Dionysus in ’69

Inspired by the Living Theatre, Dionysus in ‘69 was the Performance Group’s staging of Euripides’ The Bacchae: a ritual confrontation which culminated in a virtual orgy of audience participation. Brian De Palma filmed a performance staged by Richard Schechner using multiple 16mm cameras, both preserving the complex immediacies of the dramatic event and working those immediacies into the formal properties of his own creation (using a split screen, his cinematic trademark).