From elite to exclusive: Lysistrata and gender, democracy, and war

• Author / Creator

  Severini, Giorgia

• In 2003, Lysistrata was chosen for the Lysistrata Project, a global theatrical protest against the United States’ planned invasion of Iraq. This thesis examines Lysistrata in its original context of the Peloponnesian War, then moves on to the Lysistrata Project in the context of American democracy and modern Greece. While Lysistrata was originally used by Aristophanes to express his individual opinion about the precarious situation in Athens in the final years of the Peloponnesian War, the Lysistrata Project allowed a diverse group of individuals to use the play to express their individual opinions about an impending war in an environment where individual political expression was threatened. This thesis considers how the Lysistrata Project’s open and inclusive theatrical form allowed the play Lysistrata to be extrapolated beyond its original context as the opinion of one playwright, allowing Lysistrata to have significance in an age of globalization.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Iraq war
  • Democracy
  • Gender
  • War
  • Lysistrata

• Graduation date

  Spring 2010

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3Z118

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.