IN BRIEF

“To Bacchize means to experience a kind of religious experience,
the experience of communion with the god,
and it transforms a human being into a Bacchant.”
E. R. Dodds

Elena Mavridou presents Euripides’ *The Bacchae* as a contemporary dramatized visual-musical performance rooted in tradition, embodied by a quartet of actors.

What remains in the end for the audience and the characters when the music stops and we are called to reflect on the human deadlock of our existence? Is Dionysus alive today?

With these questions and more, Elena Mavridou engages, aiming at a powerful interpretation of Euripides’ text and its physicality.

Dionysus here is a voice. A voice within us that connects us to our primal instincts. A Dionysus who transforms Pentheus, who transforms the world around him.

The worship of Dionysus is the union with the primal force.

The director utilizes the expressiveness of the body, shadow theatre figures, and the sounds of the lyra and daouli to create a unique soundscape, managing not only to embody Euripides’ work physically but also to gradually lead the audience into an exploration of their own Bacchic experience, as well as “the feeling of possession by some foreign personality that the chorus often creates in the dancers” (E. R. Dodds).