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About The Bacchae

Dionysus, son of Zeus, seeks vengeance on Thebes, the city of his birth and site of his mortal mother Semele's cruel and horrible death. Leading his army of women into the surrounding mountain glens, Dionysus casts a spell on the city's females, who abandon their husbands and fathers in order to engage in forbidden revels. When the young and highly repressive king Pentheus discovers that his own mother Agave has given herself over to this upstart god of wine and erotic joy, he declares a state of war, despite the very stern warnings of Cadmus, the former king and the famed prophet Teiresias. Incredibly, Dionysus' unarmed women defeat Pentheus' formidable royal army. When the king meets the god in a face-to-face confrontation, the result takes on a horrible logic all its own. Hitting the voyeuristically inclined young king where it hurts, Dionysus lures him into the glens where, at the very site Semele's destruction, he is seduced into disguising himself as a woman in order to watch the forbidden orgies unabated. Unable to resist the sexual lure of the Maenads' holy eroticism, Pentheus attempts to join in only to be torn, literally limb from limb, by the frenzied Bacchae. The following morning, Cadmus discovers the terrible aftermath: the still-raving Agave dancing through the woods, her dead son's head clutched in her hands. Now joined by Teiresias, the former king forces his daughter back to her senses and the horrifying realization that not only is her son dead, but that Agave herself was "amongst his butchers."

About JoAnne Akalaitis

Theatre director and writer JoAnne Akalaitis is the winner of five Obie Awards for direction (and sustained achievement) and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York. She has staged works by Euripides, Shakespeare, Strindberg, Schiller, Beckett, Genet, Williams, Philip Glass, Janacek, and her own work at Lincoln Center Theatre, New York City Opera, Goodman Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, American Repertory Theatre, Court Theatre, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and The Guthrie Theater. She is the former artistic director of the New York Shakespeare Festival and was artist in residence at the Court Theatre. Ms. Akalaitis was the Andrew Mellon Co-chair of the Directing Program at Juilliard School, and is currently the Wallace Benjamin Flint and L. May Hawver Flint Professor of Theater at Bard College. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants, Edwin Booth Award, Rosamund Gilder Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre, and Pew Charitable Trusts National Theatre Artist Residency Program grant.

The Public Theater at Stanford

The Public Theater at Stanford, a collaboration between Stanford University and the Public Theater, creates new theatrical works, supports emerging and established artists, cultivates new audiences, and fosters innovation and diversity in the arts at Stanford and in the American theater industry. The residency program provides support to groundbreaking artists by bringing them to Stanford's campus to workshop plays currently under development at The Public. Playwrights engage with students, faculty, and community members through a robust series of discussions, workshops, and other special events. The partnership includes a co-commissioning program to invigorate the American theater by creating a steady and vibrant stream of new work and a fellowship program aimed to increase diversity in the arts by offering career development in the theater industry for undergraduates and post-graduates affiliated with Stanford's Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA).

The Stanford Arts Initiative

The Stanford/Public Theater Partnership is part of the Stanford Arts Initiative. The Stanford Arts Initiative is re-imagining the way we see, teach, and experience the arts today and the world tomorrow. The initiative builds upon Stanford University's strengths at the intersection of arts, science, and technology, while creating a shared language that bridges cultures and understanding. At the initiative's core, the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SICA) is fueling collaborations between the arts and other disciplines through diverse programs, performances, and campus residencies.

The Public Theater

Founded by Joseph Papp as the Shakespeare Workshop and now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, New York's Public Theater is an American theater in which all the country's voices, rhythms, and cultures converge. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Mara Manus, who is a Stanford alumna, The Public remains dedicated to producing new plays, musicals and productions of Shakespeare and other classics. Over 250,000 people annually attend Public Theater-related events on its many stages -- six at 425 Lafayette Street including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public has won 40 Tony Awards, 135 Obies, 39 Drama Desk Awards and four Pulitzer Prizes.