Lysistrata - Influence and Legacy

Influence and Legacy

• 1611 John Fletcher wrote his play The Tamer Tamed, which echoes Lysistrata's sex-strike plot.
• 1910: Performed at the Little Theatre in the Adelphi in London with Gertrude Kingston in the title role.
• 1946: Lysistrata was performed in New York with an all-black cast, including Etta Moten Barnett. It had particular resonance after a war in which many African Americans had served their nation in the armed forces, but had to deal with a segregated army and few opportunities for officers' commissions. In addition, veterans returned to legal segregation and near disfranchisement in the South, as well as more subtle but definite de facto segregation in many northern cities.
• 1956: Lysistrata became in the 1950s "The Second Greatest Sex", a movie musical with songs by Henry Mancini produced at Universal Studios and directed by George Marshall, starring Jeanne Crain, George Nader and Bert Lahr. It was re-set improbably in the 19th century American wild west.
• 1961: The play served as the basis for the musical The Happiest Girl in the World. The play was revived in the National Theatre's 1992–1993 season, transferring successfully from the South Bank to Wyndham's Theatre.
• 1968: Feminist director Mai Zetterling made a radical film Flickorna (released in English as The Girls), starring three reigning Swedish film actresses: Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom, who were depicted playing roles in Lysistrata.
• 1976: Ludo Mich adapted the play for a film in which all the actors and actresses were naked throughout.
• 1982: Utopia (band)'s album "Swing to the Right" featured an anti-war song entitled "Lysistrata" that loosely paraphrases the content of the drama as dialog between the song's protagonist and his female significant other.
• 1983: Şalvar Davası a Turkish movie adaptation based loosely on Lysistrata of director Kartal Tibet starring Müjde Ar as Lysistrata.
• 1985: David Brin's post-apocalyptic novel The Postman, which had themes of duty, war, peace, and gender roles, is dedicated: "To Benjamin Franklin, devious genius, and to Lysistrata, who tried".
• 1987: Ralf König freely adapted the play in a comic strip, satirising gay and lesbian mores and libertation movements of the era.
• 2001: Israeli playwright Anat Gov created a 21st-century adaption, called "Lysistrata 2000". It featured modern elements and major anti-war messages.
• 2003: In reaction to the Iraq disarmament crisis, a peace protest initiative, The Lysistrata Project, was based on readings of the play held worldwide on March 3, 2003.
• 2004: A 100-person show called Lysistrata 100 was performed in Brooklyn, New York. Edward Einhorn wrote the adaptation, which was performed in a former warehouse converted to a pub. The play was set at the Dionysia, much as the original may have been.
• 2005: Another operatic version of the play, Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess, composed by Mark Adamo, premiered at the Houston Grand Opera in March.
• 2005 (June): Jason Tyne's adaptation set in present-day New York City was premiered in Central Park. Lucy and her fellow New Yorkers Cleo and Cookie called all of the wives, girlfriends, and lovers of the men controlling the most powerful countries to engage the women in a sex boycott to bring the men into line.
• 2007: James Thomas directed the play for PBS as part of a series on "Female Power & Democracy", which explored how female participation in civic life was moving from comedy to reality.
• 2010: Author Kody Kepplinger devises a modern retelling of the play in a YA novel called "Shut Out", in which high school girlfriends refuse their boyfriends of sex until they agree to end a feud between the football players and the soccer team.
• 2010: As part of the Corona Classic Cuts season of Oran Mor's Play Pie and Pint, a reduced version adapted by David Maclennan and with music by Dave Anderson was performed by an all male cast with Colin McCredie as Lysistrata, Iain Robertson as Cleonice and Dave Anderson as Magistrate / Cinesias.
• 2011: Lysistrata Jones — a contemporary riff by Douglas Carter Beane (book) and Lewis Flinn (music/lyrics) for the Transport Group Theater Company, starred Patti Murin and Liz Mikel, and opened at in New York at the Judson Memorial Church Gymnasium and later transferred to Broadway.
• 2011: Tania Schrag adapted and illustrated the play for volume one of the graphic-novel anthology The Graphic Canon, edited by Russ Kick and published by Seven Stories Press.
• 2012: Isabelle Ameganvi, a civil-rights lawyer in Togo (Africa), called on the women of Togo to deny sexual relations with their men in protest against President Faure Gnassingbé.