Cinema is magic. How else could Jake Binstock and Parker Rouse have rebuilt Ancient Greece in an Austin backyard? Yet that’s the unlikely location for their timely staging of Aristophanes’ biting satire about foolish old men with too much power and a judicial system that’s become nothing more than a cash cow. (Sound familiar?) Rather than try to update the story, they kept all the 2,500-year-old references in place and used modern filmmaking techniques to explain all the details and niceties of Athenian governance, as well as all the bawdy humor, dildos, and double entendre that were Aristophanes’ trademark. Stick around for a Q&A with executive producer Richard Linklater. – Richard Whittaker
