Acharnians

To dramatize the agony of being railroaded into war, Freshly Squeezed Creative Juices Theatre Company, a new nonprofit led by actress Liat Ron, is performing a modern adaptation of Aristophanes’ Acharnians, using the lyrical translation by Douglass Parker (1969). Among its novel twists is casting the leading character, Dikaiopolis, as a young woman. The play opens with Dikaiopolis, a citizen of Athens, calling for peace with Sparta and bristling under her inability to change the corrupt government. She succeeds in sending an ambassador to the Spartans with a private treaty in her name for herself and her family. Confronted by her countrymen as traitor, she is threatened with death. Forced to defend her actions, her situation becomes a matter of “persuasion or decapitation.” Pointing out the wrongs the Spartans have suffered from the Athenians, Dikaiopolis attempts to show her would-be executioners, who are inflamed with prejudice, that no one’s hands are clean.