Conversations: the Divine Rage of Dionysus, a Transgender Translation of Bacchae w/ Emma Pauly

Liv speaks with returning guest, translator and dramaturg Emma Pauly about reshaping and expanding their translation of Bacchae, and transgender, non-binary Dionysus. Find more from Emma here https://www.emmapauly.com/ including a much earlier version of their translation of Bacchae here https://the-mercurian.com/2019/12/13/the-bacchae/. This is the work by Cameron Awkward-Rich referenced. https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-terrible-we Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

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• 2:11Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv, here with another very special conversation episode. This one, God, okay, number one, I am recording this introduction before I actually record the conversation, and that's probably pretty important for what's going on. But what I'm so excited to record this conversation because I am revisiting almost an exact same kind of conversation, basically the same topic and the same guest from one of my very earliest conversation episodes. I'm speaking with Emma Pauley, who for years now has been working on and building out

• 2:54Liv Albert?

  this translation of Euripides' Bacchae. So, you know, surprise, surprise, I'm fucking obsessed. But so specifically, a reading and a translation of Bacchae, an interpretation of Bacchae, with heavily non-binary overtones, with generally gender queer overtones. Obviously Dionysus always has these really queer overtones, but a direct kind of translation that plays with gender and pronouns and that kind of thing in that way is pretty innovative and so interesting. And it's innovative in this way where it's like, duh, like, of course Dionysus has all

• 3:39Liv Albert?

  of these elements. And Emma and I spoke a couple of years ago now, like I said, I think, God, I think they were like my maybe fifth first conversation somewhere in that realm, just so long ago. And in this way where it's one of my most memorable conversations. And yet, you know, in those years since, I have grown so much in my knowledge of the background, the mythos, the sources, Euripides. And Emma has been working on this translation, workshopping it and kind of expanding it. And Emma and I have plans for this translation. We're hoping to do something really special. In relation to this translation and this podcast, I think you can guess what it is,

• 4:23Liv Albert?

  but we're gonna keep it unofficial for right now. Hopefully by the end of the year, we're gonna have something in this realm, but we want to do it right. But in the meantime, I wanted to talk to Emma about about Backeye, about this kind of queering of Backeye, even though it is a topic and a play and a god that is so inherently queer. But you know, we're gonna go far beyond that. Talk about Dionysus as a queer god in general. Emma has just been a part of a big conference on Backeye and has so many insights from that. And I am just, I'm so excited for what we have to give you today. And so again,

• 5:06Liv Albert?

  since I haven't even recorded it yet, that's about the most I can say. So sit back and enjoy this deeply, viscerally queer Dionysus.

• 5:56Liv Albert?

  Hi, just a quick additional warning for this episode. While the first half is pretty lighthearted, talking about Backeye and queerness and a lot of angry feminism from me, sorry, not sorry. The second half does require some trigger warnings, primarily for not direct, indirect kind of talk of self-harm and suicide in relation to trans rage. We're talking a lot about that. Rather, Emma, who?

• 6:35Liv Albert?

  Is appropriate to talk about that is talking about queer and and trans rage. And it's really fascinating, really impactful, but just take care.

• 6:58Liv Albert?

  Hello. This is a weird way to start it. Normally I just jump straight into the conversation, but that we were like really, really on this timing. I am so excited to speak with you again, Emma, about

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Hello, hello.

• 7:11Liv Albert?

  Hi. Dionysus, Back Guy, just like the, I mean, mostly I just want to get so deep into the queer parts of Dionysus and Back Guy, but you know, I think you might be into that as well, but

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Not really. It's never really been my thing. I kind of approach it from the like second sophistic angle. Sorry.

• 7:31Liv Albert?

  I like that because I'm like, oh God, that's a term I just have heard. Well, I mean, we, we really, we want real classical, like OG Back Guy, because Euripides is like the only person I want to spend any time with in the ancient world. And it's so interesting. I was recording the introduction before we started talking and you, this is the first time I've done another conversation with like a repeat guest that's, that's on like the same topic ostensibly. And like, I know it's going to be a completely different conversation because years have passed and my knowledge has grown like unbelievably. And I imagine yours is the same, but it's so interesting to be kind of revisiting something that you and I did, like, I think it was like three or four years ago.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  I think, I think 2021. I think it, I think it's four years.

• 8:19Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, probably around this time of year too, because I probably would have tried to slot it into June because I do love having enough to theme a whole month.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  I, I think that's correct because I, and I was in a, living in a different state and I had a different like, because it, and I was, I had a different job. And yeah, it's, and I had, yeah, a lot of things have changed. A lot of things have changed.

• 8:43Liv Albert?

  Well, now you're teaching, right? And do you, do you teach Back Guy ever? Or is it more just general?

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Once or twice I've gotten the chance to, and it's been, uh,

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Kind of like the evil version of the Kool-Aid Man where I just like break through the wall and I'm like, congratulations, you're in my house now.

• 9:01Liv Albert?

  So you are Dionysus.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Evil Kool-Aid Man Dionysus? Sure.

• 9:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's what the Dionysus from Batguy.

• 9:13Liv Albert?

  Like he bursts in like, yeah, this is my house.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  I, oh my God, staging where everything is the same, but Dionysus is dressed as the Kool-Aid Man.

• 9:22Liv Albert?

  But it has to be wine, but like the Kool-Aid Man in like, like a, like almost like a Pythos. Pythos is the only word I'm coming with. It's the wrong one, like an amphora, maybe Kool-Aid Man.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Like Dionysus is usually holding like the kamparos. So like the big like two handles.

• 9:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  That could be great. Everyone else is dressed normal. The rest of the play is normal. No one says anything.

• 9:48Liv Albert?

  Maybe it's, maybe it's a kantharos that features, and I know this is on, I believe it's on a Kylax, but like a kantharos that features the, oh, what's the word? My, a past episode on, on Pentheus. What's the word for him getting?

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Baragmos.

• 10:05Liv Albert?

  Thank you.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Baragmos.

• 10:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that, that, that scene, but on the kantharos and then that with like, just like a little head or a face. That's Dionysus.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  I think this is a really rich dramaturgical vein.

• 10:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  And it's so meta. I support this entirely. I will dedicate the rest of my life to making sure that this staging is brought to fruition. Thank you so much for helping me nurture this idea.

• 10:31Liv Albert?

  Oh my God, I'm thrilled, thrilled to be a part of it. Please give me a free ticket. That's all I ask.

• 10:37Liv Albert?

  Well, there's so, there's so much with, with Batguy and it's this really, it's a, it's an interesting play. And this, we kind of dove into this before I hit record and then was like, no, no, stop. But like, it's a play that I want to read as, I mean, this is true for a lot of Euripides in a way that I, it's why I love him so much. But like, Batguy is such a great example of one of his plays that is simultaneous, simultaneously so comedic and so tragic and so absurd, like in the middle.

• 11:12Liv Albert?

  Like in the middle by that, I mean, like somewhere in between, not like the middle of the play. Like a Venn diagram of the play.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  No, totally. And, and one of the things that I really love about that is that it is the kind of comedy that sits very comfortably slash uncomfortably next to horror.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  It's the kind of comedy that I think my best reference for like recent media that I've seen that has like evoked this feeling in me is The Substance.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  If you've ever, if you have.

• 11:49Liv Albert?

  No, but it's familiar.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  It's real fun. The one that Demi Moore got nominated for an Oscar for, the like horror movie where Margaret Qualley crawls out of her back.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Which is very like.

• 12:01Liv Albert?

  Love it.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Oh, it's so good. If you, I, if you have a strong stomach, I recommend it.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  But that's a movie that's very comfortable putting extreme discomfort and pain right next to comedy and absurdity.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  And it's something that I'm really fond of. And I think also like,

• 12:25Speaker 03

  one of the best things I've ever seen in a live staging of Bakai was one of those moments, and it was an accident. There was a production of Bakai at the Getty Villa in 2018 that then went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music by City Company, directed by Anne Bogart. And I'm glad that I said her name right on the first try because I've been talking about her for a couple of weeks now for various other things. And every single time I've tried to say her name, I have said Anne Carson.

• 12:55Liv Albert?

  Oh, well, that's hard. Yeah. With Bakai and an Anne.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  I know, I know, but I'm, I'm a professional. I'm supposed to be able to do it right. And directed by Anne Bogart, who's like a big deal in the theater world, like worked with Satoshi Suzuki a lot. And this production of Bakai had the head of Pentheus as like.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Sort of a suspension of goo in a plastic bag. Um, like there was clearly like something head shaped in there, like it had weight and mass, but it was like in plastic and like you couldn't really see through all of the weird blood goo.

• 13:34Liv Albert?

  Vistara.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Upsetting to start with. We're off to a great start. Um, I got to be there on the night that and like there was a um, there was a moment where Dionysus had to hold it.

• 13:48Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Um, like I took it away from Magave and had to like hold on to it for a sec. And I got to be there the night Dionysus dropped it.

• 13:55Liv Albert?

  I was waiting for that. Oh, my God.

• 13:57Speaker 03

  And the horrifying, schmorfing thunk that that thing made when it hit the floor was grandly comedic and also absolutely disgusting and horrifying. And I got to watch an entire amphitheater full of people visibly like recoil in their seats.

• 14:21Liv Albert?

  Wow. That's one of those moments where like that wasn't supposed to happen, but it probably added so much for you.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  It was so, I, you really, it, it told me something about me as a person because a whole room full, a whole amphitheater full of people lean back and I lean forward just going, yes.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Uh, which is how I, I learned some things about myself, but you know, it comes and it goes.

• 14:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, I would be, I would be right there with you for back guy. Like that's one of those things like I'm not super, like I can be squeamish about some things. I get about like really, really like obviously gory like movies and stuff or whatever. Like, I mean, really like just the torture porn type of stuff, those old ones. Like I don't have any interest. But like, it is something Greek myth that is so like viscerally violent, being shown to be just as like disgusting as it, you know, was kind of meant to be evoked. Like I'm so here for it.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Well, and I think.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  It's also a really interesting invitation. Cause like, and I'm sure we'll get into this more like.

• 15:28Liv Albert?

  I know. I love that. We're just starting with like a breakdown of like the Pentheus head scene, which to the listener, I mean, I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna re-air my retelling of this play beforehand just so that people get it. It's been a while. Um, but like, you know, it, it, it ends with, with Pentheus's own mother carrying his head in, having absolutely no idea that it is his head and that she's killed, just killed and torn apart her son. And like, it's the most, you know, I think one of the most famous moments of that kind of violence on stage. Um, not that the actual violence takes place, but the, the, the head being there.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Well, and, and it would have been, and this is where people get very excited about meta theater. Um, is, do you know the thing with doubling?

• 16:15Liv Albert?

  Uh, you know, like the three actor rule doubling?

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So the way a very likely possibility, um, with the doubling for Baka in particular, is that Pentheus and Agave are the same actor.

• 16:31Liv Albert?

  Oh, I love when we have those theories like, oh, it's good.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  No, it's fun. And then, um, I think the Almeda production abided by that. So Pentheus and Agave were played by, I think, Bertie Carvel in 2014 at the Bridge. Um, I, I know too much.

• 16:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it was impressive.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Um, but yeah, the dub, so theoretically in the double, like I think the way the doubling usually breaks down is like Cadmus and the messengers. Um, Dionysus and Tiresias, Pentheus and Agave. Um, but for Pentheus and Agave, so what that means is the prop that's the head is in antiquity, that's just the mask.

• 17:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah. The mask that, that the big actor would have been wearing before then. Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  Exactly. So this, this actor has to leave the stage, take their like Disneyland mascot head off, put a different one on and then come back on stage carrying their own face.

• 17:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  And it's so.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, there's a lot going on there. Um, no, it's just, it's

• 17:40Speaker 03

  the meta theater of it, the gender. Um, it's a very rich vein of the play. But the other, I mean, the other thing that is also really

• 17:51Speaker 03

  useful about like treating the, the head as an object of like horror, fascination, disgust, like, is that gets us into like the, the way that violence is talked about in the play. Um, or the way the violence is talked about in reception of the play and in like the, um, something that I've been wrestling recently, um, is watching people try to find a quote unquote clean interpretation.

• 18:23Liv Albert?

  Um, what?

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Or like, trying to find, like, I, I just got off of a inter- really fascinating, like, two day conference about Baki, but the sort of fundamental

• 18:38Speaker 03

  linchpin of it was like, is this a reclaimably feminist text?

• 18:42Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Um, and I think that there's never going to be a good answer to that. And like likewise, there are also a lot of conversations happening right now, or at least in the rooms that I'm in because I'm a joke and a parody and a cartoon of a person. Um,

• 19:01Liv Albert?

  I'm not totally sure what you mean by that, but I'm here for it.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Well, just, I got one job. I do one thing.

• 19:08Liv Albert?

  I mean, if you think you're not talking to somebody with that exact same life description.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, fair, fair, fair, fair. Um, no, but the conversation is, is Baki a like, a like liberatory queer text?

• 19:24Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  And, you know, is this?

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Is this a play that we can take a lesson from? Is this a play that we can learn some, you know? Is this a play that we can, you know, apply to the revolution, as it were? And, and there's no easy answers to that. And something that I'm really interested in like kind of picking apart, and I'm not just gonna like ramble for fifteen minutes here, but like something that I'm really interested in looking at, which is something that I talked about a little bit four years ago, but has kind of grown is like, um, really acknowledging the, the malice and the cruelty and the rage that are present in this play. And especially

• 20:10Speaker 03

  the way that that intersects with conversations on gender and sexuality in the play, and the way that that intersects with like trans liberation.

• 20:20Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  As, as can be and as

• 20:26Speaker 03

  was Euripides thinking about trans, trans liberation? No, do I care? No.

• 20:31Liv Albert?

  Have you, but have you ever thought about that? Sorry, not to actually to take derail you, but like,

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 20:36Liv Albert?

  I, I think it was a past guest, Julie Levy, who said, who said this to me?

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, wonderful.

• 20:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and their idea was like, could Euripides have been trans? And like, or non-binary or something in that realm? I believe, I believe it was Julie. And like, it's one of those things where obviously we'll never know. There is, there's no way to like have any kind of concrete answer, but I think it's such an interesting question, given the kind of content that Euripides gives us, particularly in comparison to everything else that everyone else gives us.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. I, it's such a,

• 21:18Speaker 03

  it's such a weird avenue to go down because like, obviously, you know, avoidance of anachronism, like those, those terms did not exist in his moment. But it's not even the fact that like, it's not even, they had kind of an empty label that was waiting to be filled with a word like trans or non-binary. The ways that gender and sexuality are conceived are so fundamentally different.

• 21:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Like, it's not, you know, we're trying to play, you know, chess, we're trying to play checkers on a chessboard. It's like, we're trying to play checkers on a pizza.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Like, it's, sorry, wild metaphor.

• 22:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah, no, I like, it really conveys the point.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  It's, and that does not mean that we have to default to a cis heteropatriarchal

• 22:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  system.

• 22:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Like, we can't, yes, can we say Euripides is trans or non-binary? Probably not. By that same token, we can't also say anyone in antiquity, not just Euripides, any sentient bipedal being in antiquity, pluck chickens and all.

• 22:35Liv Albert?

  I was just gonna say, now you're making me think of the Plato memes.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Any sentient bipedal, preferably human, we cannot apply our labels of likewise cis, straight, heterosexual, those labels don't, those labels also don't go here.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  Um, so I do, no, it is, it is an interesting conversation if not to like,

• 23:06Speaker 03

  really bind Euripides to a, Euripides or anyone, to a contemporary category, but to loosen the contemporary category that he is already automatically bound to.

• 23:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, cause that's kind of how I interpret it. Like I, you know, and because I'm not in the realm of any kind of formal academia, like I do, I, you know, I do try to make my listeners very aware, like none of these things, you know, are these terms that we can officially assign to anyone in the ancient world, but at the same time, you know, from this perspective, it's, it's quite liberating to speculate on how that person might have identified today, if given the terms, you know? And I think with Euripides, like the reason why I am so interested in that idea is that Euripides has always been,

• 23:59Liv Albert?

  to me, and like obviously to, to most others who study him, like this sort of weirdo, right? Like he really, he was pushing the envelope, he was kind of.

• 24:12Liv Albert?

  He was pushing back against the patriarchy and the patriarchal structure in ways that I think others didn't. Was it like entirely revolutionary? Absolutely not. Was he anything, you know, to be defined as a, as a modern feminist? Obviously not. But like the ways that Euripides wrote female rage, the ways that Euripides wrote just women in general and then got labeled a misogynist for it because he wrote women who were terrible, women who did violent, manly things, things that women were not supposed to do, but that were reserved for the men, you know, like that is so interesting to me. And then of course, Bacchae introduces all of these other things. And what's

• 24:55Liv Albert?

  interesting to think about too, is that, that they, you know, anyone in that realm did have Dionysus as an example, as a, of a vaguely gender queer person, right? We have so many stories of Dionysus being either raised as a girl or dressing as a girl or like various things where there is a pretty clear description of his fluidity. And so like, it's interesting that there's, you know, and of course there are stories of like transformations that can be read as, as transgender. And so it's like, there's, it's not, it's not like they didn't have any kind of examples. And that's interesting too, to sort of just, I love a speculation about Euripides, I guess, is my point.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  I mean, and it's so interesting, like Dionysus as a figure in that context, as a figure that is like so integrated into, you know, let's say Athenian, that's, you know, that's who, that's the city that we're talking about. That's where Euripides is when he's not dying in Macedonia.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  Dionysus as a figure within this political structure is

• 26:12Speaker 03

  so charged. Cause that is maybe not what we think of as like a positive example of representation. Like, it's not a thing where like, I mean, and we talk about this nowadays of like, is, is visibility the same thing as safety? Is visibility the same thing as acceptance? And Dionysus as a figure, like,

• 26:38Speaker 03

  Is this sort of nuclear reactor core of like all of the fear and anxiety and disgust and internal turmoil that is put into maintaining this

• 26:59Speaker 03

  extremely rigid, rigid but not using the same structures as we would in 2023,

• 27:11Speaker 03

  gender hierarchy. Like, it doesn't turn into this thing where it's like, oh, Dionysus wears, you know, quote unquote, women's clothing. And again, those are, you know, even calling it just women's clothing is very complicated because there's also a very strong racial element. Like, this is is her easiest eastern clothing as well. This is clothing that's not only associated with, you know, a sort of uncomplicated view of gender, but it is clothing that, yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  So Dionysus serves as a, yeah, as a sinkhole for those fears and those anxieties and the need to have a figure that is, the need to put that in a thing that looks like a person.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  And a person that is right at the heart of the political life of the city. Like, the city Dionysia is the play, the festival at which Baka was performed was, and I cannot stress this enough, a political occasion as well. It is a religious occasion. It is a political occasion. It is a moment for the state, the city, to tell itself what it is. And there are opportunities in there to tell the city that it is something weird.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Or to point out

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I, there's, yes, sorry, that's, that's, that's a different conversation is like the role of tragedy in classical.

• 28:46Liv Albert?

  Well, and, and not to get too deep into that because I do want to focus on Dionysus, but, but have you done much work on, because you, you know, you, you brought up that, that Euripides died in Macedonia, right? He was, was he exiled officially or was he just like gone? I feel like he might've just left. Either way, he was like, no, okay. I, yeah, I think, I mean, he was, he was definitely in, in Macedonia when he died. And that guy though, and that's where this gets relevant, that guy was, was performed posthumously and he hadn't been in Athens for years.

• 29:26Liv Albert?

  And I think that's so interesting and like, I'm not good at the, you know, the, the bigger historian side of, of working through that type of thing, but it's so interesting to me that a, that a play like that guy, which like you said, like there's, for all we can talk about this like queerness within Dionysus, there is also a very interesting conversation going on within the play about the role of kings and about the role of leadership in a city and, and probably divine leadership in a city as well. Like a lot of things that could probably be viewed as like commentary on Athens at the time or Athens on like when

• 30:10Liv Albert?

  he was there. So many different interesting things. And I think it's also just generally interesting to think of, of that as this play that one, he didn't write when he was living in Athens, that he wrote in Macedonia and two, that like, he didn't necessarily ever intend or know that it was going to be performed. Like I, we don't know that that's true or anything, obviously, but it's a really interesting thing to think about when it comes to him and just this play so specifically, like having this be the one that was performed after his death and when he wasn't in the city is just really, it's interesting.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, and even just to think about like, This wasn't the only one.

• 30:48Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  There's a trilogy, like this is part of a trilogy and we have one of the other men, we have one of the, you know, sisters of this trilogy. Um, and they were completely, possibly, um, Ifijania at Alice is the, what would have been the companion to this.

• 31:04Liv Albert?

  Really?

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, Ifijania at Alice, and then there's.

• 31:07Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  Well, there's, um, there's a, there's a very cool scholar. Have you ever had Vanessa Stavall on here?

• 31:12Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Yes. Um, so Vanessa gave a conference paper.

• 31:16Liv Albert?

  Twice I've had Vanessa, but I just, it was the way you said her last name that somehow made my brain go, have I? But yes.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Um, has, uh, gave a paper at UCLA a couple of years ago about like noting, like metrical and like musical similarities between Ifijania and Alice and how those two plays would like go next to each other with the, uh, third one is regrettably very law, uh, you know, very fragmentary, it's Alcmaeonic Corin.

• 31:42Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Which better people than me have actually done the kind of excavatory research on. Um, but it is. I don't know. It's so interesting to me that that doesn't exist in isolation and like people have written on like finding kind of the, the thematic resonances between Ifijania and Bacchae and it's just so profoundly beyond me, but very fun.

• 32:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it, cause by trilogy, you, you mean like the, the, and the way that they would, the three would have been performed together?

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:12Liv Albert?

  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I just think of the, yeah, as comparison to like, say the Orystia where it was like meant to be like a, a, like a storyline trilogy.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. They're not, I mean, they're not, yeah, they're not plot connected.

• 32:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but they're like, even the three perform together. Yeah. Or, no, that's so interesting. And it's been a long time since I've, um, done Ifijania at Alice. I've done the Torians more recently, which is like.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 32:36Liv Albert?

  Own whole wild.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  It's beautiful. It's the stupidest heist on God's green earth. I love it so much.

• 32:43Liv Albert?

  Helen gives it a run for its money and I like, I love that for both of those, like.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Ifijania among the Torians is like the only example in my canonical knowledge where the trick, everyone has to turn around and close their eyes, works.

• 33:03Liv Albert?

  I still remember that, but that's so delightful.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  It's, I love it. It's, it's, I, it's a bonkers play. I need to read it. I need to work on it more. Um, or at all. I haven't worked on it. I just am quietly fanning from the side.

• 33:16Liv Albert?

  Well, Euripides is just, he's so weird. And that's why, like, the fact that we, you know, I think, I mean, that obviously I would, I would imagine that the, you know, so many other playwrights were, were telling stories about Dionysus. And I kind of wish we had like any version, because I would be so interested to see like how they interpret something like the back guy, particularly since we know, you know, it was a story well beyond the play.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Aeschylus did it. We just don't have it.

• 33:42Liv Albert?

  We don't have it. Yeah. And like, I'm just so curious in, in, I mean, specifically if someone like Aeschylus did it, like what? Yeah. What are we, what are we looking at in the differences? Uh, well, I mean, this is supposed to be the entire Euripides hour, but clearly, I mean, I could always make everything the Euripides hour, to be quite frank. But, um, I mean, in, in terms of, I don't know quite how to dive into like, I mean, I want to talk about your translation, but I also want to talk about just generally like reading. I mean, I don't even know that, that maybe let's start with your translation, but I'm also just curious about the conference you went to, I guess, is like the other kind of part I want to lead into. Cause I'm curious how, like, I really don't, I don't know a lot about modern scholarship of this type of stuff, just because I get like my special guests and they tell me things and I love that.

• 34:27Liv Albert?

  But like, I'm not, you know, able to be sort of up on anything else. Um, but to me, it feels like Dionysus is so obviously a queer god that, but then sometimes you hear of people who really interpret him as just like straight as an arrow. And I find that also so like sort of odd. And I'm just, I don't know. Maybe I want your thoughts, I guess.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  I think I, I find less of a like quote unquote, straight interpretation. Like I do. There is a acceptance of like, there is an acceptance of some, you know, fluid element. The thing that I find much more pushback against is viewing Dionysus as a person.

• 35:14Liv Albert?

  Really?

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Um, well, yeah, cuz it's like, there's a very strong thread through scholarship and like, there's a, there's a quote by, I think, Charles Siegel that like, says like Dionysus is a screen on which other characters like, project themselves. Dionysus is like, a, a force, an element, a personification, a, there is a kind of a wall that slams down when there's an understanding of someone as a god. Um, and like, the, the wonder, the, the glory and beauty of Dionysus is like, yes, entirely divine and, and human.

• 35:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Like, it's not coming from nothing. Like, he is

• 35:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 35:56Liv Albert?

  born of a mortal and has this really interesting and weird sort of story behind that.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I mean, I would, I would genuinely extend this to, to deities that aren't born of, of, you know, that don't have the semile cool babies don't look at explosions. Um,

• 36:17Speaker 03

  I'm really just, I'm really just on a weird tear today.

• 36:20Liv Albert?

  I'm, I'm here for it.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  I, I would extend this to other gods as well, that there is a temptation to view them as

• 36:32Speaker 03

  not possessed of emotional life.

• 36:35Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Or at least not possessed of emotional life, in a, in a way that is complementary of humanity. And I think something really beautiful and horrifying in Baka in particular is that you get to see

• 36:51Speaker 03

  both simultaneously. You get to see a sort of Lovecraftian horror, this thing in a human body that is so unbelievably beyond, you know, has knowledge and power and views the world in a way that is alien.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  And, and.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  That same, you know, kind of the meat suit, the fle- the actor onstage, the embodied creature, the embodied person is that. And at the same time, is a young, angry queer person.

• 37:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  And I think there's also ways that that resonates with like contemporary experiences of trans and non-binary identity.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  Is that there is this. There can be tension between like the psychic contours of a body as it exists, or even just a selfhood, a selfhood out external to, external to the body. The selfhood as it exists and this other thing. It's always there. And that, you know, like ways that trans and non-binary experience can kind of resonate with

• 38:20Speaker 03

  feelings of like non-humanity, but and like, and that can arise from being treated like not human.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Being told that like, not only, I mean, this is, I think this is a point that I made four years ago, but you know, for certain strain, for trans and non-binary identity, a lot of the time, the conversation is not only,

• 38:42Speaker 03

  you know, I find your choices distasteful. That's the, that's, you know, soft pedaling it.

• 38:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  The ways that that oppression occurs is not only

• 38:54Speaker 03

  you're wrong. You're wrong, you're sinning, you're doing something morally impure.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  What was that thing that was in the language of the military ban? Like you, you're not living a life consistent with the discipline, but you can't.

• 39:13Liv Albert?

  Ew, yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, it sucks. I think I'm getting it wrong, but it really sucked.

• 39:19Liv Albert?

  I'm not convinced that anything in the American military doesn't suck now, but.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  Or is disciplined.

• 39:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, for real.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Sorry, I, that's a different conversation.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  And.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  The way that that conversation is usually framed is your self-knowledge is invalid. You, you are not what you say you are, not because what you say you are is wrong, but because what you say you are is not real.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  You know, claiming, you know, set. For in that rhetoric, claiming, you know, claiming a trans identity, claiming a non-binary identity, expressing these, expressing those features is kind of put into the same bucket as, I am a dragon, actually.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  And for a character like Dionysus, where the thing on the table is I am a supernatural being and I.

• 40:25Liv Albert?

  He could have said, I'm a dragon, actually, in that case. And it would have like, been like, yeah, you know.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Cadmus is the one that's gonna get dragoned in a bit, but.

• 40:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah, we'll get to that line.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  I, there was this thing a couple of weeks ago where I had to, I was presenting on, on this and I could not stop saying, uh, I could not stop referring to the end of the play as grandpa gets snaked.

• 40:52Liv Albert?

  I mean, as, as always, like, I'm sure I said this 10,000 times when we first chatted, but like Cadmus and the sort of origin story of Thebes with Harmonia and all that are like my, you know, like pet obsession. And so, yeah, no, I absolut- absolutely. That's, that's the end. I love it.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  But, I mean, and, and yes, no, earlier in the play with, when grandpa gets snaked, um, and grandma, grandma also gets snaked, she's just not on stage.

• 41:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and she, yeah, she's not a part of it.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  No, Harmonia is not, Harmonia is not here. Um, be a different play if she was. And I, I find it interesting to, to explore that tension between like Dionysus's claims being viewed as so like, quote ludicrous.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  By Pentheus, very specifically, I should say.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  There's a really, really good book that was introduced to me by Nicolet D'Angelo, who's a member of my cohort at UCLA, who is lovely and wonderful and a genius. And I am very lucky to be around her as much as I am. A book called The Terrible We: Thinking with Transmal Adjustment by an author named Cameron Awkward Rich. Actually, I'm sorry, can I? I think I want to get into this a little bit later. Can we maybe?

• 42:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, because that's like a big, naughty, messy thing, and I think I need a little more time to kind of tease that up.

• 42:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:32Liv Albert?

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• 43:14Liv Albert?

  I'm actually traveling in Greece right now, and I have my go-to woven leather bag. I seriously use it everywhere. That's why it's with me here. It's beautiful, and it's practical, and it's from Quince. And I actually have a parcel to pick up when I get back home, which has some goodies in there. I got this pair of corduroy high-rise pants. I'm really excited to try those out as soon as I get home. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag. So give the gift of quality this holiday season.

• 43:54Liv Albert?

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• 45:30Speaker 03

  But with regard to the translation, like, I... If I'm taking the interviewer mic for a second and turning it back, like...

• 45:38Liv Albert?

  I keep opening your translation on my iPad so that we can talk about it, so it's perfect that you are bringing it back.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it's a rare gift for me to get to kind of just sit down when there's not like a production on the table, or I'm not, you know, doing a paper or prepping for a conference or anything.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  Production on the table.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  What? Who said that? That was a ghost.

• 46:05Liv Albert?

  You basically just went with exactly what I just did in our, the intro that I recorded. You just, you just continued on exactly the line I'd started, so we're so here for it.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  Perfect, perfect. I love it. Um, it's rare that I get to sit down and just genuine like be like, what did you, you know, what did you think? Like, what did, how did this sit with you? What did this feel like for you?

• 46:29Liv Albert?

  I, I mean, I, it's, it's funny for me. I read so much. I, I mean, I, I guess it's been a while since I've read like a, a play in translation. I've been really deep into the Odyssey lately, more than anything else. Um, and so it's just like an interesting, I don't know. I mean, I, I suppose it's like there's making those connections in my head just because it's there, but I, I've also been working on, um, building out, like I've, I've written a novel and I'm doing like a big kind of rearrange on it and, and building out my world building and, and it's, it's sort of been this, reading your translation, I actually like stopped doing all of that, like fun research stuff,

• 47:12Liv Albert?

  um, to read your translation and it just kind of felt like I was just kept going with it actually. And I pretty immediately took a bit and put it into my notes because I've been kind of pulling these sort of quotes, these moments from, from classical myth and, and reception, like, like the play is, um, that they give us a hint of, of like this experience beyond what we are sort of led to understand the classical world and Greek myth as like, I mean, it, it all comes from, for me,

• 47:53Liv Albert?

  it's coming from this, like, this feminist side of me that has become more and more furious and misandrist with every passing year, that just like, when it comes to Greek myth, the thing that, you know, that I talk about all the time, but also that like haunts me is just, not just the way that we don't know how the woman felt, the women felt about their entire culture and their entire, like all of this, you know, all of this mythos that was recorded by the men and

• 48:28Liv Albert?

  We don't know what the women thought and instead we have this mythos that treats them as if they are just these bodies to be consumed, to be used, to be all of these things. And, and even when we are, when we are learning about mythology, by and large, from the sort of, the overarching sort of, I mean, expectation, I guess, of how we're meant to read Greek myth. Like, we are not meant to read into that. We're not meant to question that, you know, and I am getting back to your translation, I promise, but just like, we're, we're not meant to question how people felt about that lived reality. Like, I know it's myth, it's meant to represent things and, but it

• 49:10Liv Albert?

  tends to be that when people are talking about that type of, that part of it, that the, it's meant to represent something, and I'm saying that in air quotes, like, that becomes an excuse for horrors. And, and for me, like, I, I see it most in the women and I, you know, but I'm very interested in the, just generally, anyone who doesn't fit into that, like patriarchal mold, right? Because it's the same way, like, the women are just being controlled by the patriarchy in that more direct way. But like, anyone who doesn't fit into that mold is, is so fascinating to me. But particularly when it comes to myth, we don't get this alternate side. We're just supposed to

• 49:50Liv Albert?

  be like, oh, well, the reason why Zeus assaults, like, a hundred women and nymphs and goddesses in the mythology, like, well, that's just because, you know, he's the king of the gods and he had to become father of all of these creatures. And it's like, well, like, why are we just meant to be, like, these stories are so often, like, really obviously violent, but we are not, we are not, sort of, we're meant to not read that as like, an actual trauma. And even, like, I get it, it's mythology, but we're not meant to read it as if people, particularly people who don't fit outside of that, like, binary, that male, but specifically, I mean, the, the males that were in power, like-

• 50:32Liv Albert?

  We are never, we are never asked to question how those very real people might have seen these stories, these myths, these plays. And I think that's what I'm most interested in. Like, we're sort of meant to say that like, well, you know, because we don't have the voices of women, we're just meant to sort of assume they were just there and they were fine with everything. Whereas all I want to think about is like, these people who were not in the ruling class, like when they heard a myth that features that type of violence, like, how did they feel? And so to bring it all the way around, like, that's kind of what I'm getting from that. I mean, I think it's back eye, but specifically your translation, because it's very accessible and self-aware

• 51:15Liv Albert?

  and fun in a way that I want all of my Euripides, but specifically back eye to be. But it also just kind of, I don't know. I mean, it's still the ancient text. So it's not like it, you know, invents this new thing, but, but it just feels like one of very few, and I feel this way about a lot of Euripides's work more broadly, but it feels like one of very few examples where we could get a sense of how real people might have felt. This makes me think of also his play, The Ion, where we, yeah, where we actually know that at least one writer in the ancient world saw

• 51:54Liv Albert?

  stories of divine assault as moments of severe human trauma. And like, to me, the back eye kind of has that in it too, but in this really much more bizarre way, because you're dealing with like a very immediate divine force. And, and I love understanding the stories from myth like this with, with all the gods being like how you were kind of talking about Dionysus earlier on that, like, that thing that people have trouble with, this idea that he is both a god and a human. But what I find to be most interesting about Greek myth generally is the way that the gods are presented as so human. And I think that's what I'm finding most immediate in your translation is like,

• 52:38Liv Albert?

  this is a god who is also a human, and that's what I like in my, in when I'm taking this stuff in, because I think that the people in the ancient world, depending on time period, obviously and stuff, but like, there was this understanding that at least at some point, like, the gods were this very immediate force in the world. Like, I don't think that we, Should just believe that they all just thought like, oh no, they're all just conceptualized. Like, no, the stories make them very real.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  Well, and you pull, you pull one guy off the street and ask him the question. You pull a different guy off the street and ask him the question. You're gonna get two different answers. Like, there's no, there's no unity of thought here. Like, we have to, the, sorry, I've been doing this with students a lot recently. You have to give people in antiquity the same credit as you would give a person today of being able to understand a high concept idea and being able to parse their own beliefs and have their own opinions and have takes on their world that are not what is passed down through the very small slice of elite literature that is what we have.

• 53:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that all of the men determined over centuries and centuries was worth preserving.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, and, and, and very specific kinds of men within that.

• 53:58Liv Albert?

  Uh huh.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  And what I would also add to this is, you know, there's been a lot of rhetoric of like, we're meant to, we have to, this is the framework. I really, and if there's anything that like, my more recent work has, has shown me, it gets in through the walls. It gets in through the floorboards. Like, the, uh, these stories would not exist. Like, let's just take Medea. I, and this is very kind of broad concept, and somebody that's worked on that play more than me, please, you know, write in, send me hate mail, please don't.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Those kinds of choices don't exist in a, those, those narrative choices don't exist in a society that doesn't know what it's doing.

• 54:55Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  And, and is afraid and is, and has complicated feelings about that. There's so much. Fear that's put into maintaining this hierarchy, there's so much, you know, it is not a given that women will behave in the way that you want them to. We have a play where they don't. We have a play where they all run up onto the mountain and eventually do a regicide. Um, there's a scholar named Bonnie Honig, who's written a feminist theory of refusal, which is framed around Bacchae. Um, I'm not a hundred percent on everything in, in that text, but she does go out of her way to emphasize that the killing of Pentheus is also a regicide by the citizens of, by citizen women.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Hmm. There is more going on there. There, it is not only a regicide. And it is also partially a regicide. Mm hmm. And there is so much anxiety

• 56:01Speaker 03

  that fuels these stories. So even in something, hmm, let's go back a little earlier, like, like the Homeric Chindodemeter. Hmm. A story that is so, in, in many interpretations, reifies this hierarchy, reifies this uh, system by which women are transferred from a how, one household to another. A system by which women's sexuality is, uh, taken ownership of, not by women.

• 56:34Speaker 03

  And it's about a grieving mother. And it truly gets in through the walls. I think even in the most like straightforward cis hetero patriarchal narratives,

• 56:49Speaker 03

  it gets into, it, it, you know, it's coming up through the floorboards. You can't get rid of it. Hmm. Um, and I, the, there is a joy in

• 57:00Speaker 03

  looking at, you know, maybe, uh, knowing, or at least guessing, that an author would be horrified with your interpretation and kind of looking them in the eye across centuries and going, I actually don't care.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  This is, this is mine now. I'm going to do with this what I will. Um, I'm, I'm a, I'm in favor of like antagonistic readings a lot.

• 57:25Liv Albert?

  I mean, I'm not against it.

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I, I think just because it's what we're handed doesn't mean that's what we have to make of it.

• 57:34Liv Albert?

  Yes, yes. That just feels like you just put into words like so much of what I think about all of the time and like, what I, what I want to focus on on the show, but specifically what I'm kind of working on on the outside beyond the show because I just, I think more and more, like I'm so just interested in what else was going on and just how the others saw it. And so I love this idea of that getting in through the floorboards. Like you said, like that's, that's a delightful visual to just imagine that like,

• 58:13Liv Albert?

  I mean, I think it, it's so real. I mean, it reminds me of, you know, there's, there's always this talk like back and forth about, you know, what we can and can't say about women in the ancient world. Like, can we say that there were no women in the audience at the city Dionysia? Like, no, probably not. Can we say that there were no citizen women? Maybe. But like, we still can't say with any kind of real certainty that there were none. Like there's no, you know, I mean, I also think it's unreasonable. I mean, like you said, like just in this way of like, forget how you phrased it, but, but you know, the, the way we need to be thinking about ancient people be as being just as real and complex as

• 58:55Liv Albert?

  anyone today, because why wouldn't they be like, they're humans just like us. They just have different resources and like, I mean, I think about if I was a person living back then, like you can't really put yourself in any kind of shoes, but like it's not unreasonable to imagine that one woman at the very least was like, I'm going to go to the city Dionysia, like a citizen woman, whatever, like. That someone, I mean, obviously, there's lots, there's arguments to be made about like, what type of women would have been there if there were women, blah, blah, blah. But like, there's this idea that, yeah, like, that citizen women couldn't, wouldn't, whatever, they never were. That's just so impossible. Like, that's not a thing.

• 59:36Liv Albert?

  Like, these were open-air plays in the center of Athens. We, the idea that a woman never witnessed one, the idea that a woman never snuck in or, or disguised themselves à la back guy, like, but reverse, right? Like, you know, it's, it's just, I think that we, I know, I understand why the academic side can't get into those what ifs, you know, they're, they're without evidence and such, but like, that's all I want to think about. I want to think about the women living in that world who might have thought, like, hey, this whole childbearing, house-maintaining life, like, isn't for me. Like, it, it, it,

• 1:00:21Liv Albert?

  it's absolutely, you know, not, I mean, I don't even know how, it's just like, obviously, there were women like that, like, duh, you know, but I think there's so, there's so much hesitation. And like, I'm sorry, I keep bringing it back to women. It's just like, all that I've been dealing in, in

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  You're fine.

• 1:00:37Liv Albert?

  my personal side, you know, I'm very cis, and it's just, I want to, and it's just all I keep thinking about in, in this realm. And I think because of all of the, I mean, I think in the last couple of years alone, like, I'm not, you know, even beyond the absolute horror show that's happening in your country, I'm sorry.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Oh, I've been in a coma for a couple of years. What happened? What did I do?

• 1:00:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, oh, you know, just nothing, nothing much. But like, you know, even, even if you are outside, like, not giving that the weight that it obviously also deserves, but like, the whole kind of West has, is, is going through right now, this, like, yet another backlash to, to equality, gaining ground. And, and that applies to women and, and non-men, you know? And, and we're watching this backlash happen. And so it's like, all I can think about all the time is, is, I mean, Greek myth is the Western origins. They want to say that all the damn time, right? That like, these are the people who gave us the West, like, Though, but like they, these are the men who gave us the men's west, you know, but like

• 1:01:37Liv Albert?

  there were other people there. There were, there were women, there were absolutely people who we would now could define as, as non-binary and trans and all of these things. And like, what the fuck were they doing? And like, we don't know, but not because they weren't doing it. We don't know because the patriarchy didn't allow us to know. And I don't know, that just turned into a full-blown rant about that. But it's just, I keep, I just keep thinking about, about how, how other people would have seen these stories, these plays, these representations of people, like people just like them.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Liv Albert?

  But like not told in the way that they ever would have or something, you know?

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I think,

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  I, yeah, we're probably never gonna know. There is probably no way to know. Those, that is, you know, lost to history, lost to time. And

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  that doesn't mean that a quote unquote, like unsuccessful or Sisyphean effort is not worth it.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  There is.

• 1:02:41Liv Albert?

  Good use of the word.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Well, there is, and there's something to sitting in the loss and sitting with the sat, like sitting with a, sitting with the absence

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  of like, there is, you know, I mean, and it's, it's a

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  kind of a

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  kind of a way to, like, I think about grief as well of like, you cannot,

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  you can't erase grief. You cannot like fill the hole that grief leaves.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  And so like in looking for these voices who have been silenced, in looking for these people who we know existed, who we wish could speak. There is, you know, even if we cannot talk to them, for them, with them, there is something worthwhile in.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  Sitting in, in sitting next to them and sitting, and sitting beside them in acknowledging the absence. That's, that's the thing that really, you know, constantly gets to me is like, there is a temptation to say like, well, we can't do it. So we're not going to try. We're just gonna, you know, we can't do it. So

• 1:03:57Liv Albert?

  Pretend it didn't exist. Yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  Or we can't do it. So we're just gonna like mark it as like unknown, un, you know, unknown, um, not worth investigating. We, we've sorted that out. We figured out that we can't do it. And so we're not going to, we're not going to do it anymore. And I, I don't know. I, I was just talking about this day before yesterday of like, there is, you know, it's the, a kind of positive, not positive, but a maybe less directly harmful version of like picking at a scab. Like, I think there is something to keeping the wound open.

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  Um, or to like, yeah, I, I, I don't like, I don't like tying things off. I don't like firm endings. Um,

• 1:04:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Speaker 03

  And I, I don't know. I, I'm a big fan of embracing, you can't do it. Try anyway.

• 1:04:53Liv Albert?

  I love that. Well, and to, to bring it back to your translation, which is where I got started on, you know, this whole, yeah, it's just, it's, I, it's something I just can't stop thinking about. But I think that back eye is such a great resource for like the closest we can get to the other, to the missing, I think. Like back eye, Medea, Ion. Like I think these are really good examples of someone else, like a man who fit in with the man, man, mans, you know, that's just to really tie it up. Like really, you know,

• 1:05:32Liv Albert?

  he was a man. And he, he fit in with that structure and he was interested in the people who didn't. And that I think is, is quite rare in the ancient world, which is sad, but it's true. And, you know, back eye is such an interesting examples because it's like, I mean, it's way less direct than, say, the Ion or even Medea, um, you know, which Medea is like this big question about, I mean, women's rights, but also like barbarian women's rights. And then, of course, the Ion is is a big question about like trauma from from divine assault and things like

• 1:06:14Liv Albert?

  that. But but Baqai is like, Baqai is such an interesting look at what how they saw their gods. Or how at least, you know, Euripides considered visualizing this god. It's also got to be one of the very few plays that features a god so heavily, right? Like as kind of a start.

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

  Of what we have. Yeah, it's it's Prometheus bound is tricky because like.

• 1:06:40Liv Albert?

  That's the only one I was gonna guess too. Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  Prometheus bound is weird and I love it dearly.

• 1:06:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  Um, but apart from that, like in terms of extant.

• 1:06:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Tragedy.

• 1:06:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Because we we know for a fact that there are plenty that we don't have.

• 1:06:58Liv Albert?

  Like the Cadmus.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:07:02Liv Albert?

  It might have been boring. It's maybe it's fine. We don't have it.

• 1:07:05Speaker 03

  Even if it's boring, like even if it sucks, it's still worth it's still worth talking about. We don't, these things don't have to be quote unquote, good to, we don't have to like, find reasons why these things are good to want to, you know,

• 1:07:21Liv Albert?

  No.

• 1:07:21Speaker 03

  continue to investigate. It is actually fun if they're weird and stupid and bad sometimes.

• 1:07:26Liv Albert?

  I mean, we've already talked about Ifegonai among the Torians, Helen, Ion, all of these are plays that thank all of the gods except for the bad ones, like all that they survive, not because they were deemed.

• 1:07:40Speaker 03

  Saved by being alphabetically convenient.

• 1:07:43Liv Albert?

  Yes. And like, how, I mean, that I I won't make it a whole thing because I've talked, do this on the show every time Euripides comes up. But like, yeah, I, I, those are such good examples of things we have that we're like, not considered to be good. And they're fucking amazing, you know? So it's just so interesting. And like, Again, to get back to your direct translation, which I, I know, but like I, I just, I guess I'm also just like obsessed with the main ads and, and Dionysus generally and, and it had been a while since I'd read Backeye. So I think in my head right now, your translation is just like, it's feeding the need I didn't know I had, which was to reread Backeye,

• 1:08:24Liv Albert?

  but in this way, which is like, I, okay, I've just got like a bunch of bits highlighted that I maybe can use to start a further conversation. That's more directly about Backeye.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Let's go.

• 1:08:36Liv Albert?

  But I love, okay, so first chorus, um, Parados, right? Yeah. Oh my God. For one, just that Dionysus is like, Parados, you're on. That's delightful. Um, and I'm imagining it's like in the text and, but other translations don't make it quite so like quippy. I don't know, but I love it.

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

  No, it's, that's, it's not there. I just, no, that's, that's a me thing. I have to, like, I will be very honest when something is, you know, not Euripidean, that was me. That's just me. Um, and I'm not, I'm not apologetic for that. I like, that is.

• 1:09:11Liv Albert?

  It suited, like it fit. I mean, I, I was ready to be like, it was in there because, because Backeye is, is like that in a way where, yeah, no, well, I, I love that. So then, but then to the, the Parados. Um, this, it, it's funny again, because it's been so long since I've read any other translation, but, but.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Liv Albert?

  It's like the second, I'm also just like apparently really bad with like the ancient terms. I've lost them all, but the second, um, or I don't even know, third stanza, not, not technically not, but they say, the chorus sings, who would stand in our way? Who could stand in our way? Anyone? Let them stay housebound. Let them clear the streets. Let them keep their mouths shut, shut away, shut off, and then like a cutoff. And I just, i- it's things like that, that, that just immediately evoke everything I think about. The, the missing voices, the everyone else, you know?

• 1:10:11Liv Albert?

  And yeah, I mean, I guess maiden ads are a good and rare example where we get this like idea of an everyone else that, you know, but, but they were like God inspired mythical, but not like, there's just so much going on with them. And that's me then just getting into maiden ads and not just the translation, but you know.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  Well, no, and I mean, I, the, the one kind of pin I'll drive into that is that these, these particular women of this particular chorus are not Greek.

• 1:10:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah, right. Yeah, they're meant to be these like Eastern barbarians, right? Lydian?

• 1:10:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there is a lot, people, people better and smarter than me have done, have done a lot of really cool work with, with that.

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• 1:13:22Liv Albert?

  To the listeners, actually, you know, I don't know how quite I'm gonna edit this together, but we'll see. But essentially, we could talk, I think, about the wider ideas forever, but the whole point of this was to talk really specifically about these dynamics between Dionysus and Pentheus, and rage, which I honestly am so here for. So we're just gonna edit this so that I'm just straight guiding us to that. So like, this is something that we talked about, I think, pretty in-depth last time, but I've forgotten most of it, so I wanna do it all again. But like, yeah, these dynamics between Pentheus and Dionysus,

• 1:14:05Liv Albert?

  and like, what is happening and what? Like, basically just tell me all the things, and so I don't have to try to form a question. That was probably too much.

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, no, you're fine. So like, what I've been dealing, like, as I've discussed, there's like this trend to... When this play is discussed as like a queer text,

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  there is a tendency that Dionysus like becomes sort of a anthropomorphic personification of queerness.

• 1:14:38Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:14:39Speaker 03

  It's just like the queer force, the queer, the queering thing. Um, the thing that like inflicts, that's the wrong word, uh, the thing that like triggers, nurtures, catalyzes.

• 1:14:52Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:54Speaker 03

  You know, the blurring and breaking of boundaries and binaries in other characters.

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:15:04Speaker 03

  Where things get weird and messy is if, yeah, is if Dionysus is allowed to exist within the text as like a, a fully realized like intellect and consciousness and set of emotions and emotional life.

• 1:15:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 03

  Um, not just as like the, yeah, not just as the metaphor made of flesh. Um, because where that really gets hinky is in like questions of madness.

• 1:15:37Liv Albert?

  Hmm hmm.

• 1:15:39Speaker 03

  As like, I'm going to be very clear. Is this a sort of Euripidean rooted interpretation? No. Am I doing it anyway? Yeah.

• 1:15:50Liv Albert?

  Great.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  This.

• 1:15:54Speaker 03

  Tragedies are like water. They take the shape of the container that they're in. Bacchae is in the container of this century. And is, and is for the moment in, and in for the purposes of this conversation, in the container of me.

• 1:16:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  And my lived experience, my personhood.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  I.

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  I think this is the case for every translator. I think this is the case, you know, for most writers. I am not trying to put forth an unkind of unbiased quote, big air quotes, pure faithful reading.

• 1:16:31Liv Albert?

  I think the only translators who would ever dare say something so silly because it's so inherently not a trans, what like the purpose of a translation are like just the privileged old white men who think that their word about the classics is is God itself. So I love, I like to hear that. But I also think it's, yeah, it's a great and important reminder, like all translation is, is, uh, you know, subjective. And that's what makes reading it interesting and reading multiple interesting.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. And yeah, so there is, there is this question, not question, Dionysus is the mad god.

• 1:17:11Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  Uh, Walter Otto calls Dionysus like a, a mad god, a god who is mad, a god, part of whose nature it is to be insane. Um, it definitely, I'm very fine. I'm totally normal that I have that just off the top of my head. That's a very normal thing to do. Um.

• 1:17:32Liv Albert?

  Sometimes I just quote the line from Hesiod where Medusa like gets assaulted by Poseidon because I've fully memorized a translation of that. So no judgment here.

• 1:17:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, like lay beside her in a meadow of spring flowers.

• 1:17:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  Ish.

• 1:17:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Now, now you're showing me up because I can't think of more, but yes, exactly.

• 1:17:51Speaker 03

  I, look, I've been.

• 1:17:52Liv Albert?

  Oh, and then she suffered a woeful fate. That's the line.

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 1:17:55Liv Albert?

  Me.

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  That's the money.

• 1:17:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Speaker 03

  Um, okay. No, it's so Dionysus as the mad god.

• 1:18:02Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  And this is where Cameron Awkward Rich comes to the party as recommended by my dear, dear, dear cohort mate, Nicola D'Angelo, who everyone should read and follow, um, because she is wonderful and amazing. Um, Cameron Awkward Rich is pushing back against a trend in trans studies that leans away from questions of like sickness, madness and mental illness. Uh, there is a very famous like moment where Susan Stryker, uh, says like very strongly, I'm not sick.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  Like, you know, divorcing questions of transness from like it being an expression of mental illness or sickness. In that process, that elides aspects of the trans, aspects of a trans experience that do involve quote unquote Awkward Rich's quote "bad feelings."

• 1:18:57Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  And like questions of disability, question, yeah, disability, madness, mental illness, sickness. Um, that like, there is a, there is a need to create a publicly visible version of the trans experience that does not include those things and therefore does not include those people.

• 1:19:14Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  Um. For Dionysus, well, Awkward Rich mentions that like, these bad feelings are the result of being trans, not because being trans is in itself a sickness or a madness or an illness, but because it being trans puts you into a hostile environment immediately.

• 1:19:40Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:41Speaker 03

  It leads you to bad feel, because of the hostile environment in which it is received, transness and experiences of quote unquote "bad feelings" can live very close to each other, and that needs to be acknowledged.

• 1:19:59Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:00Speaker 03

  For Awkward Rich, those bad feelings are predominantly anxiety, depression, withdrawal, um, um, like those are the bad, those are the ways that bad feelings can manifest themselves.

• 1:20:13Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:14Speaker 03

  What I find interesting about Dionysus is that I think Dionysus is, I'm not gonna say I think Dionysus is, there is an opportunity to view, to build the lens through which Dionysus is suffering from trans maladjustment.

• 1:20:32Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  Is experiencing bad feelings because of societal rejection, because of familial rejection.

• 1:20:41Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Speaker 03

  And is very clearly like hurting. And the god has a, because Dionysus is a god, there is another option.

• 1:20:58Speaker 03

  The bad feelings are not limited to what people under oppressive structures are typically limited to. People under oppressive structures, they, there cannot be an external outlet for bad feelings. So these things go inward. You cannot effectively fight back all the time in every, in every manner. So that, so depression, so anxiety, so other, other worse things as happens so frequently to trans people, particularly trans people of color, particularly trans women of color. Mm-hmm. Um, the way that, the walls that are built around their lives until they collapse

• 1:21:42Speaker 03

  in. Um, Dionysus in the Bacchae has another option, and that option is rage. Mm-hmm. And rage that does not have to go inward. And what happens to Pentheus is an expression of those bad feelings, an expression of that rage. And what I would also add to that is that in these queer discourses, in these discourses of like, what is trans rage? Um, there can be a need to make it righteous. Hmm, mhm.

• 1:22:23Speaker 03

  Um, that in order for that anger to be, to be valid, to be accepted, it has to be, you know, a, a nurturing anger, a vital anger, an anger that builds, an anger that, you know, inspires you to the revolution and pushes you forward and gets you into community organizing. Yeah, you can't just be furious. Furious in, I want to be very clear, and I was very clear last time, and I, or actually, I could have been clearer last time. And what Dionysus does to Pentheus is cruel.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  Is cruel and violent and violating. And

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  malicious. In my reading.

• 1:23:13Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Well, he gets him torn to shreds. So I think, depending on, regardless of how you're coming for it, it's a pretty, it's a relevant thing to say. Obviously, the, the angle you're, you're coming at is, is very different, but like, you know.

• 1:23:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Rightly, the spirogmos is not the most violent thing that happens on that, in that play for me.

• 1:23:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, no, I, I, yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  The most violent, malicious, cruel thing that happens in that play is, um, there's an article by Isabel Raphael, um, Raphael, Raphael, uh, who writes about what happens to Pentheus as a forced outing.

• 1:23:52Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:54Speaker 03

  Um, and understanding like that Pentheus, a, a potential transness for Pentheus is used against him.

• 1:24:02Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:03Speaker 03

  Um,

• 1:24:06Speaker 03

  there is a, a dear, dear friend of mine who I was just at this, at this conference with and co-presented with, Pasqualina Breitenfeld, who spoke very eloquently about the, of walking through the scene where Pentheus is convinced to dress as a woman as where the anxiety, she tracks where the anxiety and where the fear comes from for Pentheus and links it back to a lot of contemporary trans theory about like, um,

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  the, the shame and the joy of even wanting to be seen as a woman.

• 1:24:41Speaker 03

  And how Pentheus experiences womanhood is

• 1:24:49Speaker 03

  so tender and

• 1:24:54Speaker 03

  almost joyful and like the, when Pentheus comes back after the roving and is like asking Dionysus all of these little detailed questions of like, how am I supposed to stand? You know, how, which hand do I have the theurist in? Like, how's my posture? How's my hair? How's my skirt? Um.

• 1:25:13Speaker 03

  Is the saddest thing in the world to me.

• 1:25:16Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:17Speaker 03

  Because this could be so good. And Dionysus is a hundred percent aware of that and Dionysus is a hundred percent on, on the same wavelength in understanding how Pentheus is feeling and understanding the liberatory joy of

• 1:25:41Speaker 03

  being, of being seen as a, being seen as a woman or even feminine and is killing him with it.

• 1:25:49Liv Albert?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:54Speaker 03

  And for me, that is the kind of, that is the, that is why Bacchae is not an uncomplicatedly like queer liberatory text, because this is a queer person destroying

• 1:26:10Speaker 03

  somebody else who could, who had that potential.

• 1:26:17Speaker 03

  And, and destroying them deliberately and maliciously.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  And

• 1:26:27Speaker 03

  that doesn't mean we, that doesn't mean we walk away from the play. That doesn't mean we walk away from Dionysus. Support is different than analysis. Condoning is different than understanding.

• 1:26:40Liv Albert?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:40Speaker 03

  And what I would invite in that moment is like,

• 1:26:45Speaker 03

  not all anger is going to be righteous.

• 1:26:49Liv Albert?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  Not all rage is generative and beautiful and good. There are going to be aspects of living as the fascist walls close in where you just want to hurt somebody.

• 1:27:09Speaker 03

  Should you? No.

• 1:27:12Speaker 03

  And, sorry, this is very like, this is a little intense.

• 1:27:17Liv Albert?

  No, but I, ah, I-

• 1:27:19Speaker 03

  The kinds of rage that are not generative, the kinds of feelings that are not, that are destructive, that are destructive, that are cruel, that are petty, that are big air quotes evil.

• 1:27:32Speaker 03

  Feeling the devillain impulses

• 1:27:36Speaker 03

  is beautifully represented in Dion- beautifully and horribly represented in Dionysus, and that that is an opportu- that is a

• 1:27:45Speaker 03

  a sticking point. Dionysus is not the queer savior in this play.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  And if they are, that's a very complicated version of salvation.

• 1:28:01Speaker 03

  It's not, this is, the end of this play is not

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  either a restoration of the Paulus where the gender roles are reasserted and everybody goes back to normal and Dionysus leaves, or a kind of, you know, bright shining post-revolution future. It's not going to be either of those.

• 1:28:22Speaker 03

  Because the, the creature at the heart of this, I, the god, the person at the heart of this is

• 1:28:34Speaker 03

  fundamentally wounded as, as we all are.

• 1:28:41Speaker 03

  And this play is not a roadmap to revolutions. This play can be a warning. Not a warning that causes you to return to hegemony, to, to return to structures and binaries, but that shows a possible path that gives you the decision whether or not you want to turn to it.

• 1:29:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:03Speaker 03

  Sorry, that was really heavy.

• 1:29:04Liv Albert?

  No, I mean, it was, but like-

• 1:29:09Liv Albert?

  I it it's just made me think so many things. And I, I mean, I think one is that what I find I enjoy, I suppose, most about Euripides, but plays like this and Medea. Um, because more on that, but is this way that like the ending isn't

• 1:29:37Liv Albert?

  it isn't like what we get in so many other Greek plays, I guess. Like it isn't, it doesn't wrap everything up with a little bow. The, the, you know, the expected gods don't fly in on the machine and solve all the problems. Instead, it leaves you with

• 1:30:00Liv Albert?

  questions and emotions and probably some rage as well, even in the audience and like, you know, just a lot. And I think that's what I like. I like the, this expectation that you just sit in it yourself and make of it kind of what you will. But specifically,

• 1:30:28Liv Albert?

  and stop me, please, if, if this sounds, you know, remotely like I'm, I'm trying to, you know, hijack anything because I'm not, but one thing that really just was kind of coming up to me and the way you were talking about that and, and just the way that Dionysus, just sort of that, that Dionysus that, that you were looking at this, you know, that, that, that he isn't a savior, that, that he does terrible things out of thi- this place of sort of being in such a similar situation, kind of, you said much better, but just that, that element really made me think of, of how Euripides treats Medea.

• 1:31:08Liv Albert?

  It's so fascinatingly similar, I would say, just in this way that both of them are coming from these very sympathetic, I would say, places. And, and the way we, we are kind of meant to, to like them throughout the play and, and sympathize and kind of understand generally where they're coming from. And then they do something horrific.

• 1:31:38Liv Albert?

  And that something is so tied to their own trauma.

• 1:31:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:31:44Liv Albert?

  And like, and, and that's just sort of it, you know, we, we don't think, we don't, we're not meant to think that in the end, they're the good guy. Nor are we really meant to think ultimately that they are the bad guy. They're just a, a, a person, well, or a god.

• 1:32:01Liv Albert?

  But who did a terrible thing from a very complicated place.

• 1:32:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:32:07Liv Albert?

  And I just think that, I just, yeah, I hadn't, I hadn't seen those connections between them before. And I find that really interesting. And again, it just reminds me of this way that, that I think Euripides was just really interested in the complexity of humanity in a way that I personally love.

• 1:32:25Speaker 03

  Well, and there's, I mean, there, there's, sorry, this is off the dome, so I might refute this later.

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  Both of those plays end with a character telling that our Dionysus Armadilla, you went too far. What have you done?

• 1:32:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:44Speaker 03

  We have Jason and we have Cadmus.

• 1:32:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:48Speaker 03

  Who is the only character in the play who stands up to Dionysus and says, that's not okay.

• 1:32:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  And there is, like, that chance is given and then you get to watch your protagonist, and I, I don't use that word to mean good guy. I use that word to mean, you know, person who's the prime mover of the play.

• 1:33:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:09Speaker 03

  Um, Deuteragonis through Dionysus, uh, say, I don't care. You know, for Dionysus, it's, you know, Zeus, my father set this in motion. I am a god. You should have honored me. And another thing.

• 1:33:24Speaker 03

  I'm going to pivot for a second, then I'm going to come back.

• 1:33:28Speaker 03

  There is also in contemporary interpretation, a.

• 1:33:34Speaker 03

  Discomfort or a judgment around Dionysus's like not request, demand. It's a demand. Let's call it what it is. For worship and for, you know, cult status and divine praise. Where it is difficult to then like, hold a mortal conception in conjunction with that where it's like, that feels like too much to ask. That feels like too much for somebody to ask. That feels quote unquote arrogant. That feels unnecessary. That feels too much. And I think this gets into an interesting place when we consider what in a present day is thought to be too much to ask.

• 1:34:16Speaker 03

  When a trans person asks, call me this name. Use these pronouns. Don't for, you know, don't use X, Y, and Z for me. Let me, you know, I'm gonna dress the way I want. Let me get healthcare.

• 1:34:32Speaker 03

  Allow me to pay for the gen- allow me to pay for life-saving, gender-affirming healthcare.

• 1:34:40Speaker 03

  That I cannot necessarily afford on my own, you know, give me, give me access to the tools to save my life.

• 1:34:49Speaker 03

  That can also be interpreted by less compassionate actors as too much.

• 1:35:00Speaker 03

  As, you know, you are, you're arrogant, you're playing God, you're usurping the role of nature, you're doing, you are going too far. I'm not gonna do that for you. I'm not gonna help you with that. I'm not going to validate your conception of yourself.

• 1:35:19Speaker 03

  Financially, medically, socially, legislatively.

• 1:35:25Speaker 03

  And I think there is something to seeing Dionysus's fixation on, no, it's not fixation. Like the, the, the demand for worship as the demand for being honored as a god. That is what they are.

• 1:35:45Speaker 03

  It is, you know, big air quotes.

• 1:35:50Speaker 03

  Reasonable accommodation.

• 1:35:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:54Speaker 03

  Um, you can, I also think about it in the terms of sometimes disability, where disabled people need to ask the world to bend around them in certain ways. Or there are, you know, things that a disabled person cannot do, you know, help is needed, care is needed, some kind of intervention from the world around is needed.

• 1:36:25Speaker 03

  And that is considered too much.

• 1:36:28Speaker 03

  You know, we're not going to do that. We're not going to help.

• 1:36:30Liv Albert?

  And I would, I would say this because I think it aligns, I mean, with, with this question, but also the, the, the trans narrative that, that led to this, which is that, so a few years back, I had Kyle Lewis Jordan on my show to talk about hephaestus and disability.

• 1:36:48Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:36:50Liv Albert?

  And Kyle does a lot of incredible work on, on disability studies, but also like accessibility in like museums and all of that. But one of the things that he, it was just the way he phrased it that, that sticks with me, which is just the way we conceptualize of disability is, is something, you know, that is like inherent to the person who is disabled. Whereas in, in truth, it is the world that has disabled them because it is that the world does not fit them.

• 1:37:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:27Liv Albert?

  And, and you know, all of these things in the world are not made, they're, they're made for able-bodied body. It isn't that, that that person is disabled, you know? And so it, it reminds me of the, the, the same issues, I think, in transness, which is that the world has made it so that it is so fucking hard. It's not the trans person that has made it so fucking hard.

• 1:37:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:55Liv Albert?

  And so, yeah, like, I think that, that, that's an important connection to kind of make because it is, it is this, this bigger world problem. It is not the individual who has done anything except try to be themselves.

• 1:38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, I should also say as a caveat here, or like, I am, I am thinking about these questions having recently become disabled. Like, that is something that I'm actively wrestling with at the moment as I figure out what an accommodated life looks like for me. And experiences that I've had of attempting to ask for accommodations that require other people to do something.

• 1:38:36Speaker 03

  That might not necessarily, not just, you know, let me do X, let me do Y, I'm gonna, you know, I can't, you know. Yeah. Something that other people actually have to do. And be conscious of and, you know, change something about the way they live their lives. And having that be really difficult. Um, so

• 1:39:01Speaker 03

  I have a lot of understanding. As I already did, like, to be very clear, my Dionysus is

• 1:39:11Speaker 03

  there's a lot of me in there. And it's not a, it's not a, you know, sort of active artistic choice, it's not a grand political statement, it's, it's just how it is. That's, I mean. I feel a great affinity for that figure, that figure is somebody that's very important to me. Yeah. And if you haven't figured that out, hello, listeners, if you haven't figured that out by now. Emma likes Dionysus. Yes. Like, is probably too little a word. Emma has big feelings. Big feelings. About Dionysus.

• 1:39:51Speaker 03

  And I have a lot of sort of embodied understanding in this moment of

• 1:40:00Speaker 03

  you know, walking up to somebody or kind of trying, approaching an institution. Whether, you know, for Dionysus, that's the city of thieves, approaching any kind of, you know, larger organization and saying, hello, this is what I need from you. This is how I can, you know, be comfortable and safe and feel like me and you know, institution or a family. And that's, you know, very often the case for contemporary trans people is

• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  Experiencing, you know, no, I'm not going to help you move through the world. I'm not going to give you what you need to be you. I'm not going, because it's also like there's the, well, and it plays against this like raging hyper individualism of like, if you can't just do that for yourself, it, you're doing it wrong, you know, you have to be able to work this all out on your own. You are, you know, I'm not responsible for you. I'm not responsible for your feelings. I'm not responsible for your safety. I'm not responsible for your life. I'm not, like, there is that very American hyper individualism of like,

• 1:41:09Speaker 03

  being in community or being with other people in like a system of care is seen as like parasitic or codependent.

• 1:41:20Liv Albert?

  Late-stage capitalism is-

• 1:41:22Speaker 03

  It's great, we're doing great.

• 1:41:25Liv Albert?

  I'd say that is all, just, ugh.

• 1:41:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, and just, I, I, I don't find that model helpful.

• 1:41:32Speaker 03

  Um, I don't find that model helpful. That model is uncomfortable to deal with a lot of the time. And I can, I, I can then see that in Dionysus and also see a different version of that in the chorus who are in community.

• 1:41:50Liv Albert?

  Can I use this as a moment to quote the chorus? Because I have it pulled up and I just really love this. But it, so this is, it's, um, I, I did have to scroll through of my highlights, so I'm gonna, I hope I'm getting it right of where it is, but it looks like it's right after, it's when Dionysus is taken away to be-

• 1:42:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:10Liv Albert?

  -imprisoned before he like blows the shit up and reveals himself.

• 1:42:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:14Liv Albert?

  And, and so, yeah, it was like third stanza of the chorus and they just start, "Such rage, such rage flames up in the sun of the earth, born Acheon, the serpent's son, who sprang up from dragon's teeth, sown in the earth like grain, Pentheus, monster, fearsome beast, like none of mortal kind."

• 1:42:35Liv Albert?

  And I just, I really, I was just like doing real quick highlighting of it this morning because I, yeah, and I just- I mean, it brings up the rage. This is obviously before he's kind of made the decision to blow shit up. But it's so, it's interesting to me. And just what you were saying earlier about the accommodations. And I mean, I think often too, like it gets a little, we get a little caught up in the worship that he's requesting. And he is obviously, but I think it's really interesting also to remember that this is, and I know you do, to be clear. But like that this is also a story of, of family rejecting him. Which, yeah, is, is something that I think of a lot because I'm obsessed with his family.

• 1:43:20Liv Albert?

  But also, yeah, I imagine is also something that really ties in with, with this sort of trans reading of him.

• 1:43:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, and I'd, and I'd also add here, like Dionysus is not the only raging figure.

• 1:43:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:32Speaker 03

  Pentheus is raging. Pentheus is, this is also about Pentheus's rage. And Pentheus is internalizing that rage and directing it outwards. And that rage comes potentially in this reading, caveat, caveat, caveat, from

• 1:43:51Speaker 03

  the, the desperate need to maintain structure and hierarchy. And the desperate need to abide by these norms. Which it causes a lot of psychic anguish and that has to go somewhere.

• 1:44:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:05Speaker 03

  And I would also point out like this, and this is not just in this passage. And this is very Euripidean, the way that Pentheus in the, the words of the chorus is constantly made animal, made monster.

• 1:44:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Human.

• 1:44:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that dovetails with Dionysus, that dovetail, like Pentheus is also being pulled around to the borders of humanity and is being seen as a, as a creature, as a thing.

• 1:44:40Speaker 03

  By the chorus. So yeah, this, whenever you think this play has a straightforward like direction of energy, or where there's like only one character in Bakai that does something, or like that there, you know, whenever there's an uncomplicated reading, it comes in through the floorboards.

• 1:44:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:56Speaker 03

  It gets in through the wall.

• 1:44:57Liv Albert?

  The idea of an uncomplicated reading of Bakai, I think, is like, it betrays like a lack of interest in Bakai, like, or Euripides, or like, I don't know, that's, yeah, but it's, yeah, I, I, sorry, now I got distracted because I was looking for more of my highlights to, to keep us on this. And I found where I've highlighted an entire, I actually can't see where my camera is, but

• 1:45:23Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:45:24Liv Albert?

  age, that it shows up in my iPad. And it's because I'm, and stop me if they're, you know, I'm not trying to interrupt, but this is an ADHD moment of like

• 1:45:34Speaker 03

  Let's go.

• 1:45:35Liv Albert?

  Guiding elsewhere. But I was really interested in the way you kept a lot of Greek.

• 1:45:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:42Liv Albert?

  And whether that is, I mean, it's, it's an interesting choice that I loved. I was like, you know, I don't, I don't, um, I don't know ancient Greek, but I know little bits and I can sound it out. So that's my favorite. Anytime I see Greek is like, okay, well, I'll just say it out loud and then I'll get things out of it. And, um, you know, so that's, that's kind of all I can get out of the Greek. But I, I, I love that inclusion. I feel like it, I mean, it's interesting from, especially from like where he is also coming from this barbarian aspect, which as much as we're not, we're not going to talk about that, you know, that, that necessarily Eastern aspect, but it is interesting to note for the listeners

• 1:46:22Liv Albert?

  that like, from a bare minimum standpoint, the idea of, of barbarians in Greece, I mean, in ancient Greece was, I mean, on its face, it's non-Greek, right? But specifically from the East, there is this very strong, um, understanding in the ancient Greek world that, that there is like a lot of effeminacy that, that people from the East are, have all these, like, they're, they're woman-like. I mean, it's also where we get the idea of Amazons, All of this, it's like this, this sort of they're, they're not good like us because they're also effeminate. And I think that's an interesting tie in. Um, and I realized that just like also came out of just, this is my ADHD brand going wild because it wasn't really relevant here.

• 1:47:07Liv Albert?

  But it is so interesting to like, look at him that way. And I'm just generally in interested in, in the, the Greek like uses that you've done. But also I want to, I mean, I, I want to keep hearing more about the, the rage if you have it, but I'm just, now I'm just excited and going on.

• 1:47:25Speaker 03

  I, I will, um,

• 1:47:29Speaker 03

  steal a point from somebody at this conference. There's a lovely, uh, wildly intelligent, um, member of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at, uh, UCLA, um, and I will have to double check if she is okay with me naping her after this. Uh, her name's Charlotte. She's great. Um, and

• 1:47:54Speaker 03

  she at the conference brought up that the words specifically used to describe Pentheus's clothing are, have like a very specific Near Eastern connotation. Like that they are interpreted in this case as like, quote unquote, like women's wear. And they're also like the garments of a king.

• 1:48:18Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 1:48:20Speaker 03

  Um, like I think.

• 1:48:21Liv Albert?

  Stern king.

• 1:48:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, she was, she was way more specific than I'm being and she had it down.

• 1:48:28Liv Albert?

  I'm so interested in that.

• 1:48:30Speaker 03

  Um, and then I had to like go stare at the wall for a bit. Um, but it was so, it was so cool. But yeah, there is, there is a lot going, there is a lot of specificity there.

• 1:48:43Speaker 03

  But with regard to the Greek, are you talking about the earthquake?

• 1:48:48Liv Albert?

  Um, I mean, maybe, yeah. He, at one, it's when, yeah, I mean, it's right when, um,

• 1:48:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah, from that's shortly after we have the Dionysus from offstage amplified distorted

• 1:49:01Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:02Liv Albert?

  hallowing defiance, a child wailing, a tree uprooting. I just love that. So I had to read it all. And then there's, there's some Greek there. But I noticed mostly the next line, because he says that he's like of semile of

• 1:49:15Speaker 03

  Semelasodios

• 1:49:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah, which is like, we understood. So thank you.

• 1:49:19Speaker 03

  Well, you got it. You got it.

• 1:49:21Liv Albert?

  I did.

• 1:49:22Speaker 03

  Um, no, you had that one in the bag. Um, so this is a scene, this is a scene commonly known as like either the earthquake or like the palace miracle. The moment where Dionysus is imprisoned and busts out dramatically and supernaturally, we don't see the busting out, we see the chorus reacting to it.

• 1:49:44Liv Albert?

  We love offstage, like

• 1:49:47Speaker 03

  And yeah, I, every so often, just because there are no stage directions, stage directions in tragedy, I have to go a little nuts.

• 1:49:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah, you get to make them. That's the whole rule. And people before you have made more ridiculous ones. So I'm glad. That's all. Because I, those are so wild sometimes. And you see stuff and you're like, this sounds risky. I don't like it. So I like when I'm like, when, I mean, all of yours. I was like, oh, I'm so here for all of these.

• 1:50:16Speaker 03

  My, my stage direction, my stage directions are, and I did not do this on purpose, and then it's just how it happened. My stage directions are a technical team's worst nightmare. Because they are so abstract and weird and unstageable. And I'm so sorry to any future lighting, sound, set design. I'm so sorry, guys. Do whatever you need. I, you know, work within the constraints of your budget. I'm so sorry.

• 1:50:44Liv Albert?

  I have to say, I love that especially because unlike a large number of other, like, you know, more traditional translations, you are also a dramaturge. So I think it's funny that you're like Mine are terrible for anyone, but also I'm the person who's actually affiliated with theater.

• 1:51:02Speaker 03

  They're either, well, they're, I, so like, it's, it's a split thing of either they're a nightmare, or they are like a fun, creative invitation. And it's genuinely up to you, like, if, if you've got a million dollars and you've got like fog machines and lightning and all you want to go nuts, do that. If you've got a black box theater and like a thunder sheet offstage and like a couple of ribbons, great, do that. Um, I truly, I wanna, I'm so like, I wanna see the,

• 1:51:37Speaker 03

  my, my fond, never gonna happen dream is like, I wanna see the five dollar and the five million dollar version.

• 1:51:44Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 1:51:46Speaker 03

  And they're both good.

• 1:51:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah. That's great tragedy though, too, right? Like, that's what's so fun about, a kind of what they did and didn't have back then is that it makes it so much easier for us now to, to have all these possibilities.

• 1:51:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. My, my favorite thing is like, in discussions of like, what, you know, why is this speech so long? Why is this speech here in the play? Why is this, you know, moment being structured the way it is? And I'm just quietly in the corner going, the actor needs to go get changed.

• 1:52:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Speaker 03

  You are buying time for a quick change backstage. And I just, I love it so much. Um, with regard to the Greek in the earthquake palace miracle scene, I, I like when the, I like when divinity leaks through. I like when the more, it's not the mask, because it's not artificial, but

• 1:52:40Speaker 03

  I like when the Lovecraftian thing peeps through. And I think in this case, like, using the Greek, using a language that the chorus demonstrably understands and the audience may not lens the magic to the scene in a way that.

• 1:53:03Speaker 03

  Proves useful. And the scene is also somewhat magical in the sense of like, there's one of my professors at UCLA, Alah Hasselsvort, over this past week with the Bakai Conference, was talking about how the chorus are essentially singing down the earthquake. Like, this is a song between the chorus and Dionysus, where they sing this miracle into being. They incant this thing into being. This is a spell. And there's also something really fun. One of the Greek lines that I have in here, se e pedon kathanos en nasi potnia. It's like, you know, shake the ground, lady earthquake,

• 1:53:47Speaker 03

  queen earthquake. And like, she is personified.

• 1:53:50Liv Albert?

  I'm glad you defined that, because those were all words where I was like, okay, I've got, I've got the chthonic, I've got potnia, but I needed to hear it put together in that way. I

• 1:54:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:01Liv Albert?

  Ugh.

• 1:54:02Speaker 03

  No, it's like, it's like, oh, oh, queen earthquake, oh, lady earthquake, like, shake, shake the ground below. And she, she is like, personified, and she is like, sung into this moment. And I think, for a contemporary audience, having something that feels like a spell be in a language that you don't, a language that a given contemporary audience isn't necessarily going to understand immediately, rocks. I think it's, yeah. That's where my scholarship runs out. And I'm just like, I actually think this is just sick nasty, and I thought it would be cool.

• 1:54:36Liv Albert?

  That's where, kind of what I was taking from it. Because I was like, oh, we got this Greek, like, I can picture the kind of like, heavy chanting of ancient Greek in that moment, in a way that I, yeah, am equally obsessed with. So, it rocks. Okay, we do have to start wrapping up, which

• 1:54:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:54:53Liv Albert?

  I don't want to do, but

• 1:54:55Speaker 03

  Me neither, but here we are.

• 1:54:56Liv Albert?

  Where, okay, I, there's just another line, and then maybe this is a good, I don't want to like, oh, there's so much else to say. But I just have where, I think it's Dionysus speaking, but he's also kind of third personing, and I'm just loving this. He says, "Then the roaring god," at least, I think it was them, but that's just my opinion, "created an image in the courtyard, a phantom, a simulacrum. Hologram's good for this century." Yeah, like, I, that's so interesting. And it, it made me think, like,

• 1:55:31Liv Albert?

  I mean, generally, I don't, I'm not gonna turn this into like a big, long thing, even though I could. Um, but I love, I'm just loving all of this and I'm trying to like, okay, how, what else do we have to say that we could do in like eight minutes? Um, but I just, I just, I love all of it. Oh, I've got the snakes all highlighted. There's just so much going on. Um, but like, I mean, what kind of, if you have like a, a closing thing that you want to share, because I just, I want to hear everything. Uh, but also no, no pressure, but like, was there a moment or like something about the end, you, you were curious about the end earlier, which we barely really got, I mean, we got to it, but also not.

• 1:56:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, uh, okay, first with the fourth wall breaking. I am take, I, I, I am obsessed with, I am taken with

• 1:56:23Speaker 03

  really creating a version of Dionysus in the first, i- in the first half of the play. That is creating community with the audience. And

• 1:56:35Liv Albert?

  Oh, Dionysus.

• 1:56:36Speaker 03

  Is, is warm and funny and sparkly and cool and sexy and all of those things and like, and you know, genuinely like I, my, my dream in production is like, and it's happened once or twice. It's like Dionysus is on stage before the play starts, like chatting it up with the audience, like really building a relationship, building a rapport.

• 1:57:01Liv Albert?

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:57:03Speaker 03

  And, you know, constantly kind of coming back to the audience with, you know, that kind of divine fourth wall breaking. And also there's no fourth wall in antiquity because there's no proscenium. The fourth wall is really introduced with the advent of proscenium stages. Um, just a Dionysus that

• 1:57:21Speaker 03

  wants to be your friend.

• 1:57:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:24Speaker 03

  Uh, and, and, and very, and wants to be liked.

• 1:57:29Speaker 03

  Um, and accept, wants to be liked, wants to be accepted, and if that's not gonna happen onstage, it'll happen in the house. Um, and then tracking that through what happens at the end of the book.

• 1:57:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:45Speaker 03

  And my most recent, like, about a year ago, maybe a little bit more, I like, you know, woke up in a cold sweat and was like, I have to change the ending. Um, because there is, very famously, this large lacuna, uh, where we don't have, like, the back, we don't have Agave's lament, where she would most likely have, like, reassembled the limbs of Pentheus and grieved over them, and we don't have Dionysus's, uh, final entrance, which would have presumably been on the crane, on the meconae, uh,

• 1:58:12Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:13Speaker 03

  And revealed as a god. We don't have that. We pick up with grandpa gets snaked. Um, I'm not gonna stop calling it that.

• 1:58:21Liv Albert?

  No, no, I would be offended if you did.

• 1:58:24Speaker 03

  Uh, we, we pick up with grandpa getting snaked, and I, in my translation, initially, in the draft that is currently published online, uh, at the Mercurian, uh, a theater translation journal, um, that ending is, the way that that lacuna's been filled by me, very passive voice, the way I filled that lacuna, um, is very about semelie. It's very like, here's all of the, here's all of the ways that you screwed over my mother, or here's why I've done, you know, here's why I've done this, fuck you forever. Um,

• 1:59:03Speaker 03

  and the new ending, that felt a little too easy. That felt like trying to get Dionysus a path.

• 1:59:13Speaker 03

  Um, and this new ending, I think, this new choice to fill the lacuna.

• 1:59:24Speaker 03

  Uh, leans into what I've talked about already with the, the spite and the cruelty and the malice and the rage. Um, I, I might close by reading a little bit of it if you don't mind.

• 1:59:35Liv Albert?

  Please.

• 1:59:36Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:59:38Speaker 03

  Where Dionysus.

• 1:59:39Liv Albert?

  I think you might be about to read the part that I'm, I've got highlighted here too.

• 1:59:43Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 1:59:43Liv Albert?

  Close to it. So I'm already.

• 1:59:45Speaker 03

  Uh, I warned him. I told him exactly what I was and he said I wasn't. I told him who I was and he didn't believe me. I told all of you who I am and you said no. And then the stage directions very specifically say to audience.

• 2:00:05Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sorry. Am I not fun anymore?

• 2:00:08Speaker 03

  We were having so much fun. Me and the girls and all of you. Wasn't it fun? Wasn't it cool and sexy and camp and just a little bit dangerous? Wasn't I?

• 2:00:19Speaker 03

  But now he's dead in seventeen different pieces and she's crying. We all feel a little bit different, don't we? Well, maybe you do. You didn't have to kill him like that though. That was cruel to fuck with his mind like that. Maybe I fucked with his mind. Maybe I didn't. You'll just have to argue that one out amongst yourselves for another couple thousand years. And it, it goes on, but it is.

• 2:00:39Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, it is. It is everything that I previously described. Hopefully if I've done my job right. Um, it is, it's cruel and malicious and petty. And Dionysus actually says that later on. He says, yes, uh, they say, yes, it was cruel. That's the point. It was cruel and over the top and vicious and I'm so fucking glad I did it. Whether or not you believe Dionysus in that moment is up to you.

• 2:01:03Speaker 03

  They also say further down again to the audience after building this rapport through the whole play. I don't care if you don't like me anymore. Um, and that is the one stage direction that I will very much stick up for because the stage direction right before that just says lying.

• 2:01:19Liv Albert?

  I noticed that.

• 2:01:20Speaker 03

  Um, and then grandpa gets snaked and then we get back on track and then Euripides resumes and grandpa gets snaked and Agave leaves. So. Yeah.

• 2:01:29Liv Albert?

  Who will be a snake or whatever it was that used to be here?

• 2:01:34Liv Albert?

  So that's just the first line of it. I love that.

• 2:01:37Speaker 03

  Thank you. I, I, I like it.

• 2:01:38Liv Albert?

  I'm not at all highlighted.

• 2:01:39Speaker 03

  I like acknowledging, I, I feel a duty to acknowledge, like, yeah, I'm playing Calvin ball here. We need to understand in the narrative that what, you know, even the narrative itself is degrading here as

• 2:01:55Speaker 03

  other things come up through the floorboards.

• 2:01:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:59Speaker 03

  The twenty, you know, the, the, the existence of this as a, as a sort of snow globe narrative

• 2:02:06Speaker 03

  starts to crack.

• 2:02:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  Cause thieves can't hold this anymore.

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  So I'm very normal. I've done a very normal thing. I have a very normal research agenda.

• 2:02:21Liv Albert?

  I mean, join the club. I, okay, normality is overrated.

• 2:02:27Speaker 03

  I hope so.

• 2:02:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I cannot fuck with it anymore. I don't see the point, but I think like Back Guy is a mindfuck of a play and I think that's the point. So I absolutely love, I love this translation, like, I mean, I love Back Guy, but like, I think that a lot of times people don't lean into the mindfuck that is Back Guy and they kind of keep it like to something that, that resembles the other Greek tragedies in, in their translations. And I just appreciate when there is that sort of freedom to be like, no, this is fucked up.

• 2:03:07Liv Albert?

  And we can all love it for the piece of art and entertainment that it is, and it's fucked up. I mean, it's how I feel about Medea too. And I just, yeah, so it's.

• 2:03:17Speaker 03

  Oh, and it, and it tells, it

• 2:03:21Speaker 03

  tells you something about the fucked up parts of you.

• 2:03:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:24Speaker 03

  It, it speaks to,

• 2:03:28Speaker 03

  yeah, experi- experiences that are not comfortable. It speaks to dynamics between people that are not comfortable. It speaks to ways of living in the world that can go really horribly wrong. And

• 2:03:45Speaker 03

  I, I don't think of it as a like, a sort of call to a return to normalcy, a sort of caution, a warning against the other.

• 2:03:54Liv Albert?

  No.

• 2:03:55Speaker 03

  I think there's, I think there's more to be done.

• 2:03:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, there's just depth there and

• 2:04:02Liv Albert?

  well, we could talk about it forever, but we're already over the time we planned. So I mean, thank you so fucking much for this because truly like fucking delightful episode. I'm just gonna keep saying fuck because Dionysus would approve. Um, I'm going to get some, uh, things from you separately in an email, but is there anything you want to share with my listeners about, um, where to read more or just anything?

• 2:04:25Speaker 03

  Um, watch this space?

• 2:04:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:28Speaker 03

  Uh, you can find me on Instagram at Academic Mainad. Uh, I don't kind of have any other form of social media at the moment that's really active. I'm a member of, uh, your lovely collective and

• 2:04:43Liv Albert?

  will exist in some more formal way soon.

• 2:04:45Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, that's the, the, what do you mean? What do you mean? That doesn't exist. What am I talking about? That's a ghost. A ghost said that.

• 2:04:51Liv Albert?

  No, no, it is a space. It's just more that I have no time to fill it at all.

• 2:04:56Speaker 03

  Um, I, yeah, that's, I'm, I'm just kind of living the PhD life right now. So that is my only plug is just, you know, watch this space and follow me on Instagram if you want.

• 2:05:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah, we got fun plans. We do.

• 2:05:12Speaker 03

  All right. Evil plans.

• 2:05:15Liv Albert?

  A little of everything and plans, I would say.

• 2:05:18Speaker 03

  Yes. Okay. But yeah, thank you so much for having me on. It's such a pleasure to be back and I'm so delighted to be able to be, uh, weird and gay and arcane in this space.

• 2:05:33Liv Albert?

  Thank you. I'm delighted to have you with all of those things and in this space. It's just a fucking favorite.

• 2:05:55Liv Albert?

  Thank you all so much for listening. I am so excited to have this conversation. We've been talking about doing this for months and months and it's finally happened. I just, I mean, now more than ever, I, obviously, I find it so important to be talking about these queer versions of stories, these queer gods, these gods that are so inherently gender diverse, that so inherently are beyond the binary.

• 2:06:23Liv Albert?

  The horrors persist, so generally, we'll just say, you know, for as long as I can, I am just going to keep celebrating these queer stories, these queer bodies, these queer people. Trans people deserve to exist in exactly the same way that cis people deserve to exist. And it's utterly absurd that anyone dares suggest otherwise. And maybe we just need to sic Dionysus on them. You can pull a Pentheus on Roland and all of her terrible, hideous bunch of tarfs.

• 2:07:00Liv Albert?

  Let's Talk Oh Miss Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangowish is the Hermes to my Olympians. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, where we are trying to build out historical resources that have morals and, and values behind them. For lack of more detail, right now, the website, again, is still being created, but in the meantime, you can learn more at collectivemem.com. And sign up for the newsletter, because eventually, eventually, I'll have to release one of those, missbaby.com/newsletter. Thank you all so much for listening. I fucking, I mean, I am Liv first, you know, I'm Liv, I'm still me. I'm Liv and I fucking love this shit.

• 2:07:54Speaker 02

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