Lysistrata


Coca Cola, are you kidding me? Is there anything in the world that tastes better than Coke? What did people do before Coke? I think we ought to sneak Coke into Baghdad for a month or two, and then cut off their supply and tell them they have to be cool and then we’ll give them more Coke.

I’m actually only sort of kidding. I am a great believer in the white devil, I think fast food and bad funny movies and the sitcom Scrubs are not just good, they are great. When I was in St. Petersburg we sang the Ave Maria (Bogoro Ditsye Dyevo, or some such thing) in Russian and they were touched, but then the Russian choir ripped into ‘Soon Ah Will Be Done’ and we were all crankin’. As the old song goes, Rock and Roll is here to stay, it will never die.

An idea almost certainly as bad as that one happened this morning and I was a part of it. We did the Lysistrata Project here in New York, one of hundreds of groups of actors around the world who are performing the piece in an effort to stop the war in Iraq. Jordana said on the way in on the subway, ‘I know there are millions of people protesting this war, but just wait until Bush finds out we pulled out the Lysistrata! He’ll crap himself!’

To be fair, everyone involved was psyched basically to be acting in a fun script with a bunch of really talented actors. There was the requisite 60 year old nutjob (who said “I remember the first Gulf War”, and then stared at us. I mean, we all remember the first Gulf War…then she pulled out her tambourine and said “I brought my friend!”), but mostly no-one even talked about the war. The director was really careful not to even discuss it, we are actors who are giving our time to make a piece of theater, if anything comes of it, fine.

The show was bitterly cold, it may have been the coldest morning all year. With wind chill it was –6 degrees when I left this morning, and around 8 degrees when the play was over. But we had fun, jumping around and screaming at each other.

At the end of the play, both sides are united in ending *civil* war, and together they sing of how wonderful it is now that they are together. They say

Sing, Memory. Bring the old days alive again.

The Good Old Days

Sing of valour, of victory

How Athens sent a cloud, a storm of ships

To sink the Persians;

How Sparta sent hunters, boar hunters,

To trap the beast in blood.

Persians, countless,

Numberless as sand, sweating, running.

Basically, they are united, as Greeks, against other foes now, including, strangely Persia. Persia isn’t present day Iraq, but it is present day Iran. This is the song they sing in celebration of the end of Lysistrata’s rebellion.

Just sort of strange that this is the piece we are begging for peace with. Sing of the good old days when we kicked Arab ass! But, it was still fun and it was nice to get up at 6 in the morning and run and do a play.