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Framework: Aristophanes' Birds

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Birds was presented in 414 BCE.

In the previous year, Athens captured an island city, Melos, after a long siege. The Athenians put all the men of military age to death and sold the women and children into slavery. Later that year, the Athenians decided to launch an expedition to Sicily after a vigorous debate. The debate ended with those who opposed the expedition becoming afraid to speak out for fear of being called unpatriotic.

The outcome of the expedition in Sicily was still in doubt when Aristophanes wrote Birds. It had ended in disaster before he wrote his next extant play, Lysistrata.

A pair of slackers set out in search of the easy life ("Not a BETTER country," shrugs one, "just a less ambitious one") and when they find it, they promptly transform it into a replica of what they vowed to escape. Sound familiar? (Review of the Hurt McDermott adaptation by Mary Barnidge)

Euelpides (Confident) and Peisetaerus (Persuader of His Friends) have abandoned Palo Alto to escape their debts and obligations. They visit Tereus, once human but now a bird, to learn if on his flights he has ever seen a carefree city. But none of Tereus' suggestions proves satisfactory, for no city is carefree. Peisetaerus then asks about the life of the birds, which is carefree but lacks a city. Suddenly he has an astonishing idea: to turn the scattered bird world into a mighty bird city. Tereus summons the birds, represented by the Chorus. Being inveterate enemies of humankind, the birds are initially hostile, but Peisetaerus wins them over by pointing out that they were the original kings of the universe long before the Olympian gods took over, and by proposing a plan: the birds will build an aerial city that completely occupies the sky; demand that the Olympians return power to them or face a blockade; and instruct humankind to sacrifice henceforth to the birds, for birds have the power to harm humans if they refuse, but also give them every blessing if they accept. (From Henderson's intro)

"The City" by Constantine P. Cavafy (1863 - 1933)

Translated by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard 

You said: "I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.

Contact Thomas Talboy (ttalboy at gmaildotcom) of Ubiquity International about his adaptation of Birds at the APA 2007


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