If history is written by the victors, then we must look to artists to record the rest of the story. If not for Greek playwright Aristophanes and his play Lysistrata, we might never have known, for example, that people have been resisting war for more than 24 centuries. The history books certainly don't tell us.
In Lysistrata, women from opposing sides in the Peloponnesian war come together to end hostilities by cutting off their men from two things they can't seem to live without: money and sex. The women take over the treasury and vow not to release funds or have sex until a peace treaty is signed. It's a bawdy comedy with loads of sexual puns, double entendres and physical comedy. It also carries some very important messages: War is an absurd waste of human potential, based on greed and megalomania, and ostensibly powerless people who pay the price of war must find creative ways to resist it.
If not for two New York actors, we might have forgotten how relevant that ancient play is today as we stand on the brink of war yet again. Sharron Bower and Kathryn Blume decided to stage the play in New York as "a theatrical act of dissent" in conjunction with an antiwar protest organized by Theatre Artists Against War.
Thanks to the Internet, the event snowballed in just two months beyond anything they could have imagined, and March 3, 2003 (03/03/03), became an international day of peace activism, with more than 1,000 readings and performances of the play taking place in all 50 states and 59 countries, including England, Scotland, Spain, France, China, Cambodia, Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey.
Events ranged from celebrity performances in New York and Los Angeles — starring such luminaries as Kevin Bacon, Julie Christie, Kyra Sedgwick and F. Murray Abraham — to a reading by Greek architecture students and Kurdish refugees in a tent inside a ruined factory in Patria, Greece. Among the others was a reading by a community theater group in Mindinao, Philippines, which they described in an e-mail as a battleground between Communist insurgents, Muslim separatist groups, bandit kidnappers, government forces and U.S. troops. In Karachi, Pakistan, a women's traveling theater group performed a version of the play translated into Urdu by a famous Pakistani poet.
In the Tampa Bay area, readings were staged at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg and the Gorilla Theatre in Tampa.
The Gorilla Theatre reading drew an eclectic mix of more than 100 people on a rainy Monday night. In fact, the tiny theater, which seats 76, was so packed that organizers set up a closed-circuit television in the lobby for the overflow crowd. The event was free, but a request for donations brought in $1,300 to go to a not-for-profit peace group to be selected.
Michele Young, who does PR and manages the front of the house for Gorilla, organized the event in less than two weeks, pulling together scripts, costumes, tech support and a cast of mostly untrained actors, some of whom had never been in a production before. They performed after reading the script together only three times.
The production had all the raggedy exuberance and unity of a neighborhood talent show, where performers elbow each other to remind them to speak their lines while friends and family guffaw at each pratfall and applaud every scene. One actor sported a homemade beard of shredded plastic, and others wore an eclectic mishmash of exotic-looking baubles, beads and fabrics, much of which Young dug out of her own closet.
The men in the show were especially good sports, dropping their trousers and cavorting in silly boxer shorts or sporting giant erect fake penises sprouting from their pants.
The reading at Eckerd College drew only about 20 audience members to watch a cast nearly that large, composed of students, faculty and community members. The event was organized by Ellen Graham, assistant professor of theater at the school. Although she was disappointed in the audience turnout, she said those who did come had a great time and she felt good about her participation. "It was so wonderful to be a link in that chain around the world … to think of people reading this play in theaters and universities and coffeehouses and places where it might not be safe. … It's so easy to be cynical, but this reminded me of the power of theater and the power of the spoken word."
By the time you read this, we might well be at war. So what good, you may ask, is a little play that, after all, did not put an end to the Peloponnesian war? A single act of dissent may not keep our bombs from falling on people we have no right and no reason to kill. But one small creative act of resistance can ignite a movement; it can reach across the centuries and affirm that peace is a goal worth pursuing with all the imagination we can muster. Even if it means sacrifice.
And even if it takes another 24 centuries.
Senior Editor Susan F. Edwards can be reached at ed@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 122.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2003.