We met Emanuella Amichai, director and choreographer of the dance theater play entitled Lysistrata-X during rehearsals, just before the three performances which will be held with free entry for the audience from 11 to 13 September at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation by the Theatre Studies Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem within the framework of the program Ancient Greek Drama: Influences and Contemporary Approaches. Emanuella Amichai welcomes us in the utopia she created for her own Lysistrara, as well as for all of us, the spectators of a performance the director herself sees as a mixture between three media she always find inspiring, the movement, the image and the sound. Approaching the Aristophanes play from the start point we nowadays call postmodern art, she states that the solid base given by the original play is being transformed into a new and a different world at the same time
How close and how far is your Lysistrata from Aristophanes heroine?
Like Aristophanes heroine, our Lysistrata revolted against the common world
order in the name of peace. However, the power that Lysistrata
discovered eventually became an end in itself. In this interpretation,
Lysistrata is not a comedy or social satire, rather, our interpretation
focuses on the mechanisms of power and the dehumanization caused by any
racist or gender-based ideology. Lysistrata herself has evolved into a
techno-psychological super-being who rules through ideology and
technological control. Lysistrata is never seen. She is now an
ideological abstraction embodied by the Priestess (Olga Kurkulina), or
by the rites performed in Lysistratas name. The chorus of Old Women,
embodied by Gena Ben David, manages and controls the ancient rites due
to her memoried wisdom. The younger generation of women is represented
by 2 performers who are a mixture of Aristophanes Kleonike, Myrrhine,
and Lampito. The men in this world are incorporated into one male
performer (Yishai Ben Moshe) whose role is functional: the male
inseminates the female and cares for the children. The system of
domination portrayed here eventually falls apart, implodes, since human
existence cannot be ruled only by rituals of power. The revolt that
Lysistrata once led begins again, this time against her.
Why have you chosen this particular woman? What does she mean for you?
Today, many interpret Lysistrata as an early feminist model. I was drawn to
the question of how such a model might evolve once her power is
established. As has sometimes happened in feminist ideology and in
many other ideologies it evolves in this production into an extreme,
self-cultivating, ritualized and dangerous force.
Lysistratas power in the original play stems from her charismatic rhetorical force
and her brilliant psychological understanding, and use, of basic human
needs. Our Lysistrata is the futuristic outcome of Aristophanes figure.
The object of her power is no longer peace but rather the maintenance
of power itself: the power of female/feminine control.
You have taken Lysistrata from the past to embody your dream about the
future. What is the connection of Lysistrata with the present?
The dream is placed in the future and it is largely dystopian. The
meaning for the present is cautionary; Lysistrata represents absolutism.
The production explores the dangers of any exclusive, and thus
one-dimensional, ideology even if the ideas originally seemed
basically just. I ask: When do the means for enforcing an ideological
faith (rejection of men in the name of peace) become the ideology itself
(a world without men). Can we recognize at what point the means for
attaining a just goal, become the goal itself?
Lysistrata embodies the dream for peace. What does your Lysistrata stands for?
As I wrote above, our Lysistrata has evolved beyond a meaningful ad hoc
goal. The world we see in this interpretation is the outcome and
evolution of Lysistratas past success. This world abuses ideology and
its rituals in order to continue to rule. Lysistrata is now a mechanism,
a system whose main need is to maintain and enforce the continuation of
her power.
When you say that Lysistrata creates a
totalitarian regime isnt it the copy of a mans world? Why did she
fight against men in the first place?
Aristophanes Lysistrata does not fight against men; she fights against war through
her control of men. The present version displaces the cliché idea that
women = peace. Aristophanes uses the battle between men and women as a
metaphor for ideological battle itself: which the women win. The power
that allowed for this victory has evolved into a mechanism which
enforces the power of women, and especially of older, experienced women,
on every front. This interpretation cautions against ideological
absolutism: even a seemingly just model can evolve into its opposite
when it achieves totalitarian control.
Tell us a little more about your performance. Acting, dance, video, music is this the future of theatre for you?
Theatre has long become a meeting place for mixed media. I see this project as a
mixture between three media I find inspiring: movement – image – sound.
For me, this is what theatre is all about. My aim and challenge in each
project I approach, is to search for the best and most meaningful way
to combine all of these aspects on stage. In this project, I feel there
is a solid base taken from the original play and yet it has become a new
and different world at the same time.
How do you perceive your presence in modern art?
I would say we are dealing here with what is commonly called postmodern art.
Head of the Press Office M. Cacoyannis Foundation
