Something about Lysistrata

Lysistrata by Aristophanes Synopsis –extras note Lysistrata

The Installation Performance is built around the play Lysistrata by Aristophanes and develops the main theme of the play inside a space made to look like the city of Athens. The immense space of the Cantieri is transformed into a circular city, built around a Piazza. The space itself is split into small spaces that contain small installations and performances. The spaces are from the Acropolis, and the city jail, to the home and the space of the women, all of these spaces represent one of the main ideas expressed by the play. My installation is set in the women’s corner, a corner that can be seen from the piazza and in which you participate as the events and the action of the women evolve. The performance itself is built as a ritual created by the mature women of the city in their protest against men. They will continue their activities without giving the men what they want till they renounce war.

The play Lysistrata revolves around a suit for peace that is also a plot for love. The Greek women have revolted: their confederacy, made up of Athenian, Spartan, Boeotian and Corinthian wives and maidens, has secured an embargo upon the city’s wealth (needed to finance the war) and, more cruelly, upon all physical association with the menfolk. Until the fighting between Athens and Sparta ceases, there will be no sex. In this way is radically repolarized: Athens and Sparta are soon allies.

A Stormy Night or No. 9

O noapte furtunoasa sau Nr.9

The action takes place in Carigiale’s own time and place, Bucharest at the end of the 19th century. It is a cynical view of society as it was then but is nowadays often compared with the society of the present. He captures in a very eloquent way the mentality of the Romanian people, being able to create strong characters that verge on caricature representing society stereotypes. What he is trying to show in this play is the so-called petit-bourgeois, a nouveau-riche that has a peasant mentality and which aspires to be French but not through study but convention. This situation is often compared to the modern phenomenon of globalization, where all over the world the old and the traditional are threatened by the same clichés and stereotypes. This production of the play was staged in a classical way, but with a modern approach. What also gave it intimacy was that the public was seated in a horseshoe and therefore had more possibility to absorb and to participate in the action, becoming both witness and conspirator…