“Lysistrata” –  Gardzienice Theatre

“Lysistrata” –  Gardzienice Theatre  

23.05.2025 (Friday)/ 6 pm/ Stage in Big Outbuilding

Cast: Graduates the 15th Academy for Theatre Practices Gardzienice (Paulina Borowa-Misiarz, Agnieszka Guz, Dominika Malczyńska, Patrycja Malinowska, Anna Szymczak, Julia Zhaglina) 
with a special participation of Anna Maria Słowikowska

Voice coach / music director: Tetiana Oreshko-Muca

Cheironomy classes: Joanna Holcgreber-Gołaj

Dance classes and sequences: Anna Maria Dąbrowska

Guest dance trainers: Daniel Leżoń, Marta Kosieradzka, Joanna Czajkowska PhD

Paidagogos: Staniewski

Aristophanes wrote and staged Lysistrata in 411 BCE – that is, during the second Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Its title character decides it’s about time to put an end to the war – and persuades other women to unite in depriving men of intercourse. Sexual. Should it subjugate them and force them onto the path of pacifism.

It results though in a series of – very much comedic – events.

Women take over the power and use it. Men are humiliated.

The vernacular, as it is usually the case with Aristophanes, is obscene.

Vide: Uttering profanities activates the right hemisphere of the brain (in the region responsible for emotions and handling sudden events) and the limbic system. People who resort to profanities tend to make fewer mistakes and dedicate more time to the analysis of the swear word of their choice than they would do with a neutral term.

The show is danced and sung, with costumes inspired by Lawrence Alma Tadema’s painting The Women of Amphissa and Aubrey Vincent Beardsley’s designs.

It is filled with contemporary references.

Lysistrata is a protest show – against the war.

(The war is, by the way, everywhere today.)

Aristophanes celebrates his comedic mysteries by screaming on top of his voice: war is madness, a beast – a godzilla that needs to be thwarted with every possible means.

Of course, Aristophanes does that in his own style and in accordance with the rules of the genre. He spares no vulgarities, obscenities, nudity and unceremonial confrontations between “dudes” and “gals”.

His comedy drips with smuttiness and pantagruelisms – just as the contemporary Polish parliament, a street demonstration or an all-inclusive trip to Egypt. The difference, however, is that Aristophanes does all that within the framework of art, guided by certain moral principles, and infuses his drama with encyclopaedic knowledge. Today’s pervs, on the other hand, offer nothing but a pile of utter crap.

We have selected the most delicate translation available.

We apologise for the voluptuousness oozing from the text and its contexts as well as for the 16+ character of the introduction – it’s all Aristophanes’ fault.

fot. Maciej Dziaczko