Aristophanes's Lysistrata by Costas Montis

The Theatrical Workshop of the University of Cyprus brings to stage Aristophanes’s famous antiwar comedy in the exquisite interpretation of Cyprus’s best contemporary poet, Costas Montis. Far from being a mere translation, Montis’s adaptation of the play into Cypriot dialect, added to the ancient Greek comedy an intense local flavour, an unmistakably Cypriot character. The language of the adaptation is luscious, poignant, full of brilliant choices. The freshness and vivacity of Arisophanes’s text is preserved without resorting to purportedly shrewd or distasteful exaggerations in the use of profanities.

With his creative adaptation, Montis emerged as a talented mediator between the ancient dramatic work and the linguistic sense of modern-day Cypriots. The Cypriot nature of Montis’s Lysistrata, however, is not limited only to language and verbal expression but extends over to the broader musical and metrical organisation of the play, which in Montis’s adaptation fits into a new cultural setting, that of the demotic and popular narrative tradition of Cyprus.

Stage direction: Michalis Pieris
Music: Evagoras Karagiorgis
Set and costumes: Christos Lysiotis, Eliana Chrysostomou
Movement coaching: Michalis Pieris
Choreography: Elena Christodoulidou
Lighting: Giorgos Koukoumas
Sound supervision: Stamatia Laoumtzi
Technical support: Argyris Hatzinikolaou
Production manager, assistant director: Stamatia Laoumtzi

(in Greek)