Reflective Report
Name: Isabella Avanzato
Candidate number: 4003
Lysistrata - Aristophanes (acting: Lampito)
DNA - Dennis Kelly (costume: Cathy & practitioner:
Stanislavski)
Key extract:
Be My Baby - Amanda Whittington (costume: Norma &
practitioner: Bob Crowley)
, 'Lysistrata' - Aristophanes
Aristophanes’s Greek Comedy, ‘Lysistrata’, was written in 411 BC and staged by Athenian
men. The protagonist, Lysistrata, convinces Greek housewives to withhold sex from their
partners - encouraging them to stop fighting the Peloponnesian War1. It explores the themes
of gender and rebellion.
In our extract, Act 1 Scene 1, I played the 'country wife' Lampito. She's first to
support Lysistrata and leads the Spartan women's sex-strike. As she personified
all Spartan women, I aimed to portray her universally and stereotypically.
Lampito's dialogue's in broken English and parodies the Spartan dialect. Hence, I
used a Scottish accent, contrasting the Athenian's received pronunciation -
emphasising the conflict between Athenians and Spartans. This was inspired by
modern adaptations, like Beane's musical 'Lysistrata Jones'2 where Lampito is the
only Asian-American.
Aristophanes' caricatural presentation of Lampito employs the Athenian ethnic stereotype3
that Spartan's are uneducated. I portrayed this when 'Lampito thinks hard' and the line "now
me feel like sacrificial cow" where I elongated vowels, furrowed brows, and opened my
mouth to suggest confusion - enhancing the comedy. Spartan women were also known for
being "strong", so I interpreted Lampito as more masculine. Thus, my upright posture with
chest pushed out represented her pride and power. This emphasised "amazing… breasts"
and "beauty" that could seduce the men, but created comedy as Lampito is unaware of her
sexual power (unlike Kelonike or Myrrhine).
Greek Theatre was performed in outdoor amphitheatres4 to audiences
of up to 15,000. As we were used to performing indoors, to be more
authentic we practised outside on the sports field to an audience on
raked seating. At first, they struggled to see our actions or hear us.
Therefore, we made our gestures larger and precise, and increased
our vocal projection - using our diaphragms to project upwards.
Though this meant we lost some tonal quality, we wouldn't have had to
project as much in an actual amphitheatre where the shape amplifies
sound.
We decided against wearing Ancient Greek masks5 as we didn't feel it
translated well to modern audiences. Instead, we were inspired by
modern staging like the women's flirtatious movements in Chicago's
'Cell Block Tango'6. We used this when the Greek women vow to not
"pretend to be a lioness he has caught". To personify the men's sexual
desire, in cannon we dropped onto our knees, slowly crawling
downstage, stretching our arms and splaying our fingers like claws.
1
Fought between the two leading city-states of Sparta and Athens (the latter of which were forced to surrender).
2
The musical follows men on a losing college basketball team whose cheerleader girlfriends refuse to have sex
with them until they win a game.
3
Arguably, Aistophanes emphasises the ethnic and national differences between the Athenians and Spartans to
show how insignificant these are when it comes to female solidarity for peace and love.
4
The Epidaurus amphitheatre could seat 14,000 people, in comparison to West End Theatres which average
around 2,000 seats.
5
These masks had exaggerated facial expressions and features, and were used to multi-role between characters
and genders.
6
Six murderesses sing about murdering their husbands.
