University of Virginia Library

Black Cast

"Black" was added to the title
primarily because all the cast save
one were black, although it was also
because "Lysistrata" had been set
in a black cultural context. Before
the play proper there was a
prologue, written by the director (a
white teacher) rather than
Aristophanes, which enacted
incidents from the shooting of
Martin Luther King, Kent State,
Jackson State, the deaths of sons of
Vietnam and Attica ("shot in the
back"), and the bombing of a
couple's new house ("Mama was
inside"). The serious introduction to
what was advertised as a comedy
confused some who saw the play,
but as a speaker in the prologue
said "Lysistrata isn't a women's lib
play, it's an everybody's lib play.
Maybe the time has come for this
2400-year-old dream to come true.
Maybe the Victory of the
Oppressed is at hand."

A few extra notes on the
Hampton scene: the Friday of the
play's success "Potemkin" was
playing just across the river, and
this past week "Birth of a Nation"
was here. There is a possibility a
series of New York underground
films may be started, and this
winter "Hiroshima Mon Amour",
"Citizen Kane", and Cocteau's
"Blood of a Poet" are all supposed
to be coming.