When Theater Becomes Worship

I am in absolute awe of this production of The Bacchae performed by the Teatro Oficina in São Paulo, Brazil.  I can't recall if someone recommended it to me, or if I stumbled upon it, but it's been on my list to watch for over a year after watching an hour of it last year, and then I finally watched the whole thing over the most recent Lenaia.  (No mean feat, considering it's an epic 5 hours long - but totally worth it.) 

I can't imagine anything like this being performed in the U.S. It feels like the closest thing we could get to seeing how things might have been performed in Ancient Greece. Not because of the setting (most of it takes place in an building, albeit a really unconventional one), but because of the way it feels like devotional theater, like being part of a huge public ritual. There's nods to Brazil's Carnival tradition in the production, which only adds to it. But I can't imagine that these people were NOT overtaken with Dionysian ecstasy while doing this. And I can't imagine that anyone who wasn't in love with Dionysos would have gone through the effort of putting together something this madly ambitious.

Warning: Extremely NSFW.

I was able to dig up an article about the theater company, in case you were as curious as I was.  Now visiting this theater is a new travel goal of mine.