Lysistrata

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Taylor Kokinos

On May 9, 1969, a bunch of crazy hippies got together and put on the anti-war play Lysistrata. (In Aristophanes’ Greek comedy, the women refuse sex until the men agree to end the war between the city states.) It was the beginning of an era, the inaugural public show for Broom Street Theater, a Madison institution that has produced more than 300 local, original shows in the decades that followed. The theater’s iconoclastic and irascible longtime artistic director Joel Gersmann died in 2005, but the Broom Street tradition of creating edgy, no-budget theater continues. Under the direction of UW-Madison theater instructor Jen Plants, the company is restaging Lysistrata to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Opening night will be livestreamed, and the audience members will receive a souvenir. Come back to the former garage on May 11, 1-4 pm, for an open house and video retrospective celebrating the outlandish achievements of the scrappy thespians.

press release: May 9, 1969. The nation was in turmoil, and Broom Street Theater's first public performance was the anti-war classic, Lysistrata.

May 9, 2019 - 50 years later. The nation is still in turmoil, and Broom Street's next production will be the anti-war classic Lyistrata.

Broom Street Theater is proud to announce Lysistrata, written by Aristophanes, and directed by Jen Plants. The script is adapted from an anonymous translation, widely speculated to be by Oscar Wilde, and adapted by Plants. 

What if those in power have already decided that your voice doesn’t matter before you even open your mouth? What weapon can you wield to fight for peace? In this adaptation of the classic sex-strike comedy from 411 B.C., Lysistrata leads a lo-fi revolution of grrrls, femmes, and anybody else ready to reject toxic masculinity. Nobody gets a piece of these women until these women get some peace.

Lysistrata opens Thursday, May 9 - and runs through June 1. Performances are Thursday - Saturday @8pm. 

Walkup tickets are Pay-What-You-Can. "Comp Your Neighbor" online tickets are available at www.bstonline.org for $22.

Special Anniversary tickets are also available at www.bstonline.org for the Special Anniversary price of $50. Special Anniversary tickets are just like regular tickets, except they go further toward helping to pay the light bill. 

The May 9 performance will be livestreamed, and everyone attending the opening night performance will receive a commemorative souvenir. Details of the livestream will be available on Broom Street Theater's Facebook page. 

As a director, deviser, actor and playwright, Jen Plants' work has been seen in the UK, Hungary, and across the United States. Recent Madison directing projects include The Spitfire Grill and When the Music Stops: The Anita O’Day Story (both Four Seasons Theatre) and the world premiere opera The Queen of the Night (Fresco Opera Theatre). Jen teaches playwriting, performance studies, and community based theatre-making at UW-Madison.

50th Anniversary Open House

On May 11 from 1-4PM, Broom Street Theater will host an open house in honor of their 50th Anniversary. The public is invited for snacks, mingling, and a video retrospective of the last 50 years. At 2:30 PM, Artistic Director Doug Reed will announce the second half of the Pay-What-You-Can Jubilee Anniversary season.