Lysistrata

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Lysistrata
Lysistrata illustration by Aubrey Beardsley
Written by	Aristophanes
Chorus	women old men
Characters	Lysistrata Cleonice Myrrhine Lampito magistrates Cinesias child of Cinesias Spartan herald envoys Athenians
Setting	before the Propylaea which is the gateway to the Acropolis

Lysistrata (Attic: Λυσιστράτη, Doric: Λυσιστράτα), Aristophanes' anti-war comedy, written in 411 BC, has female characters, led by the eponymous Lysistrata, barricading the public funds building and withholding sex from their husbands to secure peace and end the Peloponnesian War. In doing so, Lysistrata engages the support of women from Sparta, Boeotia, and Corinth. All of them are at first aghast at the suggestion of withholding sex, but they finally agree and swear an oath to support each other. The woman from Sparta, Lampito, returns home to spread the word there.

The play was originally performed at either the Dionysia or a smaller Festival of Dionysus, called the Lenaia festival. A different comedy by Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, was also produced that year, and it is not clear which play was produced at which festival.

The play also addresses the contribution that women could make to society and to policy making, but cannot because their views are ignored (though the women in 'Lysistrata' were not viewed as feminists in Ancient Athens but comedic or satirical characters in a fanciful world): All such questions are considered the purview of men only. See the exchange between Lysistrata and the Magistrate who comes to try to browbeat the women into giving up their plans.

Lysistrata touches upon the poignancy of young women left with no eligible young men to marry because of deaths in the wars: "Nay, but it isn't the same with a man/Grey though he be when he comes from the battlefield/still if he wishes to marry he can/Brief is the spring and the flower of our womanhood/once let slip, and it comes not again/Sit as we may with our spells and our auguries/never a husband shall marry us then."

As with all Greek comedies, the actors portraying male characters wore phalluses, but since audiences of the day were accustomed to this convention, there would be no shock-humour as might be experienced by the modern audiences of today.

1 Modern uses
2 Real-life parallels
3 Popular culture
4 Translations
5 External links

[edit] Modern uses

The play focuses on the effects of the internecine bloodletting of the Peloponnesian War, but is now known as a broad anti-war statement, based on the modern Western notion that men of all nations ought to live together in peace. In this regard, it is important to note that the play does distinguish between feuding among Greeks and war with barbarians. See Lysistrata's speech, loosely translated from the Greek as: "That ye, all of one blood, all brethren sprinkling/The selfsame altars from the selfsame laver/At Pylae, Pytho, and Olympia, ay/And many others which 'twere long to name/That ye, Hellenes--with barbarian foes/Armed, looking on---fight and destroy Hellenes!"

[Quotations above from the translation by Benjamin Bickley Rogers, reproduced in the Britannica Great Books series, Volume 5]

The play remains popular. For instance, it was produced in the National Theatre's 1992/3 season transferring successfully from the South Bank to Wyndham's Theatre.

The play was adapted into a film in 1976 by Ludo Mich, in which all the actors and actresses were naked throughout.

An updated version of the play, which was made into a Mozart-like opera in the '60's, was published in 1979. (See link below). The opera was to be performed at Wayne State University (Detroit) in 1968, but was cancelled when the tenor was drafted into the army 4 days before the performance. The opera director got cold feet about its anti-Vietnam war protest libretto, and used the tenor's draft notice as an excuse to perform the opera in a small room with a new unrehearsed tenor, but no room for a normal-sized audience. That was unacceptable censorship to the composer who then withdrew the opera. News story.

In reaction to the Iraq disarmament crisis, this play was the focus of a peace protest initiative called The Lysistrata Project in which readings of the play were held on March 3, 2003 internationally.

In 2004, a 100 person version of show called Lysistrata 100 was performed in Brooklyn, New York. The new adaptation was written by Edward Einhorn and performed in a former warehouse which had been converted to a pub. The play was set at the Dionysia, much like the original may have been.

Another operatic version of the play was created by composer Mark Adamo. Adamo's opera Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess premiered at the Houston Grand Opera in March 2005.

In the summer 2005, an adaptation set in present-day New York City written by Jason Tyne premiered in Central Park. Lucy and her fellow New Yorkers Cleo and Cookie called all of the wives, girlfriends, and lovers of the men in control of the most powerful countries in the world to inflict their sex strike on them. The Greek civil war was replaced by the current war on terror, the magistrate was replaced by George W. Bush, and Kinesias with a fellow named Dick.

Lysistrata in Central Park

[edit] Real-life parallels

A real-life version of Lysistrata took place in the town of Pereira, Colombia, in September 2006 when a group of gangsters' wives and girlfriends declared a sex strike to force their partners to participate in a disarmament program (Daily Telegraph story).

In the Ateneo de Manila University (Manila, Philippines), a group of Freshmen English 12 students, R10, made a revised adaptation of Lysistrata which changes the story into the rivalry between the Ateneo de Manila University and the De La Salle University. In real life, these universities really are rivals.

[edit] Popular culture

The M*A*S*H episode ("Edwina") featured a variation on the main theme of Lysistrata, wherein all the nurses went on a sex strike until one of the men would date a clumsy and still-virginal nurse.

The play is also the subject of a 1982 song by the band Utopia.

[edit] Translations

Lysistrata, anonymous translator rumored to be Oscar Wilde; published in 1912 by the Athenian Society, London.
Benjamin B. Rogers, 1924 - verse
Jack Lindsay, 1925 - verse: full text
Arthur S. Way, 1934 - verse
Charles T. Murphy, 1944 - prose and verse
Dudley Fitts, 1954 - prose and verse
Douglass Parker, 1963 - verse
translator unknown - prose: full text
Nicholas Rudall, 1991
George Theodoridis, 2003 - prose: full text
Sarah Ruden, 2003
Paul Roche, 2004 - verse and prose

Chris Tilley, 2003/06 - A musical version with prose and songs
The Lysistrata Project, 2006 - A contemporary re-working for radio, developed with the help of young people living and studying in London. Premiered on BBC Radio 3, 19.30-21.30, 28 May 2006