Lysistrata, #MeToo, and Consent: A Case Study

The country is going to hell in a handbasket. Foreign policy is a disaster area. Military interventions stretch on for years. The motives and strategies (or lack thereof) of the men in power have become suspect, and women have had enough. But we are not at the most recent US Women's March or even in the current century. It is 411 bce. In Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the war-weary women of Athens and Sparta want to end the Peloponnesian War, and their tactic is radically simple: participate in a sex strike until the men lay down their arms. In this fast-paced comedy, lust is leverage and the personal is definitely political. But what does it mean to produce this classical play against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement?¹ In spring 2017, several months before the movement erupted in the United States, I had planned to direct Ellen McLaughlin's adaptation of Lysistrata for Ursinus College's 2017–18 season. In the October 2017 wake of multiple sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, women used #MeToo to create public awareness about the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault in their lives.² As more and more of my students, colleagues, and friends shared their #MeToo experiences, I paused to consider how a production of Aristophanes' sex comedy, specifically McLaughlin's adaptation of it, might be interpreted in terms of commentary on consent in this changing cultural landscape.³

Surveying Sexual Violence on College Campuses

The college sexual assault epidemic is just one of the sexual violence crises to which the #MeToo movement responds. In June 2017, Columbia University announced the findings of the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT), "a major research initiative to study sexual violence and sexual health among Columbia University undergraduates." The SHIFT team "surveyed, interviewed, and observed students, assembling one of the most scientifically rigorous and comprehensive portraits of undergraduate sexual health and behavior ever compiled" ("Columbia Researchers Present"). Researchers first published their findings in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE: of the over 1,600 students surveyed, "[s]ince college entry, 22% of students reported experiencing at least one incident of sexual assault" and "[w]omen and gender nonconforming students reported the highest rates (28% and 38%, respectively)." The data compiled by the researchers "suggest a cumulative risk for sexual assault experiences over four years of college with over one in three women experiencing an assault by senior year," but also demonstrate that "freshman year, particularly for women, is when the greatest percentage experience an assault" (Mellins). Given such statistics, how might colleges proactively address sexual assault on campus and cultivate conversations about prevention and consent?

Turning to Theatre as a Tool for Sexual Violence Prevention

Several texts, including M. Candace Christensen's "Using Theater of the Oppressed to Prevent Sexual Violence on College Campuses," Sarah McMahon and coauthors' "Utilizing Peer Education Theater for the Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence on College Campuses," and W. Gregory Thatcher's "Preliminary Evaluation of the 'Playing the Game' Sexual Assault Prevention Theatre Program," identify theatre as an effective tool for sexual violence education. For example, Speak About It, a not-for-profit organization, provides "[a]ffirmative consent education through performance and dialogue" to teach high school and college students about consent, boundaries, and healthy relationships. As of 2016, the organization reports that it reached over 300,000 students. In "Exploring and Sharing Strategies for Staging Affirmative Sexual Consent: 100 Shades of Grey and Beyond," Charlotte McIvor discusses her own experiences coordinating a theatre-based sexual violence prevention project at the National University of Ireland at Galway, and highlights similar projects at the University of Texas at Austin, Santa Clara University, Hobart and William Smith College, Michigan State University, and Rutgers University. Based on a model I developed in conjunction with AddVerb Productions and the University of Southern Maine, I coordinate and direct a performance-based sexual violence prevention program titled The Consent Event—a series of scenes and monologues about sexual violence and healthy relationships performed by an ensemble of student actors for Ursinus College's new student orientation...