Lysistrata

There was in-fighting

Because suddenly

There were twice as many women in the company

As men

And twice as many males roles

In the season

So you do the math

Suddenly, we were a company full of bitches

I even heard one of the male actors

Make a remark about it

Those women—so catty

Well, asshole

You try fighting for your job

Everyday

Then you tell me

How catty you get

Not to mention

They were still trying to pawn some of us

As being half

Our actual ages

I’m not one of those women

Who likes to believe

She’s still twenty-one

So when I’m asked to play Opehlia

I don’t feel flattered

I feel concerned for the sanity

Of the person who’s asking me

Which leads us to Lysistrata

We did it in 1999

At the height of the—‘All These Crazy Bitches Hate Each Other’ Era

And halfway through the show

I got an idea

All the women in the acting company

Went to Samantha’s office

And said—Woman to woman

That we needed more representation

In the theater’s season

Or we’d all be forced to walk

This was a big threat to make

When there wasn’t exactly a shortage of actresses

Who would be happy to take all our places

And play whatever meager roles

Got slid across the counter to them

I was nervous at first

But then I remembered that my grandmother got up everyday

At 5am to make breakfast for her family of seven

Before going to work in a factory

Building warplanes

And suddenly, I was all Helen Reddy

About the whole thing

But the other girls were a little too young

To know who Helen Reddy was

And they were sweating

It turn out all right though

Our demands were met

Did we play the girls united card?

Absolutely

Did the men like it?

Of course not

They only liked it

When we were at each other’s throats

Samantha promised

There’d be a more even distribution of roles

In the upcoming season

And she lived up to her promise

Even when the boys bitched

We would have abstained from having sex with the guys too

But those peckerwoods were so disgusting

I don’t know who’d want to have sex with them anyway

From that point on,

The girls seemed to get along a lot better

Although when we got a new, male Artistic Director

Things sort of settled back

Into their pre-Lysistrata ways

That’s the thing about being a woman in the theater

The fight’s never over

I’m sure the Greeks

Can back me up on that