Lorca
Federico Garcia Lorca was born 127 years ago today, on June 5th, 1898, and he died, violently, on August 19th, 1936, killed by a Fascist firing squad in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. The date is not in dispute but the reason is. Was he betrayed for being homosexual or for being a Socialist or for being a spy? Or perhaps it was a personal grudge. Nobody knows and his body was never found. He was 38.
Political turmoil was running so high that when García Lorca’s brother-in-law, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, became Mayor of Granada, he was assassinated within a week. On the same day he was shot, 19 August 1936, García Lorca was arrested.
What is indisputable is that he was one of Spain’s greatest poets and playwrights and, at the time of his death, his play The House of Bernarda Alba, just completed, had not yet been produced. It would not be seen in Spain until 1953.
He was an emblematic member of the Generation of ’27, a group consisting mostly of poets who introduced the tenets of European movements (such as symbolism, futurism, and surrealism) into Spanish literature.
A leader in the Spanish avant-garde, Garcia Lorca was close to composer Manuel de Falla, film-maker Luis Bunuel, and especially the painter Salvador Dali. Then in 1929, Bunuel and Dali, both Surrealists, collaborated on their film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). García Lorca interpreted it, perhaps erroneously, as a vicious attack upon himself. This caused a split with his closest friends which was never repaired.
In 1931, García Lorca was appointed director of a student theatre company, Teatro Universitario La Barraca (The Shack). It was funded by the Ministry of Education, and it was charged with touring Spain’s rural areas in order to introduce audiences to classical Spanish theatre free of charge.
For La Barraca, García Lorca wrote his best-known plays, the “Rural Trilogy” of Blood Wedding (1932), Yerma (1934) and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936), in all of them he rebelled against the norms of bourgeois Spanish society. They are his attempts to return to the roots of classical European theatre, questioning conventions such as drawing-room comedies. They all challenge the accepted role of women in society and explore taboo issues of homoeroticism and class.
The Franco regime banned García Lorca’s work, a ban which was not rescinded until 1953. That year, Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba were successfully produced on major Spanish stages.
London’s National Theatre has produced successful productions of both Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba. Yerma stars Billie Piper as young woman driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child. Directed and written by Simon Stone, this radical adaptation of Yerma is set in contemporary London and builds with elemental force to a staggering, shocking, climax.
The House of Bernarda Alba, adapted by Alice Birch and directed by Rebecca Frecknall, stars Olivier Award-winner Harriet Walter as the formidable matriarch in this pitch-black drama exploring the consequences of oppressing women.
Click here for Yerma
Click here for The House of Bernarda Alba
If you haven’t already done so, do subscribe to the National Theatre at Home website for access to all their current and previous productions.
The post Ruth Leon recommends… Federico Garcia Lorca – Yerma – Bernarda Alba appeared first on Slippedisc.
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