Federico García Lorca was a Spanish poet, playwright and theatre director in the early 1900’s. He wrote The House of Bernarda Alba in 1936, simply two months earlier than he was assassinated by Nationalist forces at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
The play, which will likely be introduced by Jagriti Theatre for the first time ever, revolves round management, energy, freedom in addition to the lack of them.
In the play, Bernarda Alba declares an eight-year mourning interval, following the dying of her husband. However, with 5 single daughters nonetheless at house, this choice turns into the motive for unhealthy and detrimental feelings to fester amongst household.
“I have always enjoyed Lorca’s work and this is one of only three plays he wrote in his lifetime,” says Arundhati Raja, founder-trustee of Jagriti Theatre, including, “I was quite keen on it as I would have loved to have played the role of Bernarda. I’ve been wanting to do an all-woman play and this was the first one I thought of.”
Arundhati says *hile the play could seem to be about girls in a patriarchal society, “there’s so much more to it — power and freedom, as well as the loss of it, and what that does to individuals.”
She provides that although The House of Bernarda Alba was written in 1936, Lorca’s brilliance shines via. “It reads like a modern script. Contrary to other works of the time, there are no long monologues and the plot unfolds through seemingly simple dialogues. That stood out to me as a script.”
Scenes from The House of Bernarda Alba by Jagriti Theatre
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Another side of the play that appealed to Arundhati was Lorca’s description of it. “On the title page of the play, he referred to this work as ‘a photographic documentation of the life of women in rural Spain’. I found it interesting that he spoke of a medium that was fairly new at the time, and especially since he was known more as a poet than a playwright.”
“It piqued my interest in thinking how we could represent this aspect in our work. I have done the set design in black and white. Also, black-and-white photographs will be projected at the beginning and between each act; in our own way of presenting a live photographic documentary.”
Though the concept of a monochromatic set and presentation of the play is hers, Arundhati says she has not tailored or revised the script. “I’m from a generation that has worked only with scripts and we had a lot of fabulous ones to choose from. For me, it has always been about looking at the lines of through the eyes of the playwright; they had a vision, and they wrote the dialogue. It is not for me to change it.”
According to Arundhati, there’s a tendency to say many performs, although written way back are nonetheless related, however with its themes of class inequality, gender divide, repression and sexuality, The House of Bernarda Alba stays pertinent at the moment.
Scenes from The House of Bernarda Alba by Jagriti Theatre
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Artistes performing in the play embrace Munira Sen, Padmavati Rao, Mayura Baweja, Priyanka Chandrasekhar, Kalyani Kumar, Yamuna Kali, Samragni Dasgupta, Urvashi HV and Garima Mishra.
The House of Bernarda Alba will likely be staged at Jagriti Theatre on August 22 at 7.30pm, and on August 23 and 24 at 3.30 and seven.30 pm. The play is appropriate for audiences aged 12 and above. Tickets, priced at ₹400, can be found on BookMyShow.
