at the IU Theatre and Drama Center:
Ranjit Bolt, the translator/adaptor, and Aristophanes, the comic playwright

Ranjit Bolt, the adaptor, was born in Manchester, England; he is the nephew of playwright and screenwriter Robert Bolt and has inherited his uncle’s talent for writing. He was educated in Perse, Cambridge, and Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where he studied the classics. His first translation was of Corneille’s The Liar, which was staged by the Old Vic. Other productions of Mr. Bolt’s translations and adaptations include The Illusion by Corneille, staged by the Old Vic in 1990 and the Guthrie Theater in 1991; Don Juan Tenorio, Oxford Stage, 1990-91; Molière’s Tartuffe, staged by Sir Peter Hall, 1991-92; Brecht’s Arturo Ui, Royal National Theatre, 1991; Goldoni’s The Venetian Twins, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1993-94; Sophocles’ The Oedipus Plays, Royal National Theatre, 1996; Molière’s The Misanthrope, staged by Sir Peter Hall, 1998 and the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., 2002; a new version of Tartuffe, staged by the Royal National Theatre, 2002, and Goldoni’s Mirandolina, staged at Chicago’s Noble Fool Theatre in 2002. Bolt’s Losing It (2001), a 150-page novel in rhymed couplets, was hailed by The Observer as the “wittiest book of the year.”
       Ranjit Bolt’s version of the Lysistrata was commissioned by Sir Peter Hall, who premiered the adaptation in Liverpool in 1993 and then brought it to the Old Vic in London. The U.S. premier of the piece was presented by the Guthrie Theater Lab in March 1999.
       On December 31, 2002, as part of the Queen’s New Year’s Honours, Ranjit Bolt was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his “services to literature” as a translator.

Aristophanes (c. 448—c. 380 BCE) is the first great comic playwright in the western tradition and the only author of Greek Old Comedy of whom we have complete plays extant. The works of his rivals are either completely lost or have come down to us only in fragments. Of the more than 40 plays Aristophanes is believed to have written, only 11 survive as complete works, along with about 1,000 fragments from others. We know very little about Aristophanes’ life with any real degree of certainty — much of what we do know is gleaned from references within the plays. He seems to have been born into a wealthy family, who may have owned property or lived on the island of Aigina. He grew up during the reign of Pericles and, like other Athenian citizens, enjoyed the peace that existed from 445-431 BCE; he was still a young man when the war between Athens and Sparta broke out. He enjoyed a good discussion, food, and wine, as Plato has recorded in The Symposium, wherein Socrates and Aristophanes drink and talk well into the early morning hours. Aristophanes lived at the same time as the playwrights Sophocles and Euripides, as well as the historian Thucydides.
      His comedies won several second prizes and at least two first prizes (for The Knights and The Frogs) at the dramatic festivals. One of his sons produced his plays and was a minor comic playwright.
      We can say with some certainty that one of his major concerns was the the war between Athens and Sparta—the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), which spanned much of his life and is central to the Lysistrata.

Where to go:

The war between Sparta and Athens
Theatre and festivals in classical Athens
Lysistrata and Old Comedy
Women in Athens and Sparta
The "Happy Idea" of the Lysistrata

Lysistrata page
IU Theatre and Drama home page
Indiana University Bloomington home page