CCM PLAY SERIES Presents
Adapted by Ellen McLaughlin
Sept. 29-Oct. 2, 2022, Patricia Corbett Theater
*CCM Student
Produced by special arrangement with Playscripts, Inc. (www.playscripts.com)
Lysistrata + The Trojan Women run time is two hours and 15 minutes, plus an approximately 20-minute long intermission.
The Cincinnati Dionysia features two Greek plays: a comedy and a tragedy. To situate each play in appropriate scenography, Scenic Designer Sami Tamulonis has created a ruined version of the lovely acropolis from the first act.
Destroying a city takes time and effort, so audiences will get a unique opportunity to see CCM's technical direction students and stage crews at work during the intermission scene shift.
As a result, our intermission will be a bit longer than normal – about 20 minutes – but we hope you enjoy this backstage peek into the world of technical theatre. If you choose to stay in the lobby through intermission, don’t worry: we’ll still blink the lights when it’s time to return.
By Caitlin Hines, Assistant Professor in UC College of Arts and Sciences Classics Department
The Cincinnati Dionysia — a name inspired by the City Dionysia, the ancient Athenian religious festival that featured several days of theatrical performances in competition — brings together two dramas with wildly different tones: Lysistrata, Aristophanes’ uproarious sex comedy, and The Trojan Women, Euripides’ tragic meditation on the aftermath of war.
The two playwrights were contemporaries in 5th-century B.C.E. Athens. Aristophanes was known for writing comedies that presented sharp political commentary on current problems, often through wacky and absurdist scenarios. Euripides turned his view to the mythical past, exploring questions of power, duty and identity through the troubles and torments of mythological figures. Though only a limited selection of their works survive, both playwrights were extraordinarily prolific, with Aristophanes writing 40 and Euripides more than 90 plays within their lifetimes.
The two plays selected for the Cincinnati Dionysia were composed and performed during the same decade (The Trojan Women in 415 B.C.E., Lysistrata in 411 B.C.E.) as the Greek world suffered the political, economic and human consequences of a decades-long conflict between Athens and Sparta. Lysistrata, as is Aristophanes’ custom, addresses this contemporary conflict head-on, making the Peloponnesian War the focus of the protagonist’s anti-war efforts. The Trojan Women likewise confronts the costs of war, though Euripides chooses a mythical moment in a foreign setting — the Fall of Troy — as the focal point of his tragedy.
Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptations of both plays perform several essential functions for modern audiences: she translates not only the language but also culturally- and historically-contingent forms of humor, metaphor and idiom. Although the adaptations are relatively loose and substantially abridged, they capture the spirit of the originals with care and finesse. It is our hope that you will find, despite the sharp tonal shift between the comic and tragic portions of the program, meaningful intersections in the plays’ explorations of how women — be they fictionalized contemporaries of the original audience, or denizens of a far-distance mythical past — must bear the consequences of war.
LYSISTRATA: 411 BCE, during the Peloponnesian War, Athens
LECTURE: Right here, right now
THE TROJAN WOMEN: 12th-century BCE, at the end of the Trojan War, Troy
A brief lecture to accompany Cincinnati Dionysia: Lysistrata + The Trojan Women
Courtesy of Dr. Caitlin Hines, UC Department of Classics
“Professor” Madeleine Gaughan, lecturer
The final line of Homer’s Iliad:
ὣς οἵ γ᾽ ἀμφίεπον τάφον Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο.
“Thus they tended to the funeral of Hektor, breaker of horses.”
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CCM will share its spring 2023 schedule of performances and public events in November.
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