Additionally.
Last Saturday night I went to go see Lysistrata at the Live Arts center in C-ville. I've never seen a production of it before, but from what I've heard about other productions of it, I was very impressed with the Live Arts rendition.
It could be described as a play with anti-war sentiments. Many Tragedies and Comedies both share that quality. From what I've read, Lysistrata has been pulled out on many an occasion of people being upset with a contemporary war as an artistic cry for peace. Heavy on the political sentiment, that is.
This was... not. It was a Comedy in the truest sense of the word. A rowdy bunch of people carousing around after a Dionysiac fashion. It was crude and didn't pull any punches. The male chorus wore these gigantic (or, in the case of the chorus leader) not so gigantic phalluses, and the Spartan messenger wore a phallus that must have been almost as tall as he was. They really engaged with the funny business in the text, and the audience laughed a lot once they stopped being scandalized by it all.
That said, it was a politically charged play, back in the day. I wondered if some of the jokes I happened to catch in passing (the dialogue seemed to speed up a bit whenever they were talking about any historical figures) might have been made more relevent in the same way that Gilbert and Sullivan plays are often updated: by replacing the old political figure/situation with a comparable contemporary one.
But anyhow, it was a great production. I had my VIRGINIA CLASSICS sweatshirt on, and when I went to the concession stand to get a bottle of water at intermission, the fellow there kindly asked, "So, Virginia Classics, what do you think so far?"
I thought it was wonderful.
Also, all the Thoucydides I've ben reading this semester has really paid off. I understood a lot more of it than I think I would have two months ago.
TCE
It could be described as a play with anti-war sentiments. Many Tragedies and Comedies both share that quality. From what I've read, Lysistrata has been pulled out on many an occasion of people being upset with a contemporary war as an artistic cry for peace. Heavy on the political sentiment, that is.
This was... not. It was a Comedy in the truest sense of the word. A rowdy bunch of people carousing around after a Dionysiac fashion. It was crude and didn't pull any punches. The male chorus wore these gigantic (or, in the case of the chorus leader) not so gigantic phalluses, and the Spartan messenger wore a phallus that must have been almost as tall as he was. They really engaged with the funny business in the text, and the audience laughed a lot once they stopped being scandalized by it all.
That said, it was a politically charged play, back in the day. I wondered if some of the jokes I happened to catch in passing (the dialogue seemed to speed up a bit whenever they were talking about any historical figures) might have been made more relevent in the same way that Gilbert and Sullivan plays are often updated: by replacing the old political figure/situation with a comparable contemporary one.
But anyhow, it was a great production. I had my VIRGINIA CLASSICS sweatshirt on, and when I went to the concession stand to get a bottle of water at intermission, the fellow there kindly asked, "So, Virginia Classics, what do you think so far?"
I thought it was wonderful.
Also, all the Thoucydides I've ben reading this semester has really paid off. I understood a lot more of it than I think I would have two months ago.
TCE