A PLAY BASED ON A DEAD GREEK GUY: Stinger Productions Present: THE WASPS , A Comedy that Sings!: At the Lost Studio on La Brea


There are plenty of dead Greek poets and playwrights to admire, but here at Stinger Productions our favorite is Aristophanes. Arguably best known to modern audiences as the author of Lysistrata, Aristophanes takes aim at the Athenian love of litigation in the satiric master work, THE WASPS. He has been labeled in our era as “the father of Burlesque,” and in his own as “one of the most indecent writers in the world.” No wonder we like him. For most of his career Aristophanes wrote in the style we now call “Old Comedy.” What that means really is a loosely plotted, highly political joke fest in which “fantastic attacks upon distinguished men were part of the general license.” It may have been a general license, but Cleon, the most “distinguished” man in Athens at the time, wanted Aristophanes’ license revoked. When Aristophanes’ plays first began to be performed it was shortly after the death of the ruling general Pericles who had succumbed to the plague. Into his place had stepped Cleon and though Pericles was no peacenik, Cleon was, in Aristophanes’ opinion, a dangerous warmonger. The Acharnians, the “world’s first anti-war comedy,” debuted in the sixth year of The Peloponnesian Wars. Its protagonist was an ordinary Athenian who set out to broker his own peace with Sparta. We suspect this is the moment Cleon decided he was not a fan of Aristophanes. Cleon took Aristophanes to court on a charge that may ring familiar to witnesses of the 2008 United States presidential contest. Cleon tried to prove that Aristophanes was not a native Athenian and therefore had no standing to criticize Athens and should in fact, be banished. The case dragged on in the courts for years, but in the end Aristophanes proved his citizenship. The good news for us is that Aristophanes turned his observations and frustrations with the Athenian court system into THE WASPS… and we’re not exactly doing that play. We’re sure that play was really entertaining in 422 b.c., but topical humor has a pretty short shelf life and if you’ve ever seen a literal staging of a Greek comedy you may have found yourself asking “where’s the funny?” What Meryl Friedman has conjured is probably closer to what Aristophanes would have written if he were writing today. Her reimagining of THE WASPS is completely faithful to the spirit of the original and yet she manages to peel away the cobwebs, revealing the comedy in our own language, connecting his comedic tradition to ours, so we can experience the play as it was intended, “as one immense joke in action.”