BACCHIC: AN EXPLORATION OF BOOZE

Bacchic: An Exploration of Booze delves into our personal and cultural relationship with inebriation. We open up a conversation about the ways in which alcohol affects our lives both positively and negatively. This devised piece is dance and theater, lecture and spectacle, performance and party.

The play follows the Bacchantes in a ritual worship of wine and extravagance as they celebrate the life-giving and destructive power of drink. They show us, tell us, and teach us how booze can set us free or tear us down. Set on a bare stage, Bacchic takes us to ancient Greece, 19th century France, pre-war Berlin, and the contemporary lecture hall.

The text was composed by The SuperGeographics with Charles Coursey Jr. as dramaturg, and is based on works by Euripides, Emile Zola, Adam Rogers, Noah S Sweat Jr. and includes original writing. Our work has been strongly affected by adaptations from several playwrights: David Greig, Margaret Mauldon, Herbert Golder, C.K. Williams and Mike Poulton.

In addition to our proscenium version of the play we have an immersive iteration built for Club OBERON in Cambridge. This dance party version is an even mix of performance and open space for enjoying the main subject of the play, alcohol! The SuperGeographics’ own DJ, KSO, spins a set to go along with the play, keeping people dancing and drinking once the show is over.

We first developed this piece during the inaugural In The Water Block Island Residency. It premiered in 2015 as Bacchic at The Hive, Brooklyn. The following year in 2016 we went back to Block Island and further built the piece into Bacchic: An exploration of booze to tour around Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York State.

Bacchic: An Exploration of Booze was made possible by generous financial backing from private donors.