The country is always at war. The men are always away on military campaign or they come back having died a "glorious death." What's a woman to do? Lysistrata, Uber-Ancient-Greek-Activist, calls women to join her in a sex strike until desperation brings the men to their...senses. Lysistrata is the third and last of Aristophanes' peace plays, says translator Alan H. Sommerstein in his preface to the play: it was "conceived at a time when Athens was going through the most desperate crisis she had known since the Persian War."
As I say in this introduction to the play, although I've known about Lysistrata for decades, I'd always assumed it was a fairly grave play. Don't get me wrong--I prefer Greek tragedy to many forms of spectacle currently on Broadway! But Lysistrata is a bawdy comedy and, although one could argue that women would never achieve the solidarity necessary to carry off an effective sex strike, Aristophanes nails human foibles and stereotypes as recognizable to a listener today as to the audience of its first production in 411 B.C.
Stay tuned for the reading of LYSISTRATA.
This podcast is 16:11 minutes. Listen at the PicklePlayer, top of this page, or at Cyberears.
As I say in this introduction to the play, although I've known about Lysistrata for decades, I'd always assumed it was a fairly grave play. Don't get me wrong--I prefer Greek tragedy to many forms of spectacle currently on Broadway! But Lysistrata is a bawdy comedy and, although one could argue that women would never achieve the solidarity necessary to carry off an effective sex strike, Aristophanes nails human foibles and stereotypes as recognizable to a listener today as to the audience of its first production in 411 B.C.
Stay tuned for the reading of LYSISTRATA.
This podcast is 16:11 minutes. Listen at the PicklePlayer, top of this page, or at Cyberears.
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