Welcome To Eagle Peak,

"Lysistrata's Children"

a comedy about love and war

WHERE AND WHEN:

November 6 to 23, 2008
Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue
Presented by Theater for the New City
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 pm, Sundays at 3:00 pm
Tickets: Adults $15, Seniors, Teachers and Students $5
Box office/info (212) 254-1109. Online ticketing: www.theaterforthenewcity.net

NEW YORK, July 1 -- To share an outstanding show of last season with a larger audience, Theater for the New City will present a return engagement of "Lysistrata's Children," a Brechtian comedy written and directed by Philip Suraci, from November 6 to 23, 2008.

Inspired by Aristophanes, "Lysistrata's Children" is an original work conceived by Suraci and devised for and with the teenage cast. Like "The Me Nobody Knows" and Broadway's current "Spring Awakening," it is a play performed by young people for adults to see. It explores issues of war and peace, violence and non-violence through the power dynamics of child/parent relationships. In Aristophanes' original, Athenian wives denied their husbands sex in order to persuade them to make peace. In Suraci's ingenious adaptation, children withhold love from their parents until they sign an oath of "Victory over violence" and join the children's quest for peace. There is sly comedy in the children's manipulation of their parents' behavior and in the parents' responses to their children's demands.

The play was originally workshopped and produced in 2006 with students of Friends Seminary on Stuyvesant Square. It was presented by Theater for the New City last fall.

In program notes to last year's production, author/director Philip Suraci wrote, "I hoped to create a peaceful response to the human plagues war and violence using classical references voiced through young people. I asked actors to research the history of war in the U.S., to create collages based on the theme of war and peace, as well as compose prose poems inspired by the art and poetry of child war victims. In rehearsal, we brainstormed methods that children use to get their parents to do what they want, and later, strategies employed by parents to control their children. In small groups, the actors created short scenes based on these ideas. These embryonic 'scene-lets' became the basis for individual scenes in the piece itself, which I structured and wrote out more fully. Much of the dialogue concerning thoughts about war was culled from a discussion in rehearsal on the topic of 'Is war necessary and if so, when?'"

The visual style of the play is Brechtian and expressionistic. Larger-than-life puppets, in the style of Bread and Puppet Theater, are used throughout.The play is staged with teens and 'tweens in all the parts, donning half-masks when they play their parents.

This production is not recommended for audiences under twelve.