The Bacchae In our Time

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seneca2008
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The Bacchae In our Time

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The latest "in our time" is on The Bacchae and is available here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000t6kp

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Euripides' great tragedy, which was first performed in Athens in 405 BC when the Athenians were on the point of defeat and humiliation in a long war with Sparta. The action seen or described on stage was brutal: Pentheus, king of Thebes, is torn into pieces by his mother in a Bacchic frenzy and his grandparents condemned to crawl away as snakes. All this happened because Pentheus had denied the divinity of his cousin Dionysus, known to the audience as god of wine, theatre, fertility and religious ecstasy."

With
Edith Hall
Professor of Classics at King’s College London
Emily Wilson
Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
Rosie Wyles
Lecturer in Classical History and Literature at the University of Kent
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

Post by seanjonesbw »

This was a good one - it's nice when the panelists riff off each other. Melvyn is sounding steadily more knackered and the programme can lose its shape a bit but they did well to keep it focused. Rosie Wyles's bits about costume in particular I thought were interesting. Have you seen any productions using masks? I can't really get my head around how the sound works for the audience when an actor is wearing one.

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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

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This is not the Bacchae, but if you want to hear a performance using antique style masks you'll do little better: https://youtu.be/mdv3vkECqXA
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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

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I think there is a lot of conjecture about how masks work. Some scholars have advanced theories that they could act as resonators and so enabled Actors to produce a variety of effects. The acoustics of Greek theatres were excellent and so audibility would not have been a problem. What is true is that with actors doubling up roles a quick change of mask could produce a seamless performance. From a distance (think of sitting towards the back at Epidaurus as I have done) masks would also enable a ready identification of the roles the actors were playing and it wouldn't have been easy to spot any facial expression for most of the audience had they not worn masks. Metre, song, dance and music would all have combined to produce the emotional effect. This is a different experience to ours conditioned as we are to the "close up". You can find examples of the masks used illustrated on vases although how they were actually constructed is debatable and I suspect it varied over time and from place to place.

Did they use masks in the Persians broadcast some of us watched last year? I can't remember......
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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

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seneca2008 wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:04 pm
Did they use masks in the Persians broadcast some of us watched last year? I can't remember......
Nope! Quite a stunning production is was too, especially given the current issues with Turkey.
seneca2008 wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:04 pm I think there is a lot of conjecture about how masks work. Some scholars have advanced theories that they could act as resonators and so enabled Actors to produce a variety of effects. The acoustics of Greek theatres were excellent and so audibility would not have been a problem. What is true is that with actors doubling up roles a quick change of mask could produce a seamless performance. From a distance (think of sitting towards the back at Epidaurus as I have done) masks would also enable a ready identification of the roles the actors were playing and it wouldn't have been easy to spot any facial expression for most of the audience had they not worn masks. Metre, song, dance and music would all have combined to produce the emotional effect. This is a different experience to ours conditioned as we are to the "close up". You can find examples of the masks used illustrated on vases although how they were actually constructed is debatable and I suspect it varied over time and from place to place.
I am not up on whatever the debate may be on mask-production, I find myself quite skeptical as to their ability as resonators. Wood and plaster is quite a sound absorbent mix and whatever slight (again, dubious) advantage masks may render is surely negated when you consider the size of the audience.

I agree with the rest of your post and hope it is the academic consensus.
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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

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seneca2008 wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:20 am The latest "in our time" is on The Bacchae and is available here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000t6kp

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Euripides' great tragedy, which was first performed in Athens in 405 BC when the Athenians were on the point of defeat and humiliation in a long war with Sparta. The action seen or described on stage was brutal: Pentheus, king of Thebes, is torn into pieces by his mother in a Bacchic frenzy and his grandparents condemned to crawl away as snakes. All this happened because Pentheus had denied the divinity of his cousin Dionysus, known to the audience as god of wine, theatre, fertility and religious ecstasy."

With
Edith Hall
Professor of Classics at King’s College London
Emily Wilson
Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
Rosie Wyles
Lecturer in Classical History and Literature at the University of Kent
Thanks much for this link!
Site offered a download of the discussion, so I can listen to it off-line.
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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

Post by seanjonesbw »

Thanks Seneca and Scribo! Very interesting to see Peter Hall's Agamemnon. I think his 'Bacchai' got a mention at some point during that episode of In Our Time, which seems to have had masks as well - in fact, I've just done a bit of googling and there's a short but very interesting National Theatre video about the masks they used presented by Edith Hall (one of the IOT panel).

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset ... Kx8g?hl=en

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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

Post by jeidsath »

There's a similar video discussing the masks of the earlier series of plays (Google to the rescue, with Oliver Taplin: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... h0vGYv_3Jm , scroll down the playlist to "The Use of Masks" -- it's a real joy to listen to him talk. Apparently he did a number of others in that series for the production, which I haven't seen and will have to go through now). Somewhere, I don't recall whether it's in a book or on the web, there is a detailed discussion of the creation of the 1957 Oedipus Rex masks. I've thought that it might make a good kids' craft project at some point.
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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

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That sounds fun for the kids! For a no less fun, but perhaps lower bro, addition to the thread, Mary Renault wrote a book called The Mask of Apollo I would like to recommend. The main character is an actor and the titular mask plays a really important role as a psychological prop.
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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

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I found the discussion of masks and the role they played in civic life as well as on stage in Wyles, R. (2020) Theatre Props and Civic Identity in Athens 458-405 BC. London: Bloomsbury very interesting. In the chapter on Masks she discusses the Bacchae and in connection with Pentheus' cross dressing she draws attention to the the mask's potential for drawing the audience further into the horror of the action. This is a brief extract from 138-9 from her book

Spoiler
Show
Tragedy’s awareness of the mask’s potential in this respect and its capability in exploiting it, despite comedy’s handling of the prop, is demonstrated by Euripides’ Bacchae. The theatrical self-consciousness of this play, probably produced in 405 bc, has long been recognized in scholarship. The Agave scene, however, has still more to offer to our understanding of the play’s self- awareness and significance for its audience. By taking the mask’s theatrical and social life into account, the full extent of this scene’s allusion to previous plays can be appreciated and its engagement in the discourse on theatre and citizen identity is revealed. The appearance of Agave on stage holding the head of Pentheus carries its own significance within the play’s symbolic design as the realization of Dionysus’ victory prefigured through his earlier costume change. Pentheus’ appearance on stage disguised as a maenad (Bacch. 913) signifies both Dionysus’ mastery over him as well as the king’s imminent death. This cross-dressing scene also, however, forms a prominent moment in the ‘play within a play’ directed by Dionysus. The same actor, who has exited as Pentheus (dressed in maenad disguise to spy on the women), returns, approximately 189 lines later, as Agave. He is probably in the same costume but is now wearing Agave’s mask while holding Pentheus’ mask in his hand. In the world of the play the mask held by the actor represents Pentheus’ severed head, but the verbal cue from Cadmus (1277) as well as the self-consciousness of the cross-dressing scene, allows it to be simultaneously perceived as a theatre mask by the audience. The use of full ‘helmet’ masks in ancient Greek theatre established the metonymy between head and mask offering symbolic logic to this staging.

The already striking stage image of a mask being handled by a masked actor is enhanced by the visual similarity between the masks. The juxtaposition presents the realization of a comparison cued in the mind’s eye of the audience before Pentheus goes to the mountain, 925–7:116
ΠΕΝΘΕΥΣ
τί φαίνομαι δῆτ ̓; οὐχὶ τὴν Ἰνοῦς στάσιν ἢ τὴν Ἀγαυῆς ἑστάναι, μητρός γ ̓ ἐμῆς;
ΔΙΟΝΥΣΟΣ
αὐτὰς ἐκείνας εἰσορᾶν δοκῶ σ ̓ ὁρῶν.

Pentheus What do I look like? Do I not have the carriage of Ino or my mother Agave?
Dionysus When I look at you I think I see their very image.

Dionysus’ reply invites a general visual equation between the disguised Pentheus and his mother or aunt. There is much to be gained dramatically if Pentheus bears resemblance to his mother. It would make Agave’s appearance, alive and well, looking like Pentheus when he had left the stage to go to his death, more painful for the audience. The text confirms details of the visual similarity. Pentheus is promised long hair by Dionysus before he goes into the house (831). When he appears cross-dressed on stage, his hair is arranged in a snood (928–9) that he later removes, as the messenger tells us, when begging his mother to recognize him (1115–6). With the snood removed, Pentheus’ long hair must have flowed down from his decapitated head (mask). It matches Agave’s hair that as a maenad would be hanging loose (as the first messenger confirms 695: καὶ πρῶτα μὲν καθεῖσαν εἰς ὤμους κόμας). The possible visual effect of this similarity is captured by the image of Agave holding Pentheus’ head, preserved on a papyrus fragment found in Egypt (Fig. 25).Even in this crude drawing, the arresting effect of the similar features (wide eyes, brows, straight nose, curly hair) between Agave and the head that she carries can be felt. Moreover, the choice to present Pentheus’ mask frontally in the image responds to the scene’s engagement in the discourse of theatre and identity.

Image


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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

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"The same actor, who has exited as Pentheus (dressed in maenad disguise to spy on the women), returns, approximately 189 lines later, as Agave. He is probably in the same costume but is now wearing Agave’s mask while holding Pentheus’ mask in his hand."

Interesting - supposition based on spreading roles between three actors or does Wyles provide a source for this?

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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

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I cut the footnotes but this is the footnote for this passage:

"113 Ringer (1998) 10. It is generally accepted that Pentheus’ mask is used in this scene;
see Foley (1980) 130–1, Segal (1997) 248, Seaford (2001) 248 and Nelson (2016) 42. There are three possibilities for how the mask was carried by Agave: on the end of a thyrsus (supported by lines 1140–1; favoured by Seidensticker (1978) 303, Foley (1980) 131 and Chaston (2010) 184); held in her hands (supported by line 1277); or on a thyrsus initially and then taken into her hands, see Mueller (2016b) 68 n. 29. I favour the second or last possibility, although my analysis would not be seriously affected by insistence on the first."

So there is no reference to the number of actors but it's the consensus see for example this from The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed P. E. Easterling, Cambridge, 2003 p 152-3. (Incidentally this is still a good introduction to Greek tragedy along with Simon Goldhill's "Reading Greek tragedy".

"The number of speaking actors is a case in point. One of the undisputed facts of Athenian dramatic history is that tragedy developed out of performances by a chorus, in which one performer (the poet himself) was set apart from the rest of the group and took on a series of different roles. Aeschylus introduced a second performer to share the acting, and Sophocles later brought in a third.4 The texts of nearly all the plays from the Oresteia onwards suggest that they were composed to be performed by a maximum of three speaking actors, and there is no external evidence for the regular use of more.

4. Ar. Poet. i449ai8; the ancient Life of Aeschylus (5) records a tradition which attributes the introduction of the third actor to him. Pickard-Cambridge (1988) 130-2."
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: The Bacchae In our Time

Post by seanjonesbw »

Thanks for posting those snippets - out of curiosity I made myself one of those little logic puzzle grids (Hannah plays tennis on Tuesdays but hates crochet) to assign the roles. There are a few different options, as far as I can tell, one of which is that the actor playing Pentheus would also have played Agaue and the second messenger. Killer, killed and reporter!

Edit: I've found the following in Margaret Dickin's "A Vehicle for Performance: Acting the Messenger in Greek Tragedy" (2009, p.128)

"The part of the ἄγγελος who is the Second Messenger could have been played by any of the actors. However, by assigning the role of the Second Messenger to the same performer who portrays the roles of Pentheus and Agave, the Messenger is not only permitted to report his 'own' death in a very dramatic fashion, but in his next appearance on stage (as Agave) he will also play his assailant"

The dramatic potential is exciting, but I still don't see why the same actor would have to play Pentheus and Agaue. Maybe I'm missing something.

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