Grade 5/6 Production of The Frogs

The Fifth and Sixth Graders of Regina Pacis Academy presented Aristophanes’ The Frogs, on Sunday, May 2.

Aristophanes was the most popular comic playwright in Athens, writing about forty plays  for religious festivals in honor of Dionysus.  We’re lucky that eleven of them survive. In fact, his are the only complete comedies from ancient Greece to survive!

He began writing his plays at the beginning of the thirty-year Peloponnesian War between Athens (and her allies) and Sparta (and her allies), and wrote the last one after Athens was defeated. During this time Athens was becoming ever more ruthless in pursuit of victory so you might think there wasn’t much to be funny about.  But Aristophanes managed it!  In his plays, Aristophanes mocked pretty much everyone:  corrupt leaders, philosophers with their heads in the cloud like his friend Socrates, sleazy citizens on the make, war-mongers, bad playwrights—and even good playwrights he admired, like Euripides and Aeschylus.  He made fun of himself too, for being bald and wanting to win the prize at the festival!  But above all he chided the citizens of Athens for forgetting the values that had led them to join together more nobly with other city-states to fight against the Persians.  He hopes the audience in the theatre—that is, the citizens in their democracy—will laugh and learn.

The Frogs won first prize at the Dionysia in 405 BC, the next-to-last year of the Peloponnesian War.  Athens has lost her fleet at the Battle of Aegospotami and Sparta is blockading the port of Athens, slowly starving the city.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.  Dionysus decides to descend to the Underworld.  Maybe someone there can help save Athens . . . 

Click here to view the Program.