Guide Note:
Lysistrata is a Greek comic play from 411 BC, written by Aristophanes. At the center of the play are a number of Greek women, who are fed up after years of their husbands being away at war. Led by Lysistrata, the women decide to withhold sex from their men, in an effort to bring about the end of the Peloponnesian War, which embroiled Athens and Sparta.
While the play may have originally been comic in tone because in the author's time, the idea of women having any kind of impact on society was laughable, but the play has since been identified as having significant feminist implications.
The play has had a continuous cultural influence, especially in times of war, as evidenced by the Lysistrata Project, during which thousands of performances of the play were held around the world, in protest of the impending hostility in Iraq in March of 2003.
Fast Facts:
- Setting: Athens, Greece, in front of the Acropolis
- "Lysistrata" loosely translates to "she who disbands armies" in Greek
- Lysistrata was the first positive female leader in drama
- Early performances often featured nudity
- Originally performed as part of the Dionysian festivals of Ancient Greece
- Inspired the musical The Happiest Girl in the World
- Laws against profanity prevented true adaptations in the U.S. before 1960
- Male characters wore inflated phalluses
- Aristophanes wrote the play during the height of the Peloponnesian War
