Hole in the Wall Theater to Present LYSISTRATA, 11/13-12/5

The Hole in the Wall Theater (HITW) in New Britain, will present LYSISTRATA by Aristophanes in a sexy new translation by Sarah Ruden. Performances run Fridays & Saturdays from November 13 through December 5 at 8:00pm with one Sunday matinee on November 22 at 2:00pm. LYSISTRATA is under the direction of Rachel Teagle of New Haven.

Tickets are $20.00 (General Admission) and $15.00 (students & seniors). They can be purchased at the door and online at www.hitw.org. The November 27th performance will be our Pay-What-You-Can performance where you name the price of your ticket. LYSISTRATA is funded in part with the support of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation.

HITW will also welcome two guest speakers to offer talk-backs and Q&A sessions during the run of the show. Translator Sarah Ruden will lead discussions after the performance on Saturday, November 14th, and Central CT State University Professor Gil Gigliotti on Friday, November 20th.

Like all great epic stories, LYSISTRATA's story is set against a war. When the Greek army refuses to stop the war, LYSISTRATA (Rowan Hawk McDonald of Hartford) leads a strike - no sex until peace is declared. McDonald sees her character as a self-made woman in a very patriarchal society. "She is the daughter of a politician," said Mc Donald. "She is pretty smart. She listened to her father and other men talk about a number of different things. She taught herself how to be a feminist based on those conversations."

For those of you who are expecting a pedantic and stuffy piece of theatre, think again. Director Rachel Teagle and her cast have developed a gender-bending, contemporary slant on this Greek classic. "Drag shows are where I encounter such frank, fun takes on sex and sexuality today," Teagle said. "We used that lens to bring this classic text into the 21st century and make room for queer readings of the text."

"LYSISTRATA embraces her femininity not just for women, but for gay men as well," said McDonald. "We can be women or LBGT and anything that isn't male and still be respected."

Teagle adds, "She doesn't play the game they expect her to. She doesn't beat the men in power by acting like a man, she does it by being unapologetically female. She wears her femininity as armor, and there's something really revolutionary in that."

The cast is comprised of HITW veterans and newcomers. Some have been acting for decades. Others are setting foot on stage for the very first time. Adam Cormier (Colebrook), a BFA Theater major from Central CT State University, is making his HITW debut, and he comes out with a bang. "I come out as a giant woman in a cape. Let's party," he said. "I came our as drag in utero. When I play a woman, I feel much more comfortable."

Come enjoy some of the oldest dirty jokes in western civilization in Aristophanes' raunchy comedy about power, persuasion, and getting it on. The HITW cast includes: Rowan Hawk McDonald & Nicole Morin (both from Hartford), Rebecca Meakin (New Britain), Mike Bracken (Windsor Locks), Stephanie Chernoff (Simsbury), Adam Cormier (Colebrook), Lisa Ives (Bristol), Rayah Martin (Manchester), Stephen Maher, Charles Merlis (both from West Hartford), Sarah Oschmann (Windham), and Ari Veur (North Haven).

Visit www.hitw.org for more information and updates.

About Our Guest Speakers:

Gilbert Gigliotti is a professor of English and Latin at Central Connecticut State University and the host of "Frank, Gil, and Friends" on Tuesday mornings on WFCS 107.7 FM New Britain. He earned his H.A.B. and M.A. degrees at Xavier University and his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. His books on Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra belie his academic interests in Greek and Roman writers, the American puritans, and the late 18th-century literary circle The Connecticut Wits.

Sarah Ruden was raised in the United Methodist Church and is a "convinced Friend" or Quaker convert of twenty years' standing. She holds a Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard University and an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She has taught Latin, English, and writing at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Cape Town, and has been a tutor for the South African Education and Environment Project, an education-enrichment nonprofit in Cape Town. She was a scholar in residence for three years at Yale Divinity School and a Guggenheim fellow, and is now a visiting scholar at Brown University.

She is a poet, translator, essayist, and popularizer of Biblical linguistics. A collection of her poetry, Other Places (William Waterman Publications, 1995, later distributed by HarperCollins) won the South African Central News Agency Literary Award, and her poems appear in The National Review and religious periodicals. She made use of her experience in publishing several book-length translations of pagan literature to write Paul among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time (Knopf, 2010). Augustine's Confessions: A New Translation from Random House/Penguin in 2016 and The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible is forthcoming from Knopf in February 2017.

Hole in the Wall Theater (HITW) has been a leader and beacon in the Greater Hartford arts community since 1972. It is an award-winning, non-profit community theater and staffed entirely by volunteers.

HITW was founded by Ray Shinn and Ted Guhl; both of whom were instrumental in the theater's mission and longevity. It is HITW's goal to present theater to all regardless of resources. Unique in its creation as well as the manner in which it was run, HITW was the only theater in the state to run solely by its members through its biweekly gatherings, termed "General Meeting." General Meeting is responsible for choosing the plays presented, maintaining the physical plant, and creating, revising, and upholding the philosophy by which HITW was run.

Over the course of four decades, the theater has seen many homes throughout New Britain including Oak Street, North Street, Harvard Street, and its current home on Main Street. Despite its location, the philosophy of presenting Quality Theater to everyone remains the same.

Pictured: Sarah Oschmann, Rowan McDonald, Stephen Maher, Ari Veur. Photo by Arienne Davey.

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