The Bacchae. Holstein Milk Cows
Satoko Ichihara
Tokyo
Categories
The Bacchae. Holstein Milk Cows
Satoko Ichihara
Tokyo
Categories
This musical theater orgy – freely adapted from Euripides – is a bold and imaginative opening to the festival Theater der Welt 2023. A seemingly ordinary Japanese housewife, her pet dog, a human-cow crossbreed born through artificial insemination, and a chorus of the souls of dairy cows joyously and provocatively transgress the moral boundaries by which humans elevate their behavior, sexuality, and physiology above those of animals. This bitingly satirical adaptation of the ancient myth of Dionysus and his bacchanalian followers awakens hidden desires and bizarre fantasies. Winner of Japan’s most prestigious playwriting award, director Satoko Ichihara has created a truly extraordinary piece of contemporary musical theater.
©Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee
Photo: Shun Sato
About the Artist(s)
Satoko Ichihara, born in Osaka and raised in Fukuoka, is a playwright, director, novelist, and Artistic Director of the Kinosaki International Arts Center (KIAC). She has directed the theater company Q since 2011. Her plays are concerned with human behavior, with bodies and the unease that surrounds them. She received the Aichi Arts Foundation Drama Award in 2011. Her adaptation of ‘The Bacchae’ (2019) won the 64th Kishida Kunio Playwriting Prize. In 2021, she co-produced ‘Madama Butterfly’ with the Theater Neumarkt in Zurich.