In Emily Wilson\u2019s hands, ancient Greek is electric.<\/p>\n
Dionysus is \u201cmidwifed by the lightning\u2019s fire,\u201d goes her translation of Euripides\u2019 \u201cBacchae.\u201d The god goes on to brag, of his ability to incite frenzy: \u201cI stung them till I buzzed them mad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson achieved fame in 2018 as the first woman to fully translate Homer\u2019s \u201cOdyssey\u201d into English verse. Now Bard Theatre\u2019s production of Euripides\u2019 tragedy, in which Dionysus spurs the women of Thebes to madness and murderousness, offers Bay Area audiences the chance to see her text embodied. Now such fiendish phrases as \u201cthe loveliness of eating fresh raw flesh, new-killed,\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll dress them up in nets of iron\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t smear your silliness on me\u201d can prick our ears live and in-person.<\/p>\n
Three-year-old Bard Theatre specializes in queer productions of classics. E.M. Ervolina directs the dance-driven show, which runs at Victoria Theatre, and Wilson herself joins the company for a talk-back on its opening night on Friday, June 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Emily Wilson\u2019s hands, ancient Greek is electric. Dionysus is \u201cmidwifed by the lightning\u2019s fire,\u201d goes her translation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[329,7,35717,101,103,102,104,106,105,1058],"class_list":["post-346479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-california","tag-datebook-pick","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}