ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a series of impressions based on an artistic enterprise which was ambitious, exciting and, as every successful comedy should be, a little touched by magic and the Santa Anas. The French archaeologist Gustave Lefebvre was excavating in Egypt at Kom Ishqaw in 1905 when he made an unexpected discovery. In the fourth century bce Greek comedy had taken a new and independent direction away from the earlier political fantasies of Aristophanes in which he castigated famous local figures, especially politicians, proposing bizarre and wonderful solutions to the problems of his own time. The performances were to coincide with the opening of an exhibition from the private collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman entitled A Passion for Antiquities. The choice of The Woman from Samos was influenced in the end by the ease with which the cast could be duplicated in Casina.
