“You will, I think, be very much moved … it’s a stunner. See this, and your understanding of the feelings and experience of transgender children and adolescents will never feel quite the same. Bacchae Before is a wonderful achievement.” - TheatreStorm
Wiley Naman Strasser and Belinda He in Bacchae Before. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
Bacchae Before
A dance theater project co-directed by Maxe Crandall (playwright) and Hope Mohr (choreographer)
inspired by the tragedies of gender reveal parties and Anne Carson's Bakkhai.
The second phase of this project premiered September 28-October 2, 2021, at the Joe Goode Annex.
“Bacchae Before distills and refracts a classical text of frenzy and filicide through a trans-centered, gender-affirming perspective.”-KQED Arts
Silk Worm as Dionysus. Photo by Robbie Sweeny. Read an Essay by Silk Worm, on playing Dionysus, on SFMOMA’s Open Space
FROM CO-DIRECTORS MAXE CRANDALL AND HOPE MOHR
"Beginnings are special because most of them are fake." --Anne Carson's Bakkhai
The moment of reveal is a cornerstone of classic tragedy. But the moment of reveal is a fiction. Our potentiality has been with us all along. And, as the ancient Greeks believed, anything can come alive at any time.
Gender identity is fluid—an endless becoming. And yet, dominant culture still clings to outdated gender binaries, as evidenced through the latest wave of anti-trans legislature, the rise of trans hate ideologies online, and an increase in cultural practices like gender reveal parties that merge political spectacle with nostalgic conservatism. Bacchae Before collides false binaries on the level of both form and content: form and non-form, objecthood and sentience, choreography and improvisation, dance and language.
Some questions for us are: Can we create a trans-centered analysis of Bakkhai, of gender reveal parties? What if we warp the gender reveal party into a ritual for the trans kids we love and want futures for? How can we use creative celebration to undermine the trope of “reveal”?
It has been moving, through this work, to process tragedy while grieving the many tragedies of the past year, to try to make magical spaces for becoming and for wilding.
We're just so grateful. We're just so ready to party.
Karla Quintero in Bacchae Before. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
Co-Directors: Maxe Crandall & Hope Mohr
Playwright: Maxe Crandall
Choreographer: Hope Mohr, in collaboration with the performers
Object Animation: Mike Chin
Performers: Belinda He, Wiley Naman Strasser, Karla Quintero, Silk Worm
Lights: GG Torres
Sound: Teddy Hulsker
Excerpts from Euripides’ Bakkhai, a new version by Anne Carson, used with permission from and by special arrangement with United Talent Agency.
Silk Worm and Wiley Naman Strasser in Bacchae Before. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Bacchae Before was inspired by desires to give voice and to embody voices that exist outside the body of power. Many voices exist outside the body of power: trans bodies, non-binary bodies, queer bodies, Native and Indigenous bodies, Brown and Black bodies, female and femme bodies, Asian bodies. And the body of land. We are grateful to have created and to be able to perform this work on the ancestral, unceded lands of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, who are still here among us. You can learn more about the Ramaytush, the original peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula, at ramaytush.org. We practice land acknowledgment with the knowledge that decolonization must go beyond words and only becomes meaningful through action and relationship. A portion of the box office revenue from this performance will go to First Nations Development Institute. firstnations.org
The first phase of the project resulted in a film, Before Bacchae Before, commissioned and presented by ODC Theater June 5, 2021, which was selected for the S.F. Transgender Film Festival.
