Who ARE these women?

Pentheus is the protagonist, Dionysus, the deus who is not ex machina, but the play is called The Bacchae. (translation: The Women who follow Bacchus). After nearly 6 weeks of rehearsing, we were still asking, “Why?”  And now we’re getting answers!

Along the way, that question prompted lots of other interesting questions: "Is this like that play all about a guy named Brutus but the play is called Julius Caesar?" "Is this play actually about the women?" "Was Euripides sympathetic to the women?” “Are these women admirable or wild and scary?”“What does that tell us about Euripides - did he like his women wild and scary?” "What would an ancient audience of made of the title and the women?"

Well, we do know that the ancient Greeks didn’t give the play any awards. Perhaps it received a chilly reception because women in Hellas were thought of as the dark flip side to masculine reason and rationality. The masculine was the rational and virtuous, the feminine was vulnerable, susceptible to irrational passions, and weak. That wasn’t the convention Euripides delivered. And nobody likes having their conventions upended when they go out for a nice morning at the theater.

We don’t know very much about him, but we can definitely say that Euripides wasn’t a conventional poet. Of the nineteen plays we know are his, twelve focus on women who defied the ancient stereotype. His Medea states, "I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once." In all of his plays he took Greek society to task for the value system that had led to the Great Peloponnesian War, including their religious customs. Euripides had an axe to grind and it turns out, we’re still discomforted by his iconoclasm.

In The Bacchae Agave and her sisters are driven mad because of their hypocrisy and lack of piety, but the foreign women following the god don’t seem mad or weak. The conventional women are dangerous and susceptible to madness because of their resistance to anything new.
     The followers of Dionysus sound a little bloodthirsty at times: "shout for joy at the misfortune of Pentheus, the death of the dragon’s offspring!” But is it surprising that these free women would want to resist a return to subjugations with every ounce of their being? In an Athenian male, such an impulse would have been applauded. To this day, the sight of a woman strongly defending her rights prompts pushback - men have “strength of character,” women are “stubborn,” men are blunt and forthright, women who speak plainly with passion are “shrill” or  “pushy” - some things never change.

Meanwhile, the men in the play, Pentheus and Kadmos, while upholding rationality and conventionality, aren’t exactly models of manly Greek excellence. In fact, Euripides makes them illustrations of what is worst in humanity: rigidity, pride, greed, hubris. Their offenses may not seem terrible, but what drives them is what drives men to war and all its horrors.

The Chorus has been working to uncover their character’s natures and motivation. We discussed the mythology behind the play, and listened to Anna (our resident Greek geek) and Zachary Thomas (visiting Greek assistant from St. John’s College) dissect the original text for meaning.

     We took about an hour talking over the original message of the play. We read bits of Dr. Catherine Svehla’s  Euripides’ Women: The Role of the Feminine Other”. "The greater permeability of a woman’s mind kept her closely linked to uncontrollable chthonic forces." “madness is the emblem of the feminine”. Unsurprisingly, our women had some choice things to say about those ancient assumptions. And that led to a more lively sense of what they wanted to convey.  And when the maenads hit the floor again, they seemed to have found their motivation and characters. 

It is the followers of Dionysus who ask the big questions in the play: What is happiness? What is wisdom then? "What is right, that is always what is wanted, what is loved” And they have the most meaningful answers: "Divine power does not answer prayer immediately - it is slow but inexorable," "That person is blessed with a good daemon that, reaching a safe harbor, escapes from the winter frost of a sea storm. Or, faced with hardships, overcomes them. “  "For my own part - I call a person blessed when they live their life without expectation. Finding happiness day by day.” 

The play is more sophisticated that it appeared at first. Euripides is having a meta conversation about origin stories and the narratives we tell ourselves and others to define reality (I think there may be a future post from the director on this subject). And, in a twist that would have been provocative in 450 B.C., he uses women as the religious purveyors of his observations. 

We go into tech week at the Bartell on Monday. Come see us if you can. The play is full of beautiful, chilling, profound passages, all delivered with devotion and attention to detail. It’s been quite a journey - the actors have worked incredibly hard to create a faithful depiction of the age-old truths in this terrible and wonderful tale.