Ms. Gokturk

Mythology

Hollywood, Here Come the Maenads

YOUR TASK: Imagine you are a filmmaker. You’ve been looking for material fro a new film, and you’ve just stumbled upon The Bacchae, a play you read in high school. You realize that it’s filled with complex characters, action, and possesses a dark, psychological side; however, you know that the ancient Greek theater style would not appeal to today’s audience, so you need to rework it.

Re-Write a Scene

Working alone or in small groups, choose a scene from the play that you think would translate well into a modern film. Use the original play as reference, but you may combine and/or omit parts of a section.

1. Describe your setting. What place makes a good fit for the scene? An urban setting? A country-western? A suburban high school? Be VIVID: show us the location.
2. What modern actors would play what roles? Why? What effect are you trying to achieve?
3. The Chorus can’t remain in the same format, so how will you adapt it? Will be broken down into other parts? You might incorporate a gimmick like a news broadcast or a homeless crazy person cautioning the characters…You can’t just remove the Chorus, though. They serve an important purpose: advising, providing back story, enhancing theme/s, and/or questioning and judging character behavior. If you cut it, it needs to be worked in some other way, through the characters’ dialogue.
4. Rewrite the dialogue to fit the time and place you have selected. The play is graphic, but please be appropriate for a classroom audience. Please!

Scene Selection Ideas:

• Tieresias, Cadmus and Pentheus clashing on how to handle the new god.
• Dionysus being imprisoned and breaking out.
• The Bacchae’s magical and violent field scene.
• Dionysus tempting Pentheus to spy on the Bacchae.
• The death of Pentheus.
• The aftermath of Dionysus’ revenge.