Bacchae

Text – Direction Lena Kitsopoulou

Set & costume design Magdalini Avgerinou

Music composition Nikos Kypourgos

Lighting design Nikos Vlassopoulos

Assistant to the director Marilena Moschou

Assistant to the set & costume designer Aggeliki Politi

Live video Alexandros Vetoulis

Sound design Kostas Lolos

Cast Stella Vogiatzaki, Lena Kitsopoulou, Dina Mihailidou, Giannis Mparitakis, Thodoris Skyftoulis, Yiorgos Triantafyllidis

Singing Lefteris Pantazis

Photography Lena Kitsopoulou

Production management & executive producer – Evangelos Constas / Constantly Productions

When the new religion arrives to impose itself and Dionysus, in his human form, appears as its spokesperson, the problem is already there in plain sight. Something, unmistakably, has gone wrong. Whenever a religion is enforced, we are no longer speaking of faith but of tyranny, of an atmosphere thick with coercion. That which is imposed should never be called religion – especially when it persuades you that it was your own choice.

When a mother kills her child for the sake of a religion or an ideology; when women scream themselves hoarse for any given leader, desperate to tear the clothes from his body; when, more broadly, women fall in love with a man because of his ideology, or because he stands as the mouthpiece of a party – then we are looking at a profound pathology. All the more so when a mother murders her own child out of devotion to such a figure: an ideologue – missionary – preacher – half-drunk on dogma – who unravels at the first taste of the grape and stumbles over his own words.

Given that, one way or another, a mother may kill her child – or a son his father, if only to avoid being killed by him – perhaps it would be better if parents did not raise children at all. Or at least, that they kept their distance. For the good of humanity.