Lena Kitsopoulou Bacchae

One of the sharpest and most unpredictable voices in contemporary Greek theatre, writer and stage director Lena Kitsopoulou combines blunt realism, humour, and existential anxiety to create performances that balance between the personal and the deeply political. 

In her latest work, Kitsopoulou doesn’t offer yet another psychoanalytical interpretation of the Euripidean tragedy. Her approach doesn’t deliver a “Higher” message that would satisfy the audience and grant them the fulfilment of the theatrical experience. Perhaps she only wants to start a celebration around dead-ends, both in the Human world and in the Gods’ realm. 

Director’s note 

When the new religion starts being imposed and Dionysus, in his human form, is presented as its spokesperson, the problem is already visible. It feels like something is wrong when religion, in general, is imposed; it is a junta, an authoritarian act we’re dealing with, and we shouldn’t, in any way, call “religion” something that is imposed, but gives people the impression they chose it. 

When a mother kills her child in the name of religion or ideology; when women fall in love with a man of ideology, with the representative of a party, well, it’s a sickness we’re dealing with; not to mention when they murder their own child out of love for that kind of ideologist-missionary-preacher-alcoholic who cracks with the first bite of grapes and lets sigmas fill his mouth.  

From the moment a mother kills her child or the other way around, from the moment a son kills his father so as not to be killed by him, perhaps it would be better if parents didn’t raise children or didn’t socialise with them that much. For the sake of humanity.