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    Lysistrata: The Sex Strike
    Lysistrata: The Sex Strike
    Lysistrata: The Sex Strike
    Ebook135 pages1 hour

    Lysistrata: The Sex Strike

    By Phil Willmott and Germaine Greer

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    About this ebook

    A new version of the Greek classic play adapted by world-famous feminist author, Germaine Greer.


    The ancient world is gripped by a long and futile war. While the men of Athens fight in a foreign land, the women of Athens can take no more. Lysistrata, the play’s heroine, persuades the women to barricade themselves inside a building and refuse to give their husbands sex until they negotiate an end to the Peloponnesian War and secure peace. She also persuades the women of Sparta, the enemy, to join her cause and refuse sex to their husbands until they too agree to stop the war. The men eventually give in, peace is agreed and the women go home to their husbands.


    REVIEWS


    “…fast, broad, silly and profound…”  -- The Independent On Sunday


    “…wonderfully fragrant, upper crust Lysistrata…”  --The Guardian


    "Known as the ‘Father of Comedy’ Aristophanes wrote many comic plays in his lifetime, although only eleven now remain in their entirety for us to enjoy. Although comical this does have a serious point to make, and thus does have a feminist dose in its telling.
    As the Peloponnesian War grinds on so the women on both sides become fed up with it all. Their men are off fighting, and when they come home it is for sex and for getting the women to care for them. For Lysistrata though enough is enough, and thus she comes up with a plan to end the interminable warring. If all the women withhold their favours then the men will be faced with having to do everything themselves, from looking after the babies, the cleaning and every other chore. They would then become too busy to go around fighting. But will her plan work, and will the other women carry it out?
    There is innuendo here and a lot of humour, and in today’s world there is certainly a feeling of girl power, although the Greeks wouldn’t have seen this, and there are at times certain elements that show this. There are after all some women who are as horny as the men and need some entertainment, and thus a bit of infighting between the females, so this which was written by a man is not about doing away with a patriarchal society, also some take this play as being anti-war and pacifist, but when you read it you do not see that here. There is no mention of stopping war for all time, instead this is about a particular and rather long war, which all of us can understand would have been punishing on both sides.
    At the end of the day then you can take certain themes from this and extrapolate them, but on the other hand you can just sit back and enjoy what is a very entertaining comedy, with sex and gender at the heart of the plot.'


                                                                               -- ***** M.DOWDEN
                                                                              TOP 50 AMAZON REVIEWER


    Germaine Greer, broadcaster, journalist and academic is best known as an author for her groundbreaking work The Female Eunuch and The Beautiful Boy. She has also been a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAurora Metro Books
    Release dateJul 5, 2017
    ISBN9781910798089
    Lysistrata: The Sex Strike

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      Book preview

      Lysistrata - Phil Willmott

      GERMAINE GREER

      Germaine Greer was born in 1939 in Melbourne, Australia. After a convent education, she graduated from Melbourne University in 1958, followed by an MA from Sydney University in 1963. She then went to Cambridge University in England on a Commonwealth Scholarship and received her PhD in 1968.

      In London, she became an active contributor to Oz magazine, and was guest editor in July 1970. While lecturing in English at Warwick University, she wrote and published the classic book, The Female Eunuch (1970), which became an essential text for the feminist movement. In 1999, she published its sequel The Whole Woman saying in the introduction: The time has come to get angry again.

      She has also written for many newspapers and periodicals and was a regular guest reviewer on BBC TV’s The Late Review. Recently, she caused controversy when she walked out of the TV Reality show Big Brother.

      Germaine Greer was married briefly to Paul Du Feu.

      First published in the UK in 2000 by Aurora Metro Publications Ltd.

      67 Grove Avenue, Twickenham, MIDDLESEX, TW1 4HX.

      www.aurorametro.com info@aurorametro.com

      Reprinted 2005.

      Lysistrata – the Sex Strike © copyright 2000 Germaine Greer and Phil Willmott

      Production notes © copyright 2000 Phil Willmott

      Cover design: Joe Webb joe@etchdesign.co.uk

      Photograph: Marilyn Kingwill Tel. 020 7702 3061

      With thanks to: Ben Chamberlain and Abigail Anderson

      Permission for the use of copyright music mentioned in the text must be agreed in advance with the Performing Rights Society, Live Music Centre: Tel. 020 7580 5544.

      All rights in this play are strictly reserved. Applications for a licence to present performances including professional, amateur, recitation, lecturing, public reading, broadcasting and television should be made before rehearsals begin, to:

      Ben Hall at Curtis Brown Ltd. Haymarket House, 28–29 Haymarket, LONDON, SW1Y 4SP. UK Tel. 020 7396 6600

      For translation rights into foreign languages contact:

      AURORA METRO PRESS, 67 Grove Avenue, Twickenham, MIDDLESEX, TW1 4HX. info@aurorametro.com Tel. 020 3261 0000

      Germaine Greer c/o Gillon Aitken at 29 Fernshaw Road, LONDON, SW10 0TG. Tel. 020 7351 7561

      In accordance with Section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the authors assert their moral rights to be identified as the authors of the above works.

      This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, UK.

      ISBN 978-0-9536757-0-8

      eBook conversion by Swift ProSys

      ISBN 978-1-910798-08-9

      Germaine Greer

      Lysistrata–

      the sex strike

      after Aristophanes
      adapted for performance
      with additional dialogue
      by Phil Willmott

      AURORA METRO PRESS

      Tremendously liberating… A Hellenic version of Up Pompeii that catches the Aristophanic spirit… Fast, broad, silly and profound.

      Independent On Sunday.

      Rarely has a show been such a romp and yet put forward its arguments so stealthily and so effectively… A robustly funny, recognisably accurate and politically thoughtful account of the ongoing battle of the sexes

      What’s On

      A fascinating collaboration - captures a mixture of bawdy humour and serious moral point with rollicking exuberance… Makes for a sexy evening. There is no mistaking or escaping its rude, vigour.

      The Telegraph

      Enters into the irreverent spirit of the original. The staging relishes the chances for fantasy and farce, it also allows the arguments to emerge clearly

      The Financial Times

      This is a bigger, bolder, funnier event than London fringe normally offers. Aristophanes’ jovial didacticism has acquired modern twists and a new earnestness.

      The Times

      Germaine Greer

      Lysistrata - the sex strike

      After Aristophanes

      Adapted for performance with additional dialogue by Phil Willmott.

      First produced in July 1999 by BAC in association with The Steam Industry at Battersea Arts Centre, London with the following cast and crew:

      Production and stage management:

      Lisa Mead, Rob Kinsman, Rebecca Maltby, Emma Barron, Donna Maloney, Ursula Jordon

      CHARACTERS

      (Society Women)

      (Cleaning Women)

      (Athenian Men)

      (Spartan Men)

      (Secret Police)

      In Act One Kinesias, the doorman and the two Spartans double as 4 Athenian Secret policemen guarding the Senators: Theorus, Nicarchus, Dikaiopolis and Amphitheus

      SETTING A bathhouse

      A Guide to Production Performance style

      The characters in this adaptation of Aristophanes/Greer’s text are best played as archetypes and in the broad style of classic British Carry On films such as Carry On Cleo. The cleaning women are the exception and should be played more naturalistically. They are the emotional heart of the piece. Lysistrata’s address to the women of Athens and her duologue with Demostratus are sincere but as a general rule if the piece is played for laughs then the politics take care of themselves.

      The Set

      The set should be designed in a cartoon style and represents a once grand, now dilapidated steam room adorned with male statuary and Greek columns. The whole building looks as if it has been bombed and there is a gaping hole in the back wall through which we can see The Acropolis represented as a little model on a hill. There are four benches where patrons can sit in the steam or lie to be massaged. In the centre of the back wall there is an imposing doorway with the sign:‘The Acropolis Bath House’ above it. To one side is another smaller sign: ‘Male Members Only’. To either side of the doorway are sunken pools of water. This doorway leads to other rooms in the bathhouse. Entrance to the bathhouse is through the centre of the audience and actors should

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