Posted on 03/07/2003 1:01:43 PM PST by ash-housewares
...Who says there's nothing new under the sun? Monday, March 3, saw the emergence of a new kind of protest against war--the Lysistrata Project. Back in January, two clever and indefatigable New York actresses, Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower, had the marvelous idea of staging readings of Aristophanes' hilarious and bawdy antiwar protofeminist play, in which the women of Greece, led by the strong, intelligent and fearless Lysistrata, unite to withhold sex from their warrior husbands until they agree to end the Peloponnesian War. Before they knew it, the project had grown to include more than 1,000 readings in 59 countries from China to Argentina. The United States had 700, with 67 in New York City alone.
Ever the enterprising reporter, I passed up numerous opportunities to see the play in wintry parks and outside neoclassical buildings (brrr), on the subway, at Grand Central Station, in bars, libraries and bookstores, and caught a performance at the Barnard College cafeteria, where students offered a high-spirited all-girl reading, complete with balloon phalluses, to their lunching classmates. That night, I saw the all-star version at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which offered gymnasts, bongo drums, a band and yet more phallic balloons, and featured, among others, Kathleen Chalfant, Kevin Bacon (!) and an unforgettable Mercedes Ruehl as the witty and redoubtable heroine.
How to account for the project's triumphant popularity? As Bower put it at BAM, "Nobody can resist an ancient Greek dick joke." Well, yes, there's that. What a pleasure it was to have fun, vitality, humor and sex on our side, not to mention the literary canon, the glory that was Greece and the majority of the world's population, and leave the other side stuck with Confederate flags, Bible study and bigoted prom queens like Ann Coulter. The Lysistrata Project belongs to something new in political organizing--Internet-fueled grassroots arts activity, in which a master blueprint is quickly adopted and freely adapted at the local level--like last month's antiwar poetry readings and V-Day, a spin on Valentine's Day in which Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues is staged at hundreds of campuses and communities across the globe as a feminist fiesta and fundraiser...
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
Actually, no. Though the preliminary reversals do provide a sort of catharsis, comedy is ultimately about restoration of right order.
Not to mention cutting down on abortions and new cases of STD's. These are good things, let's encourage them.
All is woe, though - we are doomed to be ignerent red-necks, unlettered conservative buffoons and peasants, till the end of our days.
Hey you were supposed to be left for dead while I took your place!
Damn mercenaries working on the cheap...oh well you get what you pay for...sorry about that, I hope we can still be friends ;-)
I guess we can congratulate our own illiterate selves for picking out such a swell screen nom-de-guerre. (say, are we allowed to use French without asking Miz Pollitt?)
That dead, what a character!
I guess we can congratulate our own illiterate selves for picking out such a swell screen nom-de-guerre. (say, are we allowed to use French without asking Miz Pollitt?)
Shhhhhhhh.....she's watching us.
Anti-war women threatening to withold sex is like Carrot Top threatening to retire from show biz.
Hard to imagine the dimwit anti-war college females latching on to this, given that they are mostly "Girls Gone Wild" whores. However, it is very easy to envision ugly women such as Katha Politt and other feminists witholding sex from men, since they are mainly lesbians or fat, crusty nasties themselves.
Plus I thought you might like to get in on the mocking of the Pollitt (see, I spelled her name right TWICE in a row!) ;-)
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