In Rave: The Bacchae of Euripedes -- Remixed, Dionysus and his Bacchae live for the rave.

Hall and Ketai as Dionysus and Agave.

Bacchae Adaptation a Success

By: Bailey Triggs

Posted: 11/10/03

I've decided I want to transfer back to high school, to the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, to be specific. I got to find out first-hand what I was missing when I walked down to the Black Box Theater in the Learning Corridor on Washington St. to watch their production of Rave: The Bacchae of Euripedes - Remixed. Rave is an adaptation by Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts Director and Core Teacher Brian Jennings of the Greek tragedy The Bacchae of Euripedes.

Rave is not your typical high school theater production. (Unless your typical high school theater production was heavy on the fishnets, black lipstick, and rock music, and then perhaps I'd consider transferring to your school too). As Jennings puts it in his director's note in the beginning of the program: "It's not gods and kings and fate. It's punks and jocks and rock and roll."

For those not familiar with The Bacchae of Euripedes, I'll give you a brief e an animal by the delusional Agave (I believe she's his mother in The Bacchae, though she plays the role of Pentheus's girlfriend in Rave), who thinks she is attacking a mountain lion. The moral of the story? Don't mess with the gods.

That's all well and good for a Greek tragedy, but what does it mean for a high school theater production? It means a transformation of Dionysus into the Goth overlord of the rave scene, his faithful Bacchae (dressed as though they went to Hot Topic and bought out the store) as the goth/punks who live for the rave.

Pentheus gets a modern makeover into the star of the basketball team and Agave, his girlfriend, is a cheerleader who gets a rave- worthy makeover after she is seduced into becoming one of the Bacchae.

Twenty students filled out the cast of Rave, and every single one of them gave a great performance. And I'm not talking the condescending great-for-a-high-school-play kind of great; I mean great period. Todd Hall gave an especially captivating performance as the sexually ambivalent, and thoroughly seductive Dionysus, countered nicely by Joey Kamay's bratty, yet hard to hate Pentheus.

Hall and Kamay succeeded in building a tension between their characters that kept the play interesting and left the audience unsure as to how the situation would resolve itself, and more importantly, unsure as to how they would want the situation to resolve itself. Chinaza Uche and Brigid Pasco, playing Kadmos (the injured basketball player) and Teiresius (the team's trainer) respectively, worked well as the characters on the periphery of this battle between the jocks and the ravers; and Pat Donohue O'Sullivan, Bryan Swarmstedt, and Ben Izzo (playing basketball players #12, #9, and #23) were convincing as Pentheus's thuggish jock posse.

Devorah Ketai also gave a stand out performance at the end of the play as the maddened Agave who was tricked into killing her boyfriend by Dionysus.

At the heart of this play were the Bacchae, played by Jane Bradley, Chrissie Bodznick, Kristen Chiucarello, Courtney Fitzgerald, Lauren Francis, Sarah Kronisch, Danielle Meyers, Kyla Ocain, Rachael Oxman, Ariel Rosen-Brown, Kasey Ryan, and Kelley Williams. The Bacchae served as a chorus, setting the mood of the play during their musical interludes.

They performed impressive and often complicated choreography with the large sticks they carried, singing their own words to the tune of popular music from the likes of Jimmy Page, Radiohead, and Nirvana. While the individual performances were impressive, the Bacchae collectively made the show.

You might be asking yourself: "Why the update? If you wanted to put on The Bacchae of Euripedes why don't you just bust out the togas and put on a classical version of it?" Jennings touches on the reasons for his adaptation in his director's note, titled: "Rethinking the high school play ... (a manifesto)."

Jennings believes that the reason the traditional theater audience is growing older and dying off without being replaced by younger audiences is because "We, as theater artists, have abandoned the young audience - more specifically we have abandoned the high school audience."

He goes on to assert: "The scant repertoire that exists for adolescent audiences tends to be incredibly condescending - not the greatest way to earn the respect of the average American teenager."

Rave is far from condescending or moralizing. Neither Dionysus nor Pentheus are decidedly good or evil. You respect Dionysus's argument for freedom for creative self-expression, but you also understand Pentheus's argument about the dangers of illicit substance abuse and letting yourself go too far into the madness of the rave.

Though Dionysus seems like the underdog throughout the play, when he defeats Pentheus in the end, you can't help feeling badly about the outcome. There is no clear answer or easily defined solution at the end of this play, and that's just how Jennings intended it to be. He wrote: "We need plays that speak to the concerns of young adults, without patronizing them, without moralizing, without pretending to have answers they already know we don't have."

Rave was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, and it was clear that the cast was having as much fun, if not more, putting it on than I had watching it. The good news is that you still have a chance to check this play out for yourself.

The production is running next weekend Friday, Nov. 14 and Saturday, Nov. 15 at 7:30 p.m. in The Black Box Theater on Washington St. Tickets are on sale for $5 and you can call and reserve them at the box office (860) 757-6388. Make the call; check it out. And who knows? Maybe I won't be the only one transferring back to high school.Greek tragedy brush-up course. The Bacchae follows the story of the half-man half-god Dionysus and his troop of adoring female worshippers, the Bacchae. Dionysus and his Bacchae are having a grand old time drinking, dancing, and tearing apart animals with their bare hands (sounds like a typical Saturday night here at Trinity), when Pentheus comes along determined to ruin their good time. He doesn't understand how boozing and carousing can bring anyone closer to spiritual enlightenment so he plots to destroy the whole thing. He doesn't believe that Dionysus is part god, a belief that later gets him into some big trouble. The tragedy ends, well, tragically with Pentheus being ripped apart like an animal by the delusional Agave (I believe she's his mother in The Bacchae, though she plays the role of Pentheus's girlfriend in Rave), who thinks she is attacking a mountain lion. The moral of the story? Don't mess with the gods.