The Bacchae – Brief Review of the Break-up

Among the remaining and preserved Greek tragedies of Euripides, Bacchae stands out due to several reasons – its form and theme, probably the most important one is that Bacchae holds the allusion of the theatre itself  and the fact that they present its hidden power and our civilization knowledge: the power of telling stories.

We can clearly state that Bacchae are the origin of the “metatheatrical” text. This text is a profound riddle for relativity and variability of our identity. A study for recognizing the divine and at the same time reminder that the divine can take many forms which we can neither accept nor recognize.

Bacchae is not a text that clearly reveals the division of protagonist – antagonist, text that draws a line between good and evil, rather reminds us that these opposites are created and formatted by man i.e. the man with his capability of defining and analyzing, is not able to understand the true nature of the apparent reality.

But, probably the most interesting issue we address in our play is: why our identity, instead the values we fight for, is above all constituted “with the other” – the hostility towards the “external enemy”? Is that our way to hide the fact that “the real enemy among us – is ourselves?”; that we are strangers to ourselves and to others, that nothing can sabotage us more than the social barriers we have built between us.

Igor Vuk Torbica, director

* * *

These are not only the Bacchae of Euripides; these are also our bacchae, aware that theatre is the most subversive weapon invented by human mind. It is the theatre that constitutes the public (the audience).  The theatre that has become a place for revising the society and ourselves, the theatre that is not entertainment but theatre that fights. For freedom.

And what freedom does it fight for? The long forgotten one, the one that vanished at the moment man stopped acknowledging anything except for his power.

Biljana Krajchevska, dramaturge