But the way the author approaches the staging itself pulls these issues together impressively.Īristophanes' theatre was from a modern perspective minimalist. The theme itself is a director's gift, because it deals in big confrontations, pits male and female, peace and war against each other. Lysistrata is a wonderful play for the stage. Even when we are reading, we need always to bear in mind the staging invited by the text. But Athenian comedy is in many ways a far more physical medium than tragedy. This is true of tragedy as well as comedy. Though we (mostly) meet him on the page, he wrote with live theatre and a live (and demanding) audience in mind. Stage action in Lysistrata, by Professor Chris CareyĪristophanes was first and foremost a dramatist. The play was written against the backdrop of the final years of the Peloponnesian War (a long and destructive war between Athens and Sparta): Athens had suffered major military setbacks, and shortly after the performance of the play there was an anti-democratic coup in the city which installed a brutal oligarchic regime (the historical background is given in Thucydides' History, book 8).
Aristophanes, the great comic dramatist of Athens, wrote the Lysistrata for performance in February 411 BC, probably at the Lenaia.
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