From elite to exclusive: Lysistrata and gender, democracy, and war

• Main Author: Severini, Giorgia
• Other Authors: Hawkins, John A. (Drama)
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Lysistrata; gender; Iraq war; war; democracy
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10048/937

In 2003, Lysistrata was chosen for the Lysistrata Project, a global theatrical protest against the United States planned invasion of Iraq. This thesis examines Lysistrata in its original context of the Peloponnesian War, then moves on to the Lysistrata Project in the context of American democracy and modern Greece. While Lysistrata was originally used by Aristophanes to express his individual opinion about the precarious situation in Athens in the final years of the Peloponnesian War, the Lysistrata Project allowed a diverse group of individuals to use the play to express their individual opinions about an impending war in an environment where individual political expression was threatened. This thesis considers how the Lysistrata Projects open and inclusive theatrical form allowed the play Lysistrata to be extrapolated beyond its original context as the opinion of one playwright, allowing Lysistrata to have significance in an age of globalization.