Io Bakchos!

[helenic]

When I got back home early this afternoon I was so tired I stumbled straight into bed without even emptying all the cushions, bedding and leftover food from the car. I'd slept most of the drive home (sorry _aredhel!), and was so hungover my father tells me I was groaning, although he might be exaggerating. I woke up suddenly to warm sunlight flooding through the curtains and jumped out of bed, absolutely terrified I'd somehow slept through the whole evening and night and had lost hours and hours of time. Thankfully it was only half past five; it was the quality of light that had confused me. Maybe it is spring, at long last.

Sleeping during the afternoon always leaves me feeling disorientated. I associate it with last May Week; drinking wine in the early afternoon; sitting naked on my bed in an attempt to bear the heat and drifting off into slow, entangled dreams; stumbling home euphoric and overtired with Iain the morning after Jesus May Ball and collapsing into bed to the sound of birdsong, only waking up midafternoon in order to start the drinking again. This May Week promises to be just as madcap and hazy - I have plans involving psychoactive chemicals, and (although not at the same time) speed tea-party missions with the CULES crowd, darting from college to college to drink tea and eat cake in the middle of the off-limits courts, disappearing without a trace before the porters catch on. We're aiming to set up, everyone drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of cake or cucumber sandwich, take a photo, pack up and move on within two minutes, at as many colleges as possible. This will involve plastic cups and fake flowers glued to a large tablecloth, and surreptitious thermos flasks of tea.

Last night was equally madcap and hazy, but not in the same dreamlike, sunlit way. I hosted a readthrough of Euripides' Bacchae followed by a Dionysian revel. I was up until 5am on Friday night and awake again at 9am in order to finish the script in time (I put together a bilingual version based on Philip Vellacott's translation, but with sizable chunks rewritten), and I was panicking about whether yvesilena would actually get there when I realised I hadn't given her directions, but in the end it all, somehow, came together. It was rather wonderful. There were thyrsoi and ivy crowns, bowls of grapes, drumming and (of course) wine. Highlights of the weekend included walking back from the bus stop singing an improvised evening prayer to make it Sunday so the Lent-abiding people could drink (I was very impressed by how much of the liturgy everyone knew, and we got to include our favourite passages from scripture, which was lovely), and Catriona's performance of Julian's "fire of pure being" speech from the first lesson in The Secret History. God, I love that passage, and she did it so very well.

the_alchemist was also wonderful as a pervy, megalomaniac, teenage and distressingly sympathetic Pentheus, and yvesilena as Agaue actually brought tears to my eyes during the scene where she lays out his body (her "Fly, hounds of madness!" speech as the Chorus Leader was also fantastic, and her reading of Greek absolutely fluent - can you tell I'm impressed?). smhwpf was of course marvellous as Teiresias, and his huge narrative messenger speech - which are really difficult to do well - was extremely effective. Cadmus was played beautifully by the ever-talented robert_jones, and fluffymark and _aredhel (who apparently know each other - small world!) were also fantastic as Guards, Herdsmen, and several Chorus members. I was very impressed with everyone's Greek (and there were even shouts of "Io Bacchus!" during the party that evening ... and of "oimoi" the next morning), which made the Chorus parts so effective, especially when accompanied by the_alchemist's ad hoc bodhran skills. I'd felt very nervous about casting myself as Dionysus - it seemed unspeakably arrogant - but in the end it worked quite well, and as Catriona said, the point of readthroughs is to play characters you'd otherwise never get a chance to. My Dionysus bore a suspicious resemblance to Bowie as the Goblin King, but no matter. Huge thanks to everyone who came - for putting up with my disorganisation and the overly-complicated travel arrangements, for doing it all so well even while sightreading (due to my tardiness with the script), and for generally being fantastic!

The Bacchic revel did not include orgies or naked romps through woods, although it did involve a lot of wine, a lot of flirting, hymn-wars where we tried to drown each other out with different songs, and a remarkable rendition of a poem of epic length by smhwpf. Hurrah for the oral tradition. At some point in the evening I ended up with Robert in the graveyard, sitting under a tree and talking for what seemed like hours. It was very cold, and the grass was damp and seemed vividly green in the moonlight, the shadows making the headstones, the daffodils and tussocky ground almost ethereal. It was very peaceful. If I didn't look beyond the graveyard wall I wouldn't have known I was in the twenty-first century at all; there have always been graves there, and yew-trees, and they have always looked this strange and beautiful in the moonlight. I can't remember what Robert and I talked about but I felt very close to him, in one of those quiet, unspoken ways. It was rather lovely.

I made the final alcohol count six bottles of wine, half a bottle of gin, a bottle of Greek brandy, and I think Sam had ale as well. No wonder I felt so rough this morning. I even went to church, although God unfortunately didn't see fit to reward my piety by curing my hangover. I'd say "never again", but I think we all know that would be a lie.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_aredhel/]

There was lolling and groaning *sticks out tongue*

[libellum.livejournal.com]

oh hush.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

What a marvellous icon!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_aredhel/]

Isn't it?

[yvesilena.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :):)