It’s Athens, 416 a.d., and a number of the city’s luminaries get together for a drinking party at the home of the famous tragedian, Agathon. After some eating, drinking and dilly-dallying, they each resolve to deliver a panegyric in praise of Love. The spirited, sage and sumptuous results have been written down for posterity (in the voice of one Apollodorus of Phalerum, who heard it from Aristodemus of Cydathenaeum and Socrates himself) by Plato, in one of his most deft dramatic dialogues, which we now know simply as The Symposium, or drinking party.
An abridged reading of Plato’s Symposium will take place at the Salon Populaire, facilitated by Monika Szewczyk, with distinguished guests Julieta Aranda, Annika Larsson, Hila Peleg, Olivia Plender, Dieter Roelstraete and Felix Vogel, as well as the Salon Populaire’s very own Ellen Blumenstein, in the following roles:
Cast, in order of appearance*
Phaedrus, a hypochondriac literary man
Pausanias, Agathon’s lover
Aristophanes, the comic poet (skips his turn due to hiccups)
Eriximachus, a doctor
Aristophanes, the comic poet
Agathon, a tragic poet and the host of the party
Socrates, the one and only (recalling the advice of Diotima, a wise woman from Mantinea)
Alcibiades, beautiful and notorious, at the zenith of his power in Athens
* The parts of Apollodorus, his unnamed friend and Aristodemus, three characters who introduce the story, will be skipped due to time constraints.
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