#Quarantined Bacchae

[aimee-maroux]

Plato-nic Love (Part I)

I sadly didn’t finish the whole story in time but this is part one of Seren and Plato’s epic love story for the ages XD

Illustrations were done by the wonderful @sigeel​ 😍😍😍

So this submission is by the two of us!

Plato-nic Love

Seren poured a libation of wine and started working on the grapevine that had been growing in the family garden for a while. At first, her mother had tried to get rid of it but it had proven the essence of indestructable life and so they had accepted its presence much like Seren had come to accept the presence of its patron god. She was about to cut off a branch to use for making a crown later on when she heard a familiar voice. "How is my favourite bacchae?" She sighed. It had been about a year since she had agreed to become his faithful follower and needless to say she was still the only one. "Do you know what day it is?" Seren started frantically going through all the calendars she had studied, from the reconstructed Attic calendar to the Roman calendar before and after the Julian reform -what moon phase were they in again? "You always think we don't care about these things but I have a sursprise for you." Dionysos flashed her a bright smile. "What?" she said flatly. A surprise from a god couldn't possibly mean anything good.

"I SAID: I have a SURPRISE for you!" Confetti and flower petals started raining down on them and from above sounded a rustic melody played on pan pipes. Seren looked up to see Hermes sitting on a treebranch, grinning as he played the instrument his son invented. "Ha ha, very funny, Hermes." Dionysos took Seren by the shoulders. "He was supposed to play the Time Warp. Because it's exactly ONE YEAR TODAY that you became my bacchae and do I have a surprise for you!" "Yeah, you said so. But maybe it would be better if-" "Nonsense! As your patron god I am exceedingly generous. You see, I have noticed your infatuation with Plato." "You don't say." "Yes. Anyway, Hermes was so nice to pay grandfather Kronos a visit and relieve him of a little artef- well, details, it doesn't matter! What is important is that you will get to meet Plato!" "Really?!" There was a nagging voice in Seren's head that told her to be careful but Dionysos had just told her she'd get to meet Plato! "Really. All you have to do is take my hand. But I have another gift for you. Hermes, come down here!" The messenger god swung himself lazily from the tree and floated down until his winged sandals touched the ground. "My brother pointed out that you might have difficulties speaking ancient Greek fluently so he will grant you the ability to speak it like a native for as long as you give up your native English." Seren gaped. "That... is surprisingly thoughtful of you." "Hermes, do it! And no nonsense like giving her a lisp or a foreign accent!" "Of course not. Why would I do that?" Hermes grinned at Seren. "I'd not even be there to see it." "What? Now? Wait!" Seren cried out as divine magic rearranged the synapses in her speech centre. "I did not agree-" "She'll speak fluently once you arrive in Greece," Hermes said, "Once you return, the magic wears off." Dionysos gave his brother a suspicious look. Then he beamed. "Perfect!" Dionysos clapped enthusiastically. "Hold on tight!" He pulled her into his embrace and Seren instinctively hugged him. The world around them began to blur and the heavens seemed to turn back as they sped through time and space. There was a sudden jolt and the world was clear once again. Only, it looked strange. But not strange enough for Seren not to recognise her patron god had spoken the truth. This was ancient Athens! She felt a nasty queasiness but she was much too excited to care about that just now. She had known about polychromy but the sheer explosion of colours in the city made her heart sing. The reconstructions were mere shadows of the vibrant paint on the statues, buildings, and clothes. And the Akropolis! It looked majestic even now but the ruins were nothing compared to the magnificence of colour and architecture. Seren stood in awe, even though they were miles away down in a sidestreet. Potters had laid out their painted vases and other works as they created new ones. Seren couldn't decide what to see first, jumping this way and that until the unsavoury sound of regurgitation briefly diverted her attention. Dionysos leaned against the mudbrick wall of a house and puked his guts out. "How can you be so chipper?" Dionysos groaned, wiping his mouth. "You're mortal!" We travelled both time AND space. You should be barfing like a youth at his first symposion." But Seren just ignored him in her euphoria. "It's Athens!" she cried. "ANCIENT Athens!" "That fleet-foorted son of a-" "What? What is it?!" "Nothing, nothing. Everything is fine. I just..." Dionysos leaned against the mudbrick house. "Hermes could have said something about the inconvenience of travelling." Seren shrugged. Who cared, they were already there. "I want to see EVERYTHING!!! The sculptures! The pottery! The architecture! The clothes..." "Speaking of which..." Dionysos grinned. "We should get you something less 2020. If you want to meet Plato, we need a certain disguise. And you want to look your best for him, right?" Seren screwed up her face. "Plato isn't about looks. He's about the beauty of the soul." "Well, if you want to go dressed in that tasteless pink sweater and leggings combination. But let me tell you, nothing looks better on a woman than a finely woven chiton." "Yeah, you're not at all biased." "It's one of the few things even Apollo and I agree on, so it must be true." Seren would have been happy just roaming the streets of ancient Athens for a couple of days. Or for however long this time thingy would allow. The prospect of meeting Plato both exhilarated and terrified her.

Dionysos bought her an elegant chiton in the extremely crowded agora. Seren hardly suppressed a squeal when he paid with real ancient drachmae. Only they didn't look ancient at all. "Why is nobody staring?" she asked, as another group of people walked past them without paying them any mind. "Did you put glamour over my modern clothes?" Dionysos laughed. "No need, honeybee. This is Athens. At a time like this they get tourists from all over the world. One strange, foreign costume is not going to turn any heads." He pulled her away from the merchants and splendour of the agora into the entrance of a seemingly abandoned house. "Put it on," he said, handing her the chiton. "Don't peek!" she reminded him before she changed into her new garment. It felt cool and pleasant on her skin and the quality of the linen was indeed fantastic. Despite the loose fit the fabric was so delicate it hugged her figure in an almost revealing way, making her feel exposed. "Is this really acceptable dress?" she asked. "Only with this worn over it." Dionysos came up behind her, closing another layer of cloth over her shoulders with simple dress pins. "You look great, honeybee," he said sincerely. "Plato can consider himself lucky. You got the brains, you got the looks, and even that austere, joyless personality to match." "I get the impression you don't like Plato much." Dionysos slung the belt around her waist and fastened it. "What gave it away? My graffiti, my groaning everytime you bring him up, or the charming way I speak about him?" "The graffiti was a pretty obvious hint." "I hope you appreciate my gift all the more, honeybee." "I do." She smiled. "But I don't think I could appreciate it any more than I already do. This is a dream come true. The most exciting day of my life. More exciting even than Delphi." "Be careful not to tell Apollo," Dionysos warned but he looked pleased. "Sure. If I ever run into him I'll remember it." As they stepped outside, the streets were empty. "Where is everybody?" "Oh, it must be time to crown the victors." "Victors? Of what? It's too cold to be July, isn't it?" "Not the Panathenaic Games." Dionysos smiled broadly. "It's not an athletic contest. Today..." He made a dramatic pause. "Is the last day of the Great Dionysia!" "Oh." Seren was disappointed. "So we can't go and watch any of the plays?" "I'm afraid it is too late for that. But I can show you my theatre and the temple with my cult image if you want."

Seren politely admired the simple wooden log that was supposed to be a representation of Dionysos and genuinely marvelled at the masks that had been dedicated below it. She patiently listened to Dionysos as he recounted the story of the very first Dionysia in Athens and how he used to mingle among the crowd every year to watch what the people of Athens had put on the stage in his honour. Once they arrived at the theatre it was already empty but it was a stunning sight all the same. Seeing everything intact and in its full glory filled Seren with unknown joy. The decorations, both permanent and temporary, were as colourful and flamboyant as the god they honoured. When they made it back to the streets of Athens, there were already groups of shouty drunk people roaming about. "Victory parties," Dionysos explained when he saw Seren's face. "In fact, we are about to attend one too. But first..." A purple mist shrouded the god's body and when it dispelled, his simple chiton had given way to a slutty ankle-length skirt that hung low enough to expose part of his bum cheeks, his arms, wrists, and ankles adorned with golden jewellery. "I know you practiced with the aulos. You're gonna be a flute girl." Seren startled. "What? No! I'm not nearly good enough!" Dionysos shrugged, making his golden bracelets clink. "I don't think I need to tell you that other kinds of women are not allowed at symposia. Unless you want to play the role of a hetaira..." "F-Flute girl is fine."

They arrived at a house that obviously belonged to someone well-to-do. "A group of revellers is about to show up here any minute. We'll join them to enter the symposion. Trust me, they're too drunk to realise we don't belong." Seren nodded nervously. "Now would be the time to ditch that respectable dress." Reluctantly, Seren freed herself of the protective extra layer of clothing and received the aulos flutes Dionysos handed her. The revellers did indeed show up. Loud and obnoxious, it was impossible not to notice them. A man in his late 20s or early 30s led the group. Half-naked and well into his cups, crowned with a wreath of ivy and violets, he was all but carried by two sturdy lads who looked like they were half-naked professionally. "Come!" Dionysos tugged on her arm and they danced along, she awkwardly, he with a grace and confidence she envied. The leader of the group pounded against the door and yelled for "Agathon". Seren's heart skipped a beat. "Is that... Alkibiades?!" she whispered to Dionysos. "The very same." "We are at THAT Symposium?!!" "We most certainly are." Seren gaped at the man who would eventually be the ruin of Athens by defecting to Sparta and then to Persia. He rattled the door, shouting "Agathon!" and dropped his single piece of clothing in the process, quickly picked up by his lads. Seren shrieked when the man suddenly leaned heavily on her, his arms reeling for support. Dionysos was quick to jump to his other side, taking most of the load off his bacchae. "AGATHON!" Alkibiades yelled once more, in the manner drunks yelled on their way home from the pub after closing hours. He kept demanding to see Agathon with a heavy tongue until a servant boy finally opened up and led them to the andron. Alkibiades managed to stand on his own, stumbling towards the host of the party while announcing how completely and utterly wasted he was. "Let's bring the bacchic spirit to this lame party!" Dionysos cheered. Seren gazed around with stars in her eyes. The room was bright with torches and the klinai were populated by men both young and old but all shirtless and all with crowns of ivy on their heads. She looked more closely at the guests while Alkibiades spoke to Agathon, probably congratulating him for his victory. But none of the symposiasts looked like any of the artworks she had seen of Plato. They were most likely created after his death anyway. "Soooo..." She leaned on Dionysos' shoulder. "Where is Plato?" Dionysos gestured at the kline at the very end of the room, occupied by two young men. "The dark-haired one."

"THAT is Plato?! I thought he'd be at least in his 30s!" Dionysos grinned a smug grin. "He wrote the Symposion in his late 30s. But this, honeybee, is the year the titular symposion actually took place. The first year of the 91st Olympiad. Or, as you would say, 416 BCE." Seren gaped at the young man seated on a couch with a blond youth. He had long, curly hair crowned with a wreath of ivy like all the symposiasts, young and old. A strong, Greek nose gave his face a distinct personality. Who would have thought the man Seren knew only from his words and artwork showing him as an old man could be so... hot. The blonde guy leaned over, whispering something to him. Maybe they were flirting. It wasn't anything unusual back in the day, Seren knew that. But they seemed to be about the same age. Shouldn't- "Play, flute girl," Dionysos nudged her with his elbow, "I'll clear the kline for you."

Seren watched him shimmy over to the pair and tried to remember how to play the aulos. She had practiced so much but right now it felt as if she knew nothing at all. Her idol, Plato, might be listening! Her cheeks burned as she blew into the wooden instrument, the tune an embarrassing version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Despite playing the role of a dancer, Dionysos sat down with the two no doubt aristocratic young men in his usual impudent manner. The blond youth's face turned sour. "What is the meaning of this?" "I came for the entertainment." "We are very well entertained by each other's company, thank you." Dionysos gave the blonde guy a cheeky grin. "Does your company agree?" He crawled on the kline until he basically sat on Plato's lap, prompting the young philosopher to blush. How cute! "Some people can be such a dull affair, talking about nothing but themselves all the time." The angry blond yanked Dionysos off Plato. "This was a philosophical symposion before you arrived!" "Yes. And to shame! You are celebrating a victory at the Dionysia. Where is the revelry?" "There are countless symposia all over Athens. Why did you have to come and ruin this one?" "You know exactly that I didn't ruin anything. But please, if you have any grievances take it up with my master. Alkibiades." "You know what? I will!" The blond aristocrat got up from the kline and grabbed Dionysos by the wrist, effectively pulling him off the kline. He dragged the god behind him as he made for the door, leaving Plato all alone on his bed of colourful cushions. Dionysos winked at her as they passed and it was at that moment that Seren noticed that his "friend" was the only one wearing laurel instead of ivy. Did they just... cock-block Apollon? But not all is lost, she reasoned, if Plato likes Apollon, he likes blondes, right? Right?

Shyly, Seren sat down next to the man whose teachings she still hadn't figured out. And maybe neither did he. He was so young and handsome. She was close enough to smell his heavy perfume and either oil or sweat or both made his chest gleam in the firelight. It really was quite hot in here. He didn't fit the stereotype of the philosopher at all, being so young and handsome and quite brawny. But no matter how hot he was, his physical appearance was dwarfed by the beauty of his brain and thoughts. His intelligence was that much hotter. That being said, Seren liked to think she would be less flustered if the man were old enough to be her father. But he was not. He must be about her own age. "We got rid of the other flute girl." "Wa-What?" "You must know there were already celebrations with heavy drinking last night. Surely you played at Alkibiades' place or some other house?" Seren nodded timidly. "So Pausanias suggested we refrain from drinking tonight and we ended up sending away the flute girl as well. A shame, because before you came in, it was all boring speeches of the old men assembled here. I enjoy the delightful harmony of music much, much more." "You don't like philosophy?" "Of course I do, but not at a drinking party celebrating the Dionysia. You're not from here, are you?" "Ahm, no?" "I don't think I've met a Spartan flute girl. Most of them come from Peiraieús." Seren laughed nervously. What the fuck, Hermes?! "I hope it's not a problem?" she mumbled. "No, no. I'm just surprised. Do you have a name, dear?" "I... I am Seren." "Seiren? What a fitting nickname! My name is-" "I know who you are!" Seren gushed, "I-I-I admire you greatly, Plato!" "Oh?" To Seren's great relief he smiled. "So you have seen me compete?" "Uh, yes, of course!" Seren would be thrilled to see him at any competition, really. "It's just a silly name my wrestling coach gave me. To intimidate my rivals, he says." "I like it!" "You like my broad shoulders, Seiren?" Seren blushed. "No, that's not what I, uh..." "It's all right. Lots of women admire them." "Ahahaha." Was he flirting with her? Or just bragging? "You may be an outstanding athlete," she said, "But I admire your words even more." "My poetry?" Now it was his time to blush. "Did you play it?" "Not yet." Seren decided to be bold, "People want to hear the same songs, Sappho, Pindar and the like. But... But maybe you can teach me how to play yours?" "No I... I burned them all." "Why would you do that?" "I wanted to focus better on my studies. Maybe I made the wrong call. Mousaios, the guy who just left? He said music is like medicine and can create harmony between opposites, that a musical education is helpful in the study of philosophy. Ah, I don't know. I don't want to bore you, flute girl." "You're not boring me, Plato. Please, tell me your thoughts!" And then, all of a sudden, a large drunken group walked into the room and joined the party, Dionysos among them. There was noise everywhere, and Plato leaned in very close and asked: "What do you say, Seiren. Shall we make our excuses and leave?"

to be continued...

[saltee-coffee]

tonight i am throwing a private bacchanal and by “private bacchanal” i mean just me getting myself drunk on rhubarb wine and waxing philosophical while dancing on my porch to Dinner & Diatribes by Hozier

[aimee-maroux]

Me, trying to make the deadline

Another short snippet:

"You look great, flut girl," Dionysos said sincerely. "Plato can consider himself lucky. You got the brains, you got the looks, and even that austere, joyless personality to match." "I get the impression you don't like Plato much." Dionysos slung the belt around her waist and fastened it. "What gave it away? My graffiti, my groaning everytime you bring him up, or the charming way I speak about him?" "The graffiti was a pretty obvious hint."

Hello, honeybees!

We do hope you’re all well and safe at home, and that your only problem, at the moment, is how to kill boredom while stuck at home… And on this mattere, Worry not, we’re here to provide you some well needed distraction!

We thought of setting up an ART CONTEST.

You have a month of time, if you’d like, to draw a fanart or write a fanfiction about our characters. Gods, human, corgis… Let your mind be free! We’ll choose one winner for each social, that will be rewarded for their fantasy with a free ebook of one of our chapter of their choice (Chapter 1, 2 or 3). The end deadline is the 25th of April!

RULES:

No offensive contents: no racism, pedophilia, rape, homophobia, fatphobia. (Criticism about them is fine: just, mind the readers/viewers)

1 winner will be chosen by us on each social media we’re in. Eventual double entries won’t be considered (the first one posted will be the only valid one)

Writings and Drawings will have the same value, we’ll look at concepts, not only at techique.

Our characters should be the focus. Gods, humans, corgis… But we accept headcanons, AUs, crossovers, whatever you want. plato counts as character, of course.

Tag us on the photo, not only in the caption! and use the hashtag #QuarantinedBacchae

Deadline is at 23:59 GMT+1 (paris, rome, berlin) of the 25th of April. Each work submitted after that won’t be considered for the contest (but of course we’ll be happy to see it!)

And now, let your imagination run free and sharpen your pencils! We do hope you’ll find all this funny, and we can’t wait to see and read everything that you will create! <3

[uomo-accattivante]

Fantastic (but long) article about Theater of War’s recent productions, including Oedipus the King and Antigone in Ferguson, featuring Oscar Isaac. The following are excerpts. The full article is viewable via the source link below:

Excerpt:

“Children of Thebes, why are you here?” Oscar Isaac asked. His face filled the monitor on my dining table. (It was my partner’s turn to use the desk.) We were a couple of months into lockdown, just past seven in the evening, and a few straggling cheers for essential workers came in through the window. Isaac was looking smoldery with a quarantine beard, a gold chain, an Airpod, and a black T-shirt. His display name was set to “Oedipus.”

Isaac was one of several famous actors performing Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King” from their homes, in the first virtual performance by Theater of War Productions: a group that got its start in 2008, staging Sophocles’ “Ajax” and “Philoctetes” for U.S. military audiences and, beginning in 2009, on military installations around the world, including in Kuwait, Qatar, and Guantánamo Bay, with a focus on combat trauma. After each dramatic reading, a panel made up of people in active service, veterans, military spouses, and/or psychiatrists would describe how the play resonated with their experiences of war, before opening up the discussion to the audience. Since its founding, Theater of War Productions has addressed different kinds of trauma. It has produced Euripides’ “The Bacchae” in rural communities affected by the opioid crisis, “The Madness of Heracles” in neighborhoods afflicted by gun violence and gang wars, and Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Bound” in prisons. “Antigone in Ferguson,” which focusses on crises between communities and law enforcement, was motivated by an analogy between Oedipus’ son’s unburied body and that of Michael Brown, left on the street for roughly four hours after Brown was killed by police; it was originally performed at Michael Brown’s high school.

Now, with trauma roving the globe more contagiously than ever, Theater of War Productions had traded its site-specific approach for Zoom. The app was configured in a way I hadn’t seen before. There were no buttons to change between gallery and speaker view, which alternated seemingly by themselves. You were in a “meeting,” but one you were powerless to control, proceeding by itself, with the inexorability of fate. There was no way to view the other audience members, and not even the group’s founder and director, Bryan Doerries, knew how numerous they were. Later, Zoom told him that it had been fifteen thousand. This is roughly the seating capacity of the theatre of Dionysus, where “Oedipus the King” is believed to have premièred, around 429 B.C. Those viewers, like us, were in the middle of a pandemic: in their case, the Plague of Athens.

The original audience would have known Oedipus’ story from Greek mythology: how an oracle had predicted that Laius, the king of Thebes, would be killed by his own son, who would then sleep with his mother; how the queen, Jocasta, gave birth to a boy, and Laius pierced and bound the child’s ankles, and ordered a shepherd to leave him on a mountainside. The shepherd took pity on the maimed baby, Oedipus (“swollen foot”), and gave him to a Corinthian servant, who handed him off to the king and queen of Corinth, who raised him as their son. Years later, Oedipus killed Laius at a crossroads, without knowing who he was. Then he saved Thebes from a Sphinx, became the king of Thebes, had four children with Jocasta, and lived happily for many years.

That’s where Sophocles picks up the story. Everyone would have known where things were headed—the truth would come out, and Oedipus would blind himself—but not how they would get there. How Sophocles got there was by drawing on contemporary events, on something that was in everyone’s mind, though it doesn’t appear in the original myth: a plague.

In the opening scene, Thebes is in the grip of a terrible epidemic. Oedipus’ subjects come to the palace, imploring him to save the city, describing the scene of pestilence and panic, the screaming and the corpses in the street. Something about the way Isaac voiced Oedipus’ response—“Children. I am sorry. I know”—made me feel a kind of longing. It was a degree of compassion conspicuous by its absence in the current Administration. I never think of myself as someone who wants or needs “leadership,” yet I found myself thinking, We would be better off with Oedipus. “I would be a weak leader if I did not follow the gods’ orders,” Isaac continued, subverting the masculine norm of never asking for advice. He had already sent for the best information out there, from the Delphic Oracle.

Soon, Oedipus’ brother-in-law, Creon—John Turturro, in a book-lined study—was doing his best to soft-pedal some weird news from Delphi. Apparently, the oracle said that the plague wouldn’t end until the people of Thebes expelled Laius’ killer: a person who was somehow still in the city, even though Laius had died many years earlier on an out-of-town trip. Oedipus called in the blind prophet, Tiresias, played by Jeffrey Wright, whose eyes were invisible behind a circular glare in his eyeglasses.

Reading “Oedipus” in the past, I had always been exasperated by Tiresias, by his cryptic lamentations—“I will never reveal the riddles within me, or the evil in you”—and the way he seemed incapable of transmitting useful information. Spoken by a Black actor in America in 2020, the line made a sickening kind of sense. How do you tell the voice of power that the problem is in him, really baked in there, going back generations? “Feel free to spew all of your vitriol and rage in my direction,” Tiresias said, like someone who knew he was in for a tweetstorm.

Oedipus accused Tiresias of treachery, calling out his disability. He cast suspicion on foreigners, and touted his own “wealth, power, unsurpassed skill.” He decried fake news: “It’s all a scam—you know nothing about interpreting birds.” He elaborated a deep-state scenario: Creon had “hatched a secret plan to expel me from office,” eliciting slanderous prophecies from supposedly disinterested agencies. It was, in short, a coup, designed to subvert the democratic will of the people of Thebes.

Frances McDormand appeared next, in the role of Jocasta. Wearing no visible makeup, speaking from what looked like a cabin somewhere with wood-panelled walls, she resembled the ghost of some frontierswoman. I realized, when I saw her, that I had never tried to picture Jocasta: not her appearance, or her attitude. What was her deal? How had she felt about Laius maiming their baby? How had she felt about being offered as a bride to whomever defeated the Sphinx? What did she think of Oedipus when she met him? Did it never seem weird to her that he was her son’s age, and had horrible scars on his ankles? How did they get along, those two?

When you’re reading the play, you don’t have to answer such questions. You can entertain multiple possibilities without settling on one. But actors have to make decisions and stick to them. One decision that had been made in this case: Oedipus really liked her. “Since I have more respect for you, my dear, than anyone else in the world,” Isaac said, with such warmth in “my dear.” I was reminded of the fact that Euripides wrote a version of “Oedipus”—lost to posterity, like the majority of Greek tragedies—that some scholars suggest foregrounds the loving relationshipbetween Oedipus and Jocasta.

Jocasta’s immediate task was to defuse the potentially murderous argument between her husband and her brother. She took one of the few rhetorical angles available to a woman: why, such grown men ought to be ashamed of themselves, carrying on so when there was a plague going on. And yet, listening to the lines that McDormand chose to emphasize, it was clear that, in the guise of adult rationality and spreading peace, what she was actually doing was silencing and trivializing. “Come inside,” she said, “and we’ll settle this thing in private. And both of you quit making something out of nothing.” It was the voice of denial, and, through the play, you could hear it spread from character to character.

By this point in the performance, I found myself spinning into a kind of cognitive overdrive, toggling between the text and the performance, between the historical context, the current context, and the “universal” themes. No matter how many times you see it pulled off, the magic trick is always a surprise: how a text that is hundreds or thousands of years old turns out to be about the thing that’s happening to you, however modern and unprecedented you thought it was.

Excerpt:

The riddle of the Sphinx plays out in the plot of “Oedipus,” particularly in a scene near the end where the truth finally comes out. Two key figures from Oedipus’ infancy are brought in for questioning: the Theban shepherd, who was supposed to kill baby Oedipus but didn’t; and the Corinthian messenger to whom he handed off the maimed child. The Theban shepherd is walking proof that the Sphinx’s riddle is hard, because that man can’t recognize anyone: not the Corinthian, whom he last saw as a young man, and certainly not Oedipus, a baby with whom he’d had a passing acquaintance decades earlier. “It all took place so long ago,” he grumbles. “Why on earth would you ask me?”

“Because,” the Corinthian (David Strathairn) explained genially on Zoom, “this man whom you are now looking at was once that child.”

This, for me, was the scene with the catharsis in it. At a certain point, the shepherd (Frankie Faison) clearly understood everything, but would not or could not admit it. Oedipus, now determined to learn the truth at all costs, resorted to enhanced interrogation. “Bend back his arms until they snap,” Isaac said icily; in another window, Faison screamed in highly realistic agony. Faison was a personification of psychological resistance: the mechanism a mind develops to protect itself from an unbearable truth. Those invisible guardsmen had to nearly kill him before he would admit who had given him the baby: “It was Laius’s child, or so people said. Your wife could tell you more.”

Tears glinted in Isaac’s eyes as he delivered the next line, which I suddenly understood to be the most devastating in the whole play: “Did . . . she . . . give it to you?” How had I never fully realized, never felt, how painful it would have been for Oedipus to realize that his parents hadn’t loved him?

Excerpt:

If we borrow the terms of Greek drama, 2020 might be viewed as the year of anagnorisis: tragic recognition. On August 9th, the sixth anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, I watched the Theater of War Productions put on a Zoom production of “Antigone in Ferguson”: an adaptation of Sophocles’ “Oedipus” narrative sequel, with the chorus represented by a demographically and ideologically diverse gospel choir. Oscar Isaac was back, this time as Creon, Oedipus’ successor as king. He started out as a bullying inquisitor (“I will have your extremities removed one by one until you reveal the criminal’s name”), ordering Antigone (Tracie Thoms) to be buried alive, insulting everyone who criticized him, and accusing Tiresias of corruption. But then Tiresias, with the help of the chorus, persuaded Creon to reconsider. In a sustained gospel number, the Thebans, armed with picks and shovels, led by their king, rushed to free Antigone.

“Antigone” being a tragedy, they got there too late, resulting in multiple deaths, and in Isaac’s once again totally losing his shit. It was almost the same performance he gave in “Oedipus,” and yet, where Oedipus begins the play written into a corner, between walls that keep closing in, Creon seems to have just a little more room to maneuver. His misfortune—like that of Antigone and her brother—feels less irreversible. I first saw “Antigone in Ferguson” live, last year, and, in the discussion afterward, the subject of fate—inevitably—came up. I remember how Doerries gently led the audience to view “Antigone” as an illustration of how easily everything might happen differently, and how people’s minds can change. I remember the energy that spread through the room that night, in talk about prison reform and the urgency of collective change.

###

Again, the full article is accessible via the source link below:

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Quarantine Book Club - 2021 Reading List!

I asked for your recommendations, and you gave them! 

Below is a list of my selections for this year, in no particular order:

The Reluctant Empress by Brigitte Hamann

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik

Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemison

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison

Circe by Madeline Miller

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

Perfect Rhythm by Jae 

Spellbreaker by Charlie N. Holmberg

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Sunstone by Stjepan Sejic

Birth of the Bacchae by Stephanie Mirro

Some of these I’ve already started, or have had on my shelf for ages and am DETERMINED to read this year. Others are pulled straight from the suggestions you sent in! (If you don’t see your suggestion on this list, don’t despair! This is just my first batch-- if I finish this list before the end of 2021, I’ll go back for round two.)

I’ll share my thoughts on each book as I finish reading, starting with the graphic novel Sunstone (which I just binged). I’ll announce the next book at the end of each post, along with a goodreads link, so that you can read along with me if you like! 

First Up: Sunstone by Stjepan Sejic (warning: sexual and mature themes)

[thelastbacchae]

@theunstoppablepeppercrab  replied to your post “Hello, honeybees! We do hope you’re all well and...”

do we have to rb this with the entry like Aimee did?

No, you can just post your entry in an original post! Insert the tag "quarantined bacchae” so that we’ll be able to check it, and tag us if you like. Can’t wait to see/read your entry! :D