Lysistrata

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Lysistrata
Aubrey Beardsley book illustration
Written by	Aristophanes
Chorus	Women Old men
Characters	Lysistrata Cleonice Myrrhine Lampito Magistrate Cinesias Slave Spartan herald Envoys Athenians
Setting	Before the Propylaea which is the gateway to the Acropolis
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Lysistrata (Attic Greek: Λυσιστράτη Lysistratê, Doric Greek: Λυσιστράτα Lysistrata), loosely translated to "she who disbands armies", is a Greek comedy, written in 411 BC by Aristophanes.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Historical play 3 Modern adaptations & performances 4 Translations 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Plot

Led by the title character, Lysistrata, the story's female characters barricade the public funds building and withhold sex from their husbands to end the Peloponnesian War and secure peace. In doing so, Lysistrata engages the support of women from Sparta, Boeotia, and Corinth. All of the other women are first against Lysistrata's suggestion to withhold sex. Finally, they agree to swear an oath of allegiance by drinking wine from a phallic shaped flask (the traditional implement, an upturned shield, would have been a symbol of actions opposed to the aims of the women). This action is ironic and therefore comical, because Greek men believed women had no self-restraint, a lack displayed in their alleged fondness for wine as well as for sex.

The men attempt to fight the women but the women refuse to back down, and angrily tell how they were forced for so long to stay silent and listen to the stupid decisions of men. They explain that they will take over the financial affairs of the city as they handled the finances of their homes, and also explain the injustice the war does to the women: that men will have no problem finding wives but women will never get husbands if they are too old.

Like the men, the women begin to miss sex and attempt to sneak home to their husbands. Lysistrata has them stay strong and they return to the public funds building.

After several days, the men begin to experience physical pain from lack of sex. They quickly settle peace negotiations between the countries. Lysistrata declares the sex feud over and allows the women to return home with their husbands.

[edit] Historical play

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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.

Lysistrata is the first completely positive female leader portrayed in drama who was a mortal and not a goddess. While Lysistrata has great difficulty holding the women together, she never falters in her role as a General, and throughout the play she is a model of feminine rationality. Professor Elizabeth Scharffenberger (Columbia Classics) points out Lysistrata, "releaser of war," sounds remarkably similar to an important priestess in Athens at that time whose name, Lysimache, meant "releaser of the battle." The connection would have encouraged the association of Lysistrata with sacred Athena — a model of male-like rationality. Athena was, after all, born from the head of Zeus.

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 little shock-humor in seeing a comic phallus. Aristophanes' innovation seems to be in making the usually floppy huge comic phalluses stiff and erect. The Athenians had a penchant for sexual jokes and modern productions such as the sexy staging done for PBS in 2007^{[citation needed]}, tend to emphasize the erotic and play down the more explicit references to genitals. According to Jeffrey Henderson, laws against profanity in the United States prevented honest translations before 1960. Henderson's recent translation has shocked many scholars and theater-goers who thought they knew the play.

[edit] Modern adaptations & performances

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (December 2007)

The play's anti-war message was originally highly topical and referred specifically to the Peloponnesian War, a conflict between Athens and Sparta which was in its twentieth year at the time the play was first performed. Modern adaptations have crafted Aristophanes' work into a more timeless anti-war message. 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!"^[1]

In 1961, the play served as the basis for the musical The Happiest Girl in the World. The play was revived in the National Theatre's 1992-93 season, transferring successfully from the South Bank to Wyndham's Theatre.

Feminist director Mai Zetterling made a radical 1968 film Flickorna (released in English as The Girls),^[2] starring three reigning Swedish film beauties of the time, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom, who are depicted playing roles in Lysistrata.

Ludo Mich adapted the play for a 1976 film in which all the actors and actresses were naked throughout.^[3]

An updated version of the play, which was made into a Mozart-like opera in the 1960s, was published in 1979. The opera was to be performed at Detroit's Wayne State University in 1968, but was canceled 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. The composer regarded that action as unacceptable censorship and then withdrew the opera.^[4]

In reaction to the Iraq disarmament crisis, this play became the focus of a peace protest initiative The Lysistrata Project in which readings of the play were held on world-wide on March 3, 2003.^[5]

In 2004, a 100 person version of show called Lysistrata 100 was performed in Brooklyn, New York.^[6] 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 summer 2005, an adaptation set in present-day New York City written by Jason Tyne premiered in Central Park.^[7] 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 boycott on them.

A present-day Lysistrata played out 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.^[8]

In 2007, the play was staged for PBS and directed by James Thomas as part of a series on "Female Power & Democracy" that explored how female participation in civic life is moving from comedy to reality.^{[citation needed]}

In 2008 SUU put on another modern twist of this play. They focused more on the duties a wife provides her huband to be withheld, as well as sex, in order to stop the war.

In the M*A*S*H episode, "Edwina" a variation on the main theme of Lysistrata was presented when all the nurses withheld sex from their partners until one of the men would date a clumsy nurse on staff.

In the Little Mosque on the Prairie episode, "The Barrier" Sarah uses this theme to convince her husband Yasir to remove the barrier in the Mosque. Later in the episode, the play is mentioned by name in reference to this strategy in a conversation between Sarah and Mayor Popowicz.

[edit] Translations

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[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Excerpt from the script of Lysistrata as adapted by Edward Einhorn.
• Essay on gender and power in Lysistrata.
• Excerpts from Lysistrata with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley.
• Lysistrata & the War: A Comic Opera in Mozartian Style" - updated from the ancient Greek play (ISBN 0-912424-07-9).
• Lysistrata's War - an original rock opera.
• Lysistrata: a musical sex-comedy - Chris Tilley's musical version.

	v • d • e Surviving plays by Aristophanes
	The Acharnians | The Knights | The Clouds | The Wasps | Peace | The Birds | Lysistrata | Thesmophoriazusae | The Frogs | Ecclesiazusae | Plutus