This play premiered in 423 BC and is considered, with the exception of Socrates, the best of Aristophanes’ comedies. Its central theme is the open criticism of the Socratic school and the plot develops a theme that twenty centuries later is still very current: the complicated and inexhaustible relationships between parents and children.
The story is very simple: Strepsiades, who is being ruined by his indebted lazy son, decides to enroll at Socrates’ school to learn rhetoric. He intends to use it to convince his creditors that things are not always what they seem and that actually, he owes them nothing. Faced with his inability to study, he forces his son to take the rhetoric classes. His son learns it so well and so quickly that he makes his father’s life impossible. Las Nubes is a criticism against the tyranny of children and against all those who want to make us suffer through highs and lows played by Socrates and Querefonte, two close enemies of Aristophanes himself.
We have created a version of this play completely imbued by the spirit of Aristophanes, which has made it as hard core as Las Nubes was in its time. The action takes place a few days after the inauguration of Augusta Emérita theater, in Mérida. The manager of the coliseum, a theater professional, tries to convince the main investor of the advantages of having built a theater for six thousand people, instead of the thousand expected. He also goes on about how tremendously groundbreaking it will be to inaugurate a Roman theater with a Greek play. This clearly is a “theater within the theater” genre, which allows us to poke fun at a profession which has not changed much in the last twenty centuries.
To make our adaptation we deconstructed the original text, mixed it up, cut it, mutilated and rearranged it all. We added characters, plots and jokes, replaced songs, updated incomprehensible jokes, invented theatrical problems, and laughed at ourselves. The icing on the cake is our inexhaustible desire to want the public not only as an accomplice but also to remember this night as the best night of their lives. That’s how ambitious we are.
Duration: 90 minutes.
Recommended age: For all audiences.
