Lysistrata Essay, Research Paper

Lysistrata

A drama about doing war & # 8211 ; and non doing love?

The Talbot Theatre production of Lysistrata both entertained and delighted this member of the audience, who was at that place partially because of an English assignment demand, but chiefly because of the chance to bask a unrecorded theater production. The theatre company employed many different constituents to convey this antiwar drama to life that flushing on the phase.

These constituents can be broken into three classs, which visually enhanced the text of the drama. The first of these classs is the scene, the phase lighting, and the props. The 2nd constituent is the symbolism of some of those props, and the 3rd constituent is the character portraitures by the histrions on the phase.

To take us back to antediluvian Greece, the props master employed a really simple reading utilizing columns on a raised set of stairss, with a background of blue. To add to the feel of the epoch, a statue stands in the center of the platform. This platform serves dual responsibility as the Akropolis and as the Citadel, both of which the adult females have occupied. When the work forces light a fire below the walls of the Akropolis, smoke pours out of the package of sticks, doing it look as if a fire has truly been ignited. Fortunately the adult females are ready and the fire is extinguished and the work forces all doused with H2O, which is portrayed good with pails and actions that look as if the work forces are being driven away by the H2O. When Kinesias comes to see Myrrhine, and they head off to Pan? s cave, the phase lighting is dimmed to give the consequence of the darkness of being in a cave. The most strikingly ocular usage of phase props is the visual aspect of larger than life vertical Phalluss under the adventitias of all the male chief characters during the 2nd half of the drama.

These apparently monstrous male members serve to typify the defeat of the work forces. However, they are besides a symbol of how the work forces? s political power has been superceded by the crude impulse for sex, and how the adult females now hold power over the work forces. The statue, which is on the platform, is dressed in armour and symbolizes the war. The shield is taken by the adult females to be used for the intent of cursing their curse, but they rapidly realize that they can non curse for peace on a shield used for war. This warrior statue disappears at the terminal of the drama, re-emerging as a female, the statue of PEACE, well shapelier and more luring to the work forces.

The characters presented the most impressive ocular constituent. Lysistrata was portrayed perfe

ctly as a earthy adult female who has had enough of war and is willing to take a revolution to stop it. Most of the remainder of the adult females are portrayed as being bubbling small things, more interested in vesture, shopping and sex, involvements which Lysistrata feels that she can use to convey about the alteration in the work forces? s attitudes. The costumes on the chief characters evoked the image of the clip, and helped to specify the characters. Both the members of the female chorus and the male chorus are dressed in white, to maintain them divide in our heads from the chief characters of the narrative. However, they are employed in such a manner in the drama as to explicate a batch of the narrative to us by transporting a batch of the action and duologue of the affraies between the sexes.

The chief characters employed a figure of moving techniques to convey the images of the drama. Lampito carries herself otherwise and speaks with an speech pattern, and although she is dressed slightly the same as the other adult females, we realize that she comes from Sparta. The Magistrate prances on to the phase, accompanied by a constable, merely to be harassed and finally humiliated by the adult females, who will non be arrested. They turn the tabular arraies on the constable by binding him up with his ain rope, and so direct the magistrate and the constable wadding. Amusing minutes go on when the desperate-for-sex adult females try to mouse off from the Citadel and are caught by Lysistrata. One of these adult females takes the helmet from the statue and attempts to imitate a gestation that was non at that place the twenty-four hours before.

An first-class portraiture of a defeated hubby is seen when Kinesias comes to happen Myrrhine. This is the first visual aspect of a male with a really big bulge under his adventitia, and Kinesias has all of the facial looks and organic structure linguistic communication of a adult male being teased and frustrated by his married woman. Lysistrata has taken this chance to train Myrrhine to torture and badger him to reenforce the cause. After Kinesias leaves, more male characters appear with the same agony and wretchedness seeable below their belts. We sense that the clip is near for the work forces to give in and get down negotiations with Lysistrata and the adult females.

When peace is eventually achieved, it is a clip for imbibing, music and dance. There is a solo Sung by one of the Spartans, who is so joined by more people in a dance. Finally all of the group, both the work forces and the adult females are dancing and joyous.

This ensemble has taken a drama that is timeless in its message, and through the usage of props and phase lighting has taken us back in clip to mix with, and bask the characters that live this narrative.