Plato's Symposium (a play reading)

Members of the Platonic Academy

Eros, the god of loving desire is celebrated at a drinking party. But as our symposium opens, it’s not quite the orgy one might expect of Ancient Athenian lads, for the guests are all rather nerdy and very hungover. They decide to hold back on the drinking for sober eulogies to love. And so it proceeds, with love as desire for the beautiful, with the rejection of base desires for the higher love, the very life force, the philosopher’s stairway to the divine. It’s all very camp and all very sober…at least until the gate crashers arrive.