When I first hit on Thesmophoriazusae by Aristophanes (a comedy rarely performed or written about), I was excited to find an ancient play in which female characters speak eloquently about gender oppression. Moreover, I was astounded at how familiar their voices sounded. The female chorus questions the images of women they see around them (focussing on the plays of Euripides) and seeks to fight against what they perceive to be incoherent and unfair representations of their sex. In their decision to punish Euripides, they also seek to question the authority of men and to influence everyday attitudes and behaviour towards women. These aims – and the decision to look to literature and popular culture in order to expose the mechanics of the patriarchy – have been at the heart of our women’s movement since the 1960s. As a result of this, the female chorus in Thesmophoriazusae sounds strikingly similar to a group of feminists today, making the play feel remarkably fresh and political despite it being nearly 2500 years’ old.

The Thesmophoria (the name of the Ancient Greek festival that Aristophanes parodies in his play) was for women to celebrate. It took place once a year, in the dry summer months when the Goddess Demeter was thought to be mourning her daughter Persephone, who was on her annual visit to the Underworld. In Athens, women were allowed to leave their homes and set up makeshift shelters inside the Parthenon, where they would elect leaders (seizing a patronising offer to ape the “democracy” of the men who excluded them from all practical power) and spend 3 days fasting, feasting and performing, – privately – their fiercely protected ‘mysteries’. Not surprisingly, very little is known about this ancient festival that reinforced female solidarity: in Ancient Greece, women rarely wrote anything other than letters and the festival is barely mentioned at all in mythological works or in drama. Because of this, Aristophanes’ play feels like a tantalising invitation to peek through a crack in a door (that he, like a true gentleman, has opened) to the unknown world of women in one of the first civilisations that actively oppressed them.

Of course, there is a reason why Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae is not included in the list of pre 1960 classics that are famous for their attempts to diagnose the problem of women’s inequality (such as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own). In 411 BC, Greek society was enjoying its status as one of the trailblazers of extreme misogyny and this can be found in Thesmophoriazusae just as it can in other writing from the period. The dark, emotional environment of the Temple of Demeter (where Aristophanes decided to set his Thesmophoria instead of the Parthenon) is clearly a physical representation of the essentialism at the heart of the play, just as the continual references to goddesses and nymphs are evidence of the author’s view that women are mysterious and (most importantly) different to men. Although the presentation of the female chorus may seem empathetic to a modern reader, it is important to remember that the reversal of sexual stereotypes in classical Athens was all part of the banter, reinforcing dominant idea that women were irrational creatures in need of protection from themselves and others.

So, why embark upon an adaptation of this play? As a feminist, I am continually maddened by the damaging images and representations of women that I see on stage, on television and in the ‘real’ world around me (consider, for instance, the Mail on Sunday’s profile of Liz Kendall as an “8st… power dressing… slinky brunette”). As a theatre-maker, I want to pull apart these stereotypes and ask audiences to look afresh at how we represent women. In particular, I am interested in how comedy has become a battleground for the representation of women, with female stand-ups bravely carving out a place for themselves amidst a world that is still screaming with sexism.

The landscape created by Aristophanes in Thesmophoriazusae is perfect for exploring these ideas. By going back to a play written by a man 2500 years ago, at the time when gender oppression had just begun, I hope to hold up a mirror to our society and use humour to reveal the ridiculous nature of the farcical female archetypes that have never been true, but have constantly been repeated.

I’d like to create a piece of theatre – this time fuelled by the artistic vision of women – that reaches back through time and offers real empathy to the female chorus in Thesmophoriazusae, offering them solidarity and investigating what we can do as artists to change the landscape that we live within.