NTNG - Theatro Dassous (Forest Theatre)

The play is about a caustic satire. Two Athenians, Peisthetaeros (loyal friend or one who persuades his friends) and Euelpides (one who has high hopes) leave Athens -weary of the life of their city - the first riding a crow and the second a jackdaw. Upon arriving at the land of the birds they set off to consult Epops, the hoopoe. Peisthetaeros puts forward his plan to build a new city between the heaven and the earth: the birds will fortify the air and will have control over gods and men. Epops asks the nightingale to help him summon the birds. The birds though in the beginning distrust the foreigners and show an aggressive disposition, they succumb afterwards in their flatteries and adopt their plan, take that is to say the domination of the world from the gods of Olympus and found immediately an air city, between the heaven and the earth, cutting off all communications between the men and the gods. Hardly however had the new state been built when a good many annoying persons began to roll up aiming to gain something from the new country city called Nephelococcygia (the city of the birds). This is how the adventure begins with its complications and its unexpected. Aristophanis through funny brainwaves and with a masterly travesty of persons and situations, it proposes that the desire of all people for the creation of an ideal society is permanently being hindered from the malice, the passions and the fooleries of the people.