March 3, 2003 saw the emergence of a new kind of protest against war–the Lysistrata Project. Back in January, two clever and indefatigable New York actresses, Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower, had the marvelous idea of staging readings of Aristophanes’ hilarious and bawdy antiwar protofeminist play, in which the women of Greece, led by the strong, intelligent and fearless Lysistrata, unite to withhold sex from their warrior husbands until they agree to end the Peloponnesian War, Before they knew it, the project had grown to include more than 1,000 readings in 59 countries from China to Argentina. How to account for the project’s triumphant popularity? The Lysistrata Project belongs to something new in political organizing–Internet-fueled grassroots arts activity, in which a master blueprint is quickly adopted and freely adapted at the local level.’Lysistrata’ plays on some very old stereotypes, such as that men are violent and women are peaceful, men love guns and women love children, and it proposes that men messed up the world and women can fix it.