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What
began two months ago in a simple e-mail culminated Monday
night in drinks and hugs and disbelieving laughs at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music's Cafe. The Lysistrata Project was
alive and co-founders Sharron Bower and Kathryn Blume had
thrust themselves into the forefront of a global peace protest
of the United States' looming war with Iraq. The murmurings
of two New Yorkers have exploded into a unified voice of dissent,
with technology providing a speed and a reach for their message
unimaginable in prior eras.
Bower and Blume repurposed Lysistrata, Aristophanes'
bawdy, ancient Greek anti-war comedy, as the centerpiece of
a technology-driven grassroots political movement that has
spread rapidly worldwide. Tuesday evening's star-studded
play reading at the Academy's Harvey Theater capped off an
organized one-day series of more than 1,000 readings yesterday
in all 50 states and almost other 60 countries.
At
the cocktail party after the show, the founders seemed overwhelmed
by the global response to their cause.
"I don't think my imagination is that good," said
the sprightly, energetic 35-year-old Blume, discussing whether
the reality of the day matched her and Bower's dreams.
"We talked immediately about it being nationwide or worldwide
but there is a very big difference between imagining something
or dreaming about something and seeing the manifestation of
the reality in all the detail. That's the great gift
of life. It fills out the picture that you just drew
an outline for and the reality is more interesting than anything
you could have thought up."
The reality took
place not just in front of almost 1,000 spectators last night
in Brooklyn, but in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators
around the world, all connected through the Internet and the
movement's Web site. Bower said she had received more
than 20,000 e-mails in two months since the Web site launched
in January. The critical role of technology in enabling
the breadth and depth of the movement was not lost on the
founders.
"[The power of technology] is huge in this entire peace
movement," said the tall, stately Bower. "It
worked. E-mail worked. Web sites worked. Even those
of us who are poor can get an e-mail and take action.
I hope this is the key to a generation of peace. I hope
there is a higher consciousness."
More important than the particular impact of this movement
may be its proof that one or two people can indeed have a
voice and an ability to enact, if not change, then at least
education or awareness. Both cofounders spoke openly
and excitedly about the role the movement had played in giving
a voice to those who felt like they lacked one.
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"I
think it has had a huge impact," the 32-year-old Blume
said. "I don't know about the impact of stopping
the war necessarily. I don't think that is measurable.
But in terms of individual lives of people, it has had a huge
impact, because so many people have written in saying, 'I
felt so helpless and so powerless and had no way of expressing
how I felt about this situation until the Lysistrata Project
came along, and it's just so easy and now I'm re-energized.
I have hope.' A lot of people said they have hope, and
there is no way to measure the ripple effect of that."
The co-founders
were quick to credit the play selection as a large part of
the movement's success. Lysistrata is a ribald
account of the women of ancient Greece forcing an end to the
Peloponnesian War by refusing to have sex with their husbands
until they signed a peace treaty. The movement's Web
site describes the choice as one that "provides a humorous
entree into a healthy community dialogue: What CAN we do on
a local level to stop 'diplomacy by violence' in our world?"
Aside from the play's apropos theme of female empowerment
leading to peace, Bower's additional lighthearted explanation
of why Lysistrata was chosen was equally telling.
"No one can resist an ancient Greek [penis] joke,"
she remarked, laughing with the crowd at the theater during
the reading's introduction.
High-profile performers such as Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick,
Johnny Lee Davenport, and Mercedes Ruehl, who played the title
character, headlined a 14-person cast that enthralled an openly
pro-peace crowd with witty banter intermixed through the play's
adaptation. After the reading concluded, many of the
actors came back on stage flashing peace signs and joined
the audience in chanting, "No more war!"
As the party wound down, Bower was able to take a couple minutes
to reflect on what she and Blume have created and pondered
her future as an activist.
"I feel like a lot of people have become activists for
the first time with this project, and once you do it, you're
responsible. Once you know, you're responsible.
I'm never going to be able to go back to not being an activist,
so I think that's what we did. I think we succeeded
in that."
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