The Theatre of Dionysus

Euripides, The Bakkhai (405 BCE). In Corrigan. This backstory might help!
Also Read, Wiles chapters 1 and 2



Assignment: Bring in pieces of clothing or accoutrement that read very feminine (if you are already wearing such items, just bring one or more additional items unless you can take it off).

Reading response:
1.  Who in the play is most “unreasonable.” Who most "reasonable." Why? Is there a clear sense of right and wrong? If so, what is it? If not, what does that imply?

2. If you had to be a human character in this play in real life, which would you be? Why?

3. If you have sympathy for Pentheus, say why. If sympathy for Dionysus, say why. If lack of sympathy for Agave, say why. In other words, craft a reading response that parses your sympathies.


This image above is a photo of a pillar at the side of a Temple of Dionysus on the isle of Delos. The phallus is one symbol of Dionysus. Notice the cock on the side, an allusion, most probably, to cockfighting. On another side of the pillar are images of Dionysus's followers. This is one of two phallic pillars that stand of either side of a temple platform where a statue to Dionysus stood. The southern pillar pictured here, was erected ca. 300 BCE to celebrate a winning theatrical performance. The statue of Dionysus was originally flanked by statues of two actors. The marble stage at the site is a rebuilding of an older one, undertaken shortly after 300 BCE.



Some links to check out:

• Satyr Play
• Interesting read:  Riding the Phallus for Dionysus

Did You Know? Theatre/Coinage

Sometime in the first millennium BC, coinage was invented in Asia Minor, and it rapidly spread throughout the Mediterranean. The invention is attributed to Lydia but it quickly became a Greek affair in or around 600 BC. (On the birth of coinage see Mundell.) Wherever Greeks settled coinage followed ...and so did, around the same time, "theatre." Is this coincidence?  As Jennifer Wise writes in Dionysus Writes: "The rise in the use of coinage just prior to the appearance of drama helped determine that the theatrical stage was, and remains, a mercantile space. [...] As a perennial stage image the coin represents above all the mobility of signs that Derrida describes in Of Grammatology, and one that is integral to the kinds of stories that the Western theatre has told since its beginning" (2000, pg. 181).

Offerings made before the image of Dionysus: Attic vase from Campania, 5th cent. BC

Maenads with Dionysus as a bull, one of his principal animal forms

Bakkhai production clips

• Scottish National Theatre Bacchae
• Second Life Bacchae
• Brazilian production, 2017, by Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona, (warning nudity)
  
• Trailer for 2015 Almeida Greeks

Images and links that will help with the in-class lecture follow below.


Above: komast cup, featuring padded male dancers. 575 BCE. Click to enlarge.

Above is a photograph of an Attic vase picturing Pentheus being torn apart by Agave and Ino.

The Theatre of Dionysus as seen from one of the caves in the hillside of the Acropolis.


Above, the orchestra. Below, choristers who would have danced in the orchestra.



Click on the map  to enlarge or click on the word map here to go to an interactive version. If you click there on the Acropolis or the Agora you can see greater detail.
The point is to check out the linked location of the theatre of Dionysus in relationship to the Agora (the market) and the Pnyx - the site of the democratic legislature, the Athenian ekklesia (assembly).

In these images of the Pnyx, you can see the Acropolis from the Bema. The flat stone platform is the Bema, the "stepping stone" or speakers' platform. As such, the Pnyx is the material embodiment of the principle of isēgoria (Greek: ισηγορία), "equal speech", i.e. the equal right of every citizen to debate matters of policy. The architectures of theatre, assembly, and market are linked. We'll discuss this in class.

Also check out the Getty exhibition for images.

View Ancient Greek Theaters in a larger map

Additional recommendation: Barbara Kowalzig, "And Now All the World Shall Dance!"" Dionysus' Choroi Between Drama and Ritual." In The Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and Beyond, ed. Erik Csapo and Margaret C. Miller. Cambridge University Press, 2007: 221-246.

Another additional recommendation, though not about The Bakkhai, watch (or rewatch) the video Antigone in Ferguson for an attempt to update a "classic" in light of contemporary events. Think about the chorus.