Vassar Drama Department Presents LYSISTRATA, 12/6-8

The Vassar Drama Department will present three performances of Aristophanes' comedic satire about war and sex, Lysistrata, directed by guest artist Ianthe Demos, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, December 6, 7, and 8, at 8:00pm, in the Martel Theater of the Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film. Demos, a 2000 Vassar graduate, co-founded the critically acclaimed One Year Lease theater company (OYL) in 2001 and their work has been widely praised by the New York Times and New York Magazine among other outlets. Reservations are required for these free public performances, and can be made by calling the Drama Department box office at (845) 437-5599 or emailing boxoffice@vassar.edu. A seating chart for the Martel Theater can be viewed online at http://www.tix.com/Images/MARTEL1.gif.

In Aristophanes’ classic play about Greek women seeking to end the Peloponnesian War through a sex strike, he explores how humans consistently return to war, despite its consequences. This Vassar production will focus on exposing the contrasts between classical and modern, art and war, male and female, and comedy and stoicism.

The all-student cast includes Kelly Schuster (Lysistrata), Meropi Papastergiou (Lampito/Stratyllis/Chorus), Sarah Traisman (Role of Myrrhine/Chorus), Clare Redden (Kalonike/Old Woman/Chorus), Benjamin Olneck-Brown (Kinesias/Spartan Ambassador/Chorus), Steven Wolff (Role of Athenian Ambassador/Herald/Chorus), Rex Huxford (Old Man/Porter/Chorus), Ben Morrow (Magistrate/Chorus), and Olivia McGiff (Reconciliation).

About the Director
Ianthe Demos is Artistic Director of OYL, a New York City-based ensemble company dedicated to creating new work, training young theater artists, and advancing international collaboration in theater. She co-founded the company in 2001 with fellow Vassar alumnae Ariane Barbanell and Jacqueline Kristel.

“Three cheers for the small but ambitious One Year Lease Theater Company for bringing this terrific play to local shores, in a vividly acted production,” wrote Christopher Isherwood in his New York Times review of pool (no water), the Mark Ravenhill play OYL mounted earlier this year. “Ms. Demos’ staging, which employs five white benches on a bare stage, ingeniously transforms the group’s wavering between solidarity and isolation into movement..." Scott Brown wrote in New York Magazine that, "In 60 minutes of shadow-cut theatrical witchcraft, Demos and her superb cast make Ravenhill's vinegary misanthropy dance, literally and figuratively."

Demos has also directed for OYL Clay McLeod Chapman’s Teaser Cow, Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, Ariel Dorfman’s Resistance Trilogy (Death and the Maiden, Widows, and Reader), Brendan Cowell’s Bed, Caridad Svich’s Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell that Was Once her Heart (a rave fable), PHAEDRA x 3 (Jean Racine’s Phèdre, Matthew Maguire’s Phaedra and Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love), Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, and Oresteia, translated and adapted from Aeschylus by Iason Demos and Yannis Papatheodorou.

Among its many efforts OYL runs an annual theater apprentice program in northern Greece, and its ensemble members have worked with numerous theater companies internationally including the National Theater of Greece, the Sydney Theater Company, the Public, the Capitol Repertory Theater, and the Kennedy Center.

Vassar College strives to make its events, performances, and facilities accessible to all. Individuals with disabilities requiring special accommodations must contact the Office of Campus Activities at least 48 hours in advance of an event, Mondays-Fridays, at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space/and or assistance may not be available. For detailed information about accessibility to specific campus facilities, search for “campus accessibility information” on the Vassar homepage (http://www.vassar.edu).

Vassar College is located at 124 Raymond Avenue in Poughkeepsie, NY, and directions to the campus can be found at http://www.vassar.edu/directions.