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Sisters, Stand Up: The Danger and Charm of Aristophanes

The Shanghai adaptation of Lysistrata reveals why Aristophanes still matters: his comedy unsettles precisely because it turns sex, gender, bodies, and laughter into weapons against war and power.

“先锋”还是“冒犯”？《姐姐妹妹站起来》中的古希腊喜剧传统与当代实验
/ The Paper · 22 May 2026 · read the original in Chinese →

公元前431年至公元前404年，希腊的伯罗奔尼撒半岛上，以雅典为首的提洛同盟和以斯巴达为首的伯罗奔尼撒同盟之间发生了战争。这场战争历时长、范围广、伤亡大，直接导致雅典民主政治的衰颓，影响了后世对战争、政治与国际关系的认知，故被视作西方政治思想史上最具标志性的古代战争之一。阿里斯托芬的《吕西斯特拉忒》（Lysistrata）诞生于这样的时代背景：深受战火侵扰的希腊女性联合起来，以“性罢工”的方式挑战权威，争夺话语权，从而实现停止战争、恢复和平的目的。两千四百余年过去，战争与和平、权力与政治、身体与性别，依旧是人类世界无法回避的核心命题。于是，这部作品经中希两国团队联合制作，跨越语言、文化与历史，以《姐姐妹妹站起来》为名，再度呈现于上海话剧艺术中心舞台之上。然而，经典的“重生”并非毫无摩擦，赞扬与质疑、笑声与不适同时存在，喜爱者赞其大胆、诙谐、鲜活、先锋，反感者责其低俗、尴尬、生硬、冒犯。或许，恰恰是这种分裂性的接受，为理解这次改编提供了一个极具意味的文化切口。

From 431 to 404 BCE, war broke out on the Greek Peloponnese between the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. Long in duration, wide in scope, and terrible in casualties, the war directly led to the decline of Athenian democracy and shaped later understandings of war, politics, and international relations; it is therefore regarded as one of the most emblematic ancient wars in the history of Western political thought. Aristophanes' Lysistrata was born from this historical setting: Greek women, deeply harried by the flames of war, join together and, by means of a "sex strike," challenge authority and struggle for the right to speak, so as to bring the war to an end and restore peace. More than 2,400 years later, war and peace, power and politics, the body and gender remain core questions that the human world cannot evade. And so, through a joint production by Chinese and Greek teams, this work has crossed language, culture, and history to appear once more on the stage of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, under the title Sisters, Stand Up. Yet the "rebirth" of a classic is never without friction. Praise and doubt, laughter and discomfort coexist: admirers praise it as bold, witty, vivid, and avant-garde; detractors fault it as vulgar, awkward, forced, and offensive. Perhaps it is precisely this divided reception that offers a richly suggestive cultural opening through which to understand the adaptation.

A production still from Sisters, Stand Up at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre. Jesting in wartime: the profundity and absurdity of Lysistrata.上海话剧艺术中心《姐姐妹妹站起来》剧照 战争中的戏谑：《吕西斯特拉忒》的深刻与荒诞

在古希腊，戏剧是祭祀酒神狄俄尼索斯的重要公共活动，兼具宗教仪式、公民节庆与文化竞赛的性质。古希腊喜剧通常在城市酒神节（City Dionysia）和勒奈亚节（Lenaia）等节庆场合竞演，酒神所象征的狂欢、身体性与边界突破，深刻塑造了喜剧的面貌：粗俗的笑料，犀利的讽刺，夸张的身体表演与幻想性的情节结构，对生殖和生命的关注，构成酒神节庆传统下喜剧的鲜明特征。与今天常被理解为“休闲消遣”的喜剧不同，古希腊戏剧是公共生活的重要部分：参赛剧作家要竞逐名次，观众也并非单纯的娱乐消费者，而是作为城邦共同体的一员参与评判。公元前五世纪，随着雅典民主政治发展至高峰，社会对城邦政治、公众人物、权力、制度、教育等公共议题的关注与日俱增，喜剧遂与民主制度紧密结合，政治可以成为笑料，公众人物经常被点名戏仿，甚至连神明、哲人与普通市民都难以置身事外。荒诞与现实并置，宗教氛围与论辩精神兼备，包袱与批判同出，形成独具特色的古典“旧喜剧”（Old Comedy）风格。

In ancient Greece, drama was an important public activity in the worship of Dionysus, at once religious ritual, civic festival, and cultural competition. Ancient Greek comedy was usually performed competitively on festive occasions such as the City Dionysia and the Lenaia. The revelry, corporeality, and transgression of boundaries symbolized by the god of wine profoundly shaped comedy's appearance: coarse jokes, sharp satire, exaggerated physical performance, fantastical plot structures, and a concern with reproduction and life formed the distinctive features of comedy under the Dionysian festival tradition. Unlike comedy today, often understood as "leisure entertainment," ancient Greek drama was a vital part of public life. Competing playwrights vied for rankings, and spectators were not merely consumers of amusement, but members of the polis community participating in judgment. In the fifth century BCE, as Athenian democracy developed toward its height, society paid ever greater attention to public issues such as civic politics, public figures, power, institutions, and education. Comedy thus became closely bound to the democratic system: politics could become a source of laughter, public figures were often named and parodied, and even gods, philosophers, and ordinary citizens could scarcely remain outside its reach. Absurdity and reality stood side by side; religious atmosphere and argumentative spirit coexisted; comic business and critique sprang from the same source. Together they formed the distinctive style of classical "Old Comedy."

A bust of Aristophanes, first century CE.阿里斯托芬胸像（公元1世纪）

Classical Old Comedy was usually centered on the chorus, advancing the plot through such sections as the prologos, the parodos, the agon, and the parabasis, in which the chorus steps outside the story and addresses the audience directly; its endings often moved toward feasting, celebration, and reconciliation. As the most representative comic playwright of ancient Greece, Aristophanes concentrated in his works the typical structures and artistic features of Old Comedy, taking chorus, debate, and bodily revelry as his chief forms, and constructing his content from political satire, absurd fantasy, and rough jesting. Lysistrata is one of the most classic of Aristophanes' works. It is generally believed to have premiered at the Athenian Lenaia in 411 BCE, though its exact competition ranking and first reception can no longer be known. Yet this comedy, centered on collective action by women, not only expresses a longing for peace, but also keenly reveals the complex entanglement of gender, body, desire, and power, and for this reason it has become one of the works in the history of ancient Greek drama with the strongest modern resonance.

The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. In Aristophanes' time, spectators may have watched dramatic performances from wooden benches.

The inherent avant-garde quality of Lysistrata naturally equips it to be interpreted and rewritten in modern contexts. First, the work satirizes the dysfunction of political order through a "gender inversion." In ancient Athens, women were legally under the authority of fathers, brothers, or husbands; they had no political voice and could not enter male-dominated public space. Yet by the time Lysistrata was staged, the Peloponnesian War had already entered its later phase, and the disastrous defeat of the Sicilian Expedition had dealt an even heavier blow to Athenian political confidence. Against such a background of turbulence and disorder, women long excluded from public politics instead take on the role of restoring order and negotiating peace, while men appear as embarrassing figures mired in desire, hapless and incapacitated. In Sisters, Stand Up, the posturing "magistrate" proclaims that he possesses the great powers of proposing, legislating, and deciding, only to be reduced in the play to the ridiculous, weak, easily led "Ruan-nuos." Two thousand years ago, Aristophanes achieved through theatrical imagination a brief inversion of the order of the polis; today, this imagined reversal of gender has still not gone out of date. Second, the work establishes an internal tension between public politics and corporeality. In Aristophanes, war is not only a grand historical event belonging to rulers and assembly halls; it also invades private spaces such as the family, childbirth, and sexual life. War may appear to belong exclusively to public politics dominated by men, yet what truly bears its consequences is the "bodily structure" of society as a whole. Aristophanes no longer discusses questions of political philosophy in an "elegant" or "abstract" manner, but exposes the problems of the polis through comic expression that is embodied, exaggerated, and out of control. Those seemingly explicit sexual jokes are in fact metaphors for the patriarchal order's desire for land, power, and wealth. Third, the work sharply perceives the logic of power behind relations between the sexes. In Lysistrata, sex is not merely an appendage of private feeling, but a social resource, closely entangled with reproduction, marriage, family, property, power, and even the order of the state, deeply embedded within structures of power. The episode in which Myrrhine seduces her husband but finally withdraws is an especially vivid demonstration of how sex can be used as an instrument of power; within relations between men and women, a contest for power always lies hidden.

Picasso's artwork on Lysistrata. Experiment on the stage: the inheritance and rewriting of Sisters, Stand Up.毕加索关于《吕西斯特拉忒》的绘画作品 剧场上的实验：《姐姐妹妹站起来》的继承与改写

To preserve the vitality of a classical work is not to keep it intact or copy it wholesale, but to let it generate more possibilities in the context of a new age. So it is with Lysistrata. How can a work deeply rooted in the tradition of ancient Greek Old Comedy, full of a particular historical context and primal jokes, be performed again in another language and cultural environment? Sisters, Stand Up is precisely a response to and experiment with that question.

On the whole, the many elements of content, form, and style that Sisters, Stand Up retains from Lysistrata are indeed worthy of affirmation. In content, the script preserves the original's narrative logic, dramatic rhythm, and character relationships in relatively complete form, while adding some vivid details and modern treatments; its rewriting concentrates on modes of expression rather than on the story itself. In form, the production uses abundant music, dance, and group movement, recreating the expressive methods and festive atmosphere of ancient Greek drama through repeated and exaggerated bodily actions, collective clamor, and rhythm, thereby moving the audience through ensemble performance. Most important, Sisters, Stand Up preserves Aristophanes' absurd, rough, highly corporeal linguistic style: everyday metaphors, frequent obscenities, and point-blank verbal skirmishes. The "vulgar" expressions in the play that carry double meanings, such as "big business," "the sandals fit just right," "clearing the pipes," "lighting the fire," and "sticking the staff in," all derive from the original's classic "jokes."

Of course, in order to allow contemporary audiences to enter the dramatic context of ancient Greece more naturally, Sisters, Stand Up also undertakes extensive modern translation and localized adaptation. Most obvious are the modern theatrical set design and the actors' retro yet avant-garde makeup and styling, instantly eye-catching and unexpectedly intimate, which carry forward the "surreal" style of Aristophanic comedy. As noted above, rewriting the dialogue is the focus of the adaptation. The production reorganizes Aristophanes' comic language through a contemporary cultural register. For example, it uses Mandarin and dialect to highlight cultural differences between Athens and Sparta; in the "agon" section, it adds comic business currently popular; it increases homophonic jokes, jokes about ethics, and gender satire such as "old codger" and "no means yes" ... all in order to draw closer to the concerns and demands of modern women. At the same time, the creative team boldly omits certain concepts, allusions, and episodes relatively unfamiliar to modern people, and removes many of the original's religious sacrificial scenes: the gods' "feast" becomes modern festivals such as "Christmas" and "New Year's Eve"; overly crude words are deleted; compared with the naked obscenity of the original, the stage production might even be called "refined." In addition, where the plot involves a classical cultural background, such as episodes referring to gods and customs, the characters can offer the audience timely explanations in their own words.

As an important core of Aristophanic comedy, the role of the chorus concentrates the rewriting logic of Sisters, Stand Up. In Old Comedy, the chorus usually consisted of twenty-four people, performing collectively, stirring the audience's emotions and driving the plot's movement. The chorus of Lysistrata is divided into two groups, elderly men and elderly women, in order of appearance. They enter after the women occupy the Acropolis, take part in the "agon" in the middle of the drama, and return at the end to celebrate the peace negotiations, formalizing abstract disagreements between the sexes into concrete opposing camps. Sisters, Stand Up basically preserves this design. The placement of the choral songs is close to the narrative rhythm of the original. Through collective activities such as movement, gathering, and shouting, the stage calls forth not the mode of viewing centered on interior psychology familiar from modern realist drama, but a theatrical experience that places greater emphasis on the body, rhythm, and collective emotion. Unlike the original, however, in the ancient Greek dramatic tradition the principal actors and the chorus usually had clear divisions of labor and each performed its own role: the former were responsible for character action and dramatic conflict, the latter for collective commentary and theatrical atmosphere. Sisters, Stand Up does not continue this model, but instead allows Lysistrata and the other young female protagonists to assume choral functions, setting them in sharp contrast to the stooped old men, and allowing them to be the first to raise their own voices, using sound to perform the process of resistance. The stage production's first choral number is triggered after the Greek women's oath; as they sing "Come, sisters, stand up," it directly echoes the title of the play and, to some extent, restores the ancient Greek custom of naming dramatic works after their choruses. Although the several choral songs are almost entirely modern adaptations, the lyrics move from "stand up" to "unite" and then to "no one can control me," as the women sing, layer by layer, of their courage, aims, solidarity, and firm will. Through repetition and intensification, the audience can feel the atmosphere of the scene rising step by step, and sense the awe-inspiring spectacle of ancient Greek theatrical performance. This treatment both preserves the atmosphere and experiential force of the classical theater and responds to contemporary women's expectations of subjectivity, collective identity, and emotional resonance.

Laughter or discomfort: the danger and charm of Aristophanes.笑声还是不适：阿里斯托芬的危险和魅力

More than two thousand years have passed since the premiere of Lysistrata, and rule on the Greek Peloponnese has long since changed hands; yet in modern society, war still occurs, gender issues remain acute, and both affect people's daily lives to varying degrees. Thus Lysistrata's imagination of gender inversion, its suspicion of structures of power, and its demand for peace and an end to war are still not out of date. Aristophanic comedy, too, still has value for performance and interpretation, and may at some instant generate a force powerful enough to shake the deaf awake. Yet this force is not gentle, nor is it always "correct." It is chaotic, rough, full of desire, and even bears a certain aggression. Some effects in performance do indeed present a subtle tension: on the one hand, the audience is amused by densely packed jokes; on the other, it continually becomes aware of its own discomfort, so that evaluations of the work become highly contentious. You can see Sisters, Stand Up praised from the perspectives of sexual liberation, vitality, and avant-gardism; you can also scroll past many audience comments describing embarrassment, offense, and the feeling of sitting on pins and needles. This controversy essentially reflects the obstacles to Aristophanes' "rebirth" in contemporary China.

First, Lysistrata is a play built on conflict over gendered power. From a feminist perspective, it has within itself a dual character, both progressive and conservative. On the one hand, while presenting scenes from the daily lives of ancient Greek women, it unusually grants them unprecedented agency. The women led by Lysistrata are brave and resourceful; the Spartan women are full of strength; the Athenian women brim with intelligence. They plan strategically, unite, and keep their oath, and they have a distinctive understanding of war and power. Nor are they desireless "holy women," but subjects with desires, needs, thoughts, and the capacity to act. On the other hand, women's power remains founded throughout on "sex" and male demand. They can influence politics and stop war not because they possess a legitimate political identity, but because men "need" their bodies. The play's conclusion is the restoration of order, not its reconstruction.

Second, the sense of discomfort is the result of a cross-cultural dialogue between the classical Greek comic tradition and contemporary East Asian society. Modern drama emphasizes language and psychology and relatively suppresses the body; ancient Greek Old Comedy emphasizes corporeality, collectivity, and carnivalization. Different theatrical traditions lead audiences to a certain "misalignment" in their understanding of concepts such as "body" and "sex." The many jokes of this kind in Sisters, Stand Up inevitably create friction with contemporary audiences' expectations of "civilization," "propriety," and gender expression. In fact, in Old Comedy, vulgarity is not an ancillary element of entertainment. Desire, excretion, sexual organs, and the body's loss of control appear continually onstage not simply to manufacture low amusement, but to disintegrate the authority and seriousness of public order. For many contemporary spectators, this very "discomfort" becomes the point of entry for truly understanding Aristophanes. He was never an elegant, mild, or "correct" playwright; his drama is built from the outset on a transgressive kind of offense.

Finally, changes in historical context and deviations in adaptation and translation further magnify this discomfort. As mentioned above, Sisters, Stand Up makes reasonable and bold revisions in order to narrow the distance between ancient comedy and the audience, and between ancient comedy and popular culture. But to some extent, these localized and modernized treatments also weaken the original cultural buffer and explanatory space, creating a suspended and fractured experience of spectatorship. At the same time, the audience's sensitivity to "offense" and the "gaze" exists precisely because women are no longer in a condition of total dispossession of power. As the relation between women and power gradually extends into politics, economics, cultural life, and other domains, the original subversiveness, avant-garde quality, and satirical edge of this ancient work are inevitably blunted and dissolved in contemporary restaging. In this double sense, is Sisters, Stand Up not also reminding us that those female actions and public voices we have long since grown used to were, more than two thousand years ago, extraordinarily rare and radical imaginings? If we have been fortunate enough to awaken, or to wake fully, let us also never forget that first force of upheaval, which was not especially gentle, not especially decent, not especially comfortable.

To be sure, the dislocations of gender, culture, and time have caused Aristophanes, that combative writer, to suffer some doubts and blows in contemporary China. Yet the Aristophanic comic spirit reveals itself, slyly and theatrically, precisely through this "controversy." The moment in Sisters, Stand Up that most unifies the audience's response is instead the obvious discomfort at the end, when the goddess Peace appears and the treaty is concluded. Here, the music departs from the solemn, exalted, and joyful tone of the entire play and turns into short, sinister, grotesque phrases. Peace is manifested as a woman's body, coveted, touched, and gazed upon greedily and predatorily by all forces at the negotiating table, filling the scene with a repressive, tense, nauseating atmosphere. This episode was deliberately retained by the director, Katerina Evangelatos, continuing Old Comedy's provocation and offense against the real order, and also reflecting the creative team's distinctive understanding of the core of Aristophanic comedy: the meaning of comedy does not always lie in producing laughter or offering identification. Sometimes it must, through jesting, transgression, and offense, strip authority of its habitual solemnity and expose those things that were originally "unspeakable." More thought-provoking still, since the effect of the ancient comedy Lysistrata at its premiere can no longer be known, perhaps we need not hurry to treat this sense of offense as the "crux" of classical reception. The "judges" seated in the Athenian theater more than two thousand years ago, faced with Aristophanes' coarse jokes, gender provocations, and public satire, may not necessarily have been more "composed" than audiences today. In a certain sense, it is precisely this offense that builds a hidden bridge between the ancient theater and the modern stage, allowing ancient and modern spectators to share a roughly similar emotional experience. This is the magic of Aristophanes and of his comic spirit.

Whatever the praise or blame, the adaptive practice of Sisters, Stand Up reminds us to keep thinking: when classical texts circulate through new times and spaces, to what exactly do we expect them to remain faithful, and what do we permit them to change? More importantly, in an age tending ever more toward mythologized reason, efficiency above all, and interpersonal estrangement, when faced with painful, exhausting, and even unnoticed realities, do we still have the alertness, courage, and imagination to raise, offensively, an Aristophanic question?

Y done · S save · G great · B bad · N not for me