Order-of-Odin

            Sarah Ruhl is one of the premier playwrights of this generation. In her works, she explores emotion and being in ways that may at first appear bizarre or unintelligible, but upon reflection, they clearly display the delineation of Dionysian performance. In particular, Melancholy Play acts to portray these aspects of Dionysus in a fabulous theatre performance. This paper plans to prove three central concepts of the play that are in and of themselves Dionysian.  The first point will be to show how Dionysian music is a major part of Ruhl’s play. Then, it will explain how the ‘melancholy’ experienced by the character