An enormous hit with Critics and Audiences at the Festival Fringe 2025, Glasgow’s acclaimed Company of Wolves’ The Bacchae arrives charged with renewed electricity and theatricality. Euripides’ wild, intoxicating tragedy has been reimagined for a contemporary stage, inviting audiences into a world where ritual, rebellion and divine chaos collide. We sat down with Ewan Downie to explore the ideas, inspirations and provocations shaping the vision, and to uncover how this timeless myth has been transformed for modern eyes.
This production distils The Bacchae into a solo performance. What artistic or thematic discoveries convinced you that one performer could carry the full weight of Euripides’ chaos and divinity?
I think the first thing to say is that I’ve been thinking about The Bacchae for a long time – I probably first read it at university in around 1994, and have had a fascination with it ever since. I think the play, and the story that it tells, are a mystery, they illuminate some dark corners of the human experience that few other works get to.
The idea for approaching this material as a solo was born after I’d made my last solo work, Achilles. In that piece I began to explore a radically embodied form of storytelling, and the idea that the storyteller could create many people all at once. It seemed that the biggest test of that idea would be to take on The Bacchae: a play known for its huge chorus of crazed bacchants.
When I began to seriously look at the idea, along with my collaborator, Dr Michael Carroll from the School of Classics at the University of St Andrews, we realised that, in the original play Dionysos is a kind of director or stage manager of the action, and the other characters are to some extent his puppets. It was a short leap from this idea to the idea that, in fact, he is the only person on the stage, a god wearing many masks.
Your staging leans into ritual, rhythm, and physical transformation. How did you develop a movement language that honours the original myth while speaking directly to audiences?
The movement language of the piece is drawn primarily from three sources. The first was a deep study of the original Ancient Greek text. We know quite a bit about the choruses: the rhythms they were sung in, the ways the music was constructed (though not the tunes themselves). This led to the musical arrangements that Anna (Joint Artistic Director, and sound designer for the show) and I made of fragments of the chorus – and we made dances to go with these musical arrangements. Secondly, as I explored the image world of the play, through work on the meaning of the original text – led by Michael Carroll – I began to work on physicalisations of these images, how they could be inhabited. And lastly, once the script of my version of this story was written, I worked with the director (at first Ian Spink, and then Heather Knudtsen) to inhabit the individual characters in the story. So the physical language is made up of dance, image and characters, all sourced from the ancient story.
As for speaking directly to audiences, because it’s a solo, the central mode of performance is storytelling: I’m there with the audience the whole time. But even this is inspired by the ancient theatre – most Ancient Greek tragedies include a messenger speech: a piece of pure storytelling. So I simply expanded this idea to use it to frame the whole piece.
Dionysos is often portrayed as seductive or anarchic — your version feels sharper, more dangerous. What informed your approach to the god’s psychology and power?
I think Dionysos is essential. He is the god of change, of becoming, and of dissolution of boundaries. In the ancient world it was well understood that they needed to pay attention to this force, and let it out in carefully orchestrated moments – or else this chaotic force could leak out at any time and wreck things. I think we could do with some of that knowledge, now. In the modern search for efficiency and optimisation there is not much room for Dionysos, but that means the force of chaos and change leaks out all over the place, in ways we cannot predict. If my approach has sharpness and danger to it, it is driven by urgency – I think we need to learn to listen to this force, or principle, or spirit that the Ancient Greeks called Dionysos – and find a healthier place in our lives for the chaotic, the changeable, the inefficient, the strange.
The production’s atmosphere is strikingly intimate. How did the design team use sound, light, and space to create a sense of ritual without overwhelming a solo performer?
We were lucky enough to have the design team in the room at points throughout the rehearsal process, and we also decided as much as possible to reuse or repurpose things for the set. This meant a lot of trial and error, but also that the design developed organically along with the piece, rather than being brought in at the last minute, as is often the case. It was an amazing experience and I want to namecheck our incredible design team: designer Alisa Kalyanova, lighting designer Katharine Williams, sound designer Anna Porubcansky and our production manager Craig Fleming, for all their suggestions and offers – it really was a collaboration – and I think that shows in the way the design supports and enhances the performance.
Euripides’ themes of control, ecstasy, and societal fracture feel increasingly relevant. Were there any modern parallels shaped your adaptation?
Euripides was writing at a time of great upheaval in Athens, so the backdrop to this play definitely has parallels to our current times. I don’t think, at the moment of making the piece, we were thinking about them. When we were originally making the show, back in 2023, Ian Spink, the original director and my long-time collaborator, had just been diagnosed with cancer. This was in April 2023. He was very clear that he wanted to still make the show. By June, when we were working on the design, he was very ill, and only able to come to rehearsals for a couple of hours a day, and by the time of the last rehearsal block, in late August, he could not leave the house, and Heather Knudtsen, our associate director, had taken over rehearsals. He died the week after the premiere.
It was incredible to work with him – he kept watching videos of the work and sending us text notes right up to the end. I think this was the greatest influence on the way the piece was shaped – though of course now I can see the political echoes of the work, at the time of making it was personal pain and loss that marked the show.
The Bacchae is notorious for its violence and extremity. What strategies did you use in rehearsal to keep the performance safe, sustainable, while still on edge?
Even though it is me alone onstage, this piece has been very much a collaboration with our whole team, the creative team behind the show, our amazing producer Corinne Salisbury and our extraordinary company manager Emma Jackson. I know I’m not just there for me, but for everyone who has been involved in making the show, and that helps keep me grounded.
I also have a deep ongoing training practice of voice, body and inner work that began when I first trained in Poland, many years ago, and which I continue to this day. I listen carefully to my body and try as much as possible to go to my own physical and emotional limits, but not too far beyond.
Audience response is a major part of this story’s legacy. What reactions did you receive following the Fringe run which surprised you, or have re-shaped the show ?
Really the main thing from the Fringe run was confidence in the work. I didn’t know until then whether the show would speak to audiences, but it did, and they came, and told their friends, and told us how much the show meant to them. And that gave us the confidence to go further – which I think we have done in this touring version of the show.
What conversations do you After presenting such a distilled and visceral version of the myth, what do you hope audiences carry with them ?this revival sparks in 2026?
I hope they carry away something of the mystery of Dionysos: essential, undeniable, dangerous, neither good nor bad. Complex and undefinable. I hope they leave a little awakened, that they maybe see the world a little differently. I hope they feel more alive.
The Bacchae is currently touring Scotland:
Photo credit – Louise Mather
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