You may be vaguely familiar with Lysistrata: “Oh, yes, the funny Greek play where all the women go on a sex strike to stop the men from going to war. And then the men get really big erections!” That’s pretty close, and it makes for a great laugh, but it leaves out one important element: The men have been at war for twenty years. We thought the pandemic restrictions were bad, but take a moment to consider what it would mean to seldom have any contact with your loved one for twenty years. You would go weeks, even months without knowing if they are alive. A woman whose infant didn’t survive would mourn that loss without her spouse, or her father, or her brothers. Young people might fall in love, but the boys would be gone soon after puberty hit. And every herald bringing news would be talking about war. War, war, war, and more war… for years. The fatigue these people must have felt is inestimable.

It was that fatigue that drew me to Lysistrata. We all went through the initial shock at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a shock that slowly stretched into despair, at times hopelessness. Then the conflict between Israel and Palestine flared up anew, and that wasn’t a matter of days or weeks either. Two armed conflicts with impacts on our home in Europe, direct and indirect, and the news wears us down. Aristophanes lived through it. Privileged enough not to have to go to the front lines, he nevertheless endured years of war-related news, victories and defeats, the death and loss of friends and neighbors.

Despair and hopelessness, then and now. As if the wars weren’t enough, human rights, fought for hard and long, seem under constant threat across Europe, across the West, across the world. Has the Black Lives Matter movement made things better? What about the #metoo movement? Or the 4B movement, which originated in South Korea in the 2010s and is now gaining traction globally: A man killed a woman because “women had ignored him”, but he was not charged with a hate crime, so some South Korean women launched the “4B” or “4 Nos” movement, refusing to date, fuck, marry or bear the children of men. Sound familiar?

Despite these grim parallels with today’s world, Lysistrata is a comedy through and through. Aristophanes knew what his fellow citizens wanted and needed. We are meant to laugh and to feel a reprieve from the oppressive news, if only for an evening. Always looking to stretch ourselves, Shakespeare Frankfurt has committed to making it a musical comedy, with original music by one of our own, the multi-talented James E. Bailey. James and I have created magic on stage together in the past. And now we’re testing to see if we can do it behind the scenes of a production as well.

Jim Phetterplace Jr., 27 November 2024