The Theater Group of Women’s NGO “Irida” will present Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds in Heraklion, the Cultural Center of Heraklion, on Saturday, 4th Novemberr 2017, at 19:00 and 21:00. The show will be free of charge (In Greek, without translation).
Concerning the play:
The Birds (Ornithes)was presented in 414BC in the City Dionysia and is considered the most successful work of Aristophanes.
It deals with civil and military practices –with no reference to what was happening then in Athens- in an attempt to describe an ideal society and to prove the certain failure of it. The Birds are the need of man to fly, to create a new world and to come in contact with his true desire.
Euelpides (Goodhope) and Pisthetaerus (Trustyfriend) are forced to leave Athens and to create their own city between land and sky. They named it “Nephelococcygian” or literally “cloud-cuckoo-land”. Unfortunately, in a while, there are found other people there too, that they want either to take part in the establishment of this city or to benefit from it. In this way, with this comedy, Aristophanes finds the opportunity to ridicule the slanderers and adulators of the municipality (of Athens) as well as the theories of new governments.
