fellow warrior, rather than a god who possesses them. The Catalan company La fura dels Baus, renowned for its acrobatic performative style that highlights the energy of the collective and uses the human body more than words (Saumell), presented an adaptation of Euripides’ Bacchae that takes the dramatic use of the human body to the extremes and emphasizes the blurring of the bodies and genders already present in the text. I argue that this extreme use of corporeity, in contrast to other adaptations of Bacchae (van Zyl Smit), dramatizes neither the bacchants’ sexual liberation nor a passive acceptance of Dionysus’ power, but rather a demand for political power and body agency (Jocsimovic). I also explore how the blurring of genders contributes to the representation of Dionysus as a collective force. I conduct this analysis also in reference to Butler’s concept of gender as performative act and Honig’s concepts of depathologization of the women and heterotopia, arguing how the choreography is used to make the heterotopia of the Theban women visible to the audience (Ugolini, Padrissa).
First, I discuss the dramatic ways in which the human body is shown on the stage, starting with the scenography, which includes a giant horned robot representing Dionysus and a metal head that also functions as Pentheus’ palace. The birth of Dionysus is visually performed by a man falling out of another colossal statue. The “latent eroticism” (Wohl, Worman) between Pentheus and Dionysus, just hinted in the text, is shown by explicit sexual acts. Then, I explore the powerful physicality of the double chorus of the bacchants (one group of bacchants occupies the cavea and the stage, while another group is raised up in the air by a crane), discussing the relevance of the presence of both men and women.
My discussion of the gender implications continues with an analysis of the performance of the first messenger, played by two actors: a man and a woman who resemble a Platonic androgyne and perform the speech while constantly intertwining their bodies. While the two bodies constitute unity, I discuss how the female and male parts narrate the story in opposite ways: the woman is amazed at the wonders performed by the bacchants, whereas the man is terrified.
In conclusion, I situate this play in the history of recent performances of Bacchae and their connection with feminist movements (Fusillo, Sampatakakis, Perris), while analyzing the explicit references to the protests against male violence in Mexico in 2019. Among the feminist banners carried by the bacchants, I focus on the one reciting “todos somos Baco”, and I connect this with the bacchants’ final display of autonomous agency: the physical assault of the author himself, Euripides.