The Central Michigan University’s theater department has put together its next feature, a play called “Lysistrata,” scheduled for the beginning of February.

The department of theater and dance described CMU’s production of Lysistrata as a modern adaptation of an older play by Aristophanes.

“Written in 411 BC, but as timely as ever, Lysistrata is a bawdy, anti-war comedy about a group of extraordinary women so intent on ending a pointless war, that they withhold sex until peace is achieved,” according to the department of theater and dance.

This adaptation, placed in the Woodstock Era, is written and directed by visiting instructor Joshua Brewer.

“Our Lysistrata is brand-new,” Brewer said. “The idea has been done for hundreds of years. There are multiple other adaptations of it that are very very popular.”

Lysistrata will be available to watch for the first five days of February in Townsend Kiva Theater.

Feb. 1-4: 7:30 p.m.
Feb. 5: 2:00 p.m.

Tickets are available at the door and online.

Brewer said the play’s cast also played a huge role in making the adaptation workable.

“I asked to do an adaptation so our students would have the opportunity to develop a play,” Brewer said. “The project of going through play development with the cast was one of the major selling points.”

Chloe Price, a junior, and Kaeleigh Casavant, a senior, have characters in the play who lead the era’s sex strike.

Price plays the lead, Lysistrata herself.

“She is the character that puts herself in charge of making a sex strike happen so the men will come back for more and the war will end,” Price said. “She is the leader of the pack.”

Casavant described her role, Myrrhina, as Lysistrata's "ride or die."

An important aspect of the play Brewer mentioned was the rating, which differs from most of the family-friendly productions the department puts together.

“It is worth noting, the play is rated R,” Brewer said. “Maybe don’t bring small children unless you want to have some really awkward conversations."

Casavant also warned that there would be a lot of inappropriate jokes.

“I think it’s good to go into it with an open mind,” Price said. “I think if people come into it with an open mind and for the music performed it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

The play, which has been in the works since the beginning of the Fall 2022 semester has an active cast of 14, along with what Brewer called an army of understudies, and a three-man band.

Brewer said the band includes two guitarists and a drummer.

In traditional Greek plays, there are two main acts each followed by a musical chorus. Brewer said those choruses are often translated until they lose value, so the three-man band is replacing the chorus sections with Woodstock-era songs that mirror the content of the original poems.

“The joy that I have with this play is that everyone can do what they like, so everybody is very memorable in how they function,” Brewer said.

Woodstock

Woodstock, a music festival originating in 1969, was an annual event for almost 50 years, dipping into the 21st century.

This adaptation of Lysistrata takes place in the first year of the festival, 1969, when it was often referred to as a “hippie fest.”

Price is also the production’s dedicated “dramaturge,” or historian. In this role, she does the research to ensure the play is as historically accurate to the Woodstock era itself.

Price said she enjoys the music and styles of Woodstock in its prime, and had an easy time compiling a long document full of research she’s done on the era, looking at the political and social climate.

The play itself is a commentary on the Vietnam war, and a widespread public desire for its end. To make it lighter though, Brewer and the cast have incorporated other aspects of social life in the late 1960s.

Those other aspects mainly include musical influences, however, like Sweetwater, Mountain, Canned Heat and others who set the tone for the music of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

The Original Lysistrata

An important theme of the play at the time of its original creation, in 411 BCE, was contradicting authority when doing so was a huge risk.

“The goal of this play was to introduce an idea, of course,” Brewer said. “War is terrible and women are people. And we’re going to get you to believe those things by telling you jokes, so you agree with us. Because in Ancient Greece, war wasn’t terrible and women weren’t people.”

Brewer said that those ideas, war being bad and women being people, were dangerous. The playwrights could have been charged with treason.

Other Adaptations

Brewer also mentioned a list, created by Odyssey Theatre, of other Lysistrata adaptations:

The Second Greatest Sex is a 1955 Old West film adaptation
The Girls is a Swedish feminist film from 1968
Lysistrata Jones premiered on Broadway in 2011 and centered around a basketball team
Chi-Raq is a 2015 film adaptation involving the girlfriends of Chicago gang members

The list also includes a variety of operettas, plays and musicals developed since the writing of the original, including an LGBTQ-focused comic strip in the ‘80s, according to the Odyssey Theater.

CMU students adapt Ancient Greek play, Lysistrata, featuring Woodstock-era adult comedy

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