Blood wedding 2016 march15

PL AYBILL BLOOD WEDDING

BLOOD WEDDING

Federico García Lorca

Translated by Guillermo Verdecchia ORIGINAL score BY ANDREW PENNER }{

A pproxi m at e ru n ni ng t i m e: 1 hou r & 30 m i nu t es T her e w ill be no i n t er m ission

ARTIST NOTE: ERIN BRANDENBURG My first attempt to understand Blood Wedding was through translation. From one language to another, one country to another. And before a word was written down for this production we began a translation in sound, in melody, in rhythm, tempo and movement.

It was like a folk song, a murder ballad passed down through the years and across continents and each time it is performed is reborn for that time and that moment. The story haunts you because you’ve heard it before, but in it there’s a struggle for something deeper that grabs hold and won’t let go.

Blood Wedding is the story of a wedding. And weddings involve families and communities and traditions and history and promises.

And if you are lucky, a great band. Weddings stand out as pivotal moments of ritual, and reinforce what we as a community treasure or most hope for. We want to protect what is ours, what we’ve worked for, to live up to expectations; and hope for the best. To resist and truly question our place in the community is to act against the status quo and question what Arthur Miller calls the “seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us.” That is the central conflict in this story and also the

tragedy. In the end we are our own worst jailers. Lorca’s universe does not provide a moral lesson; there are no simple answers.

It is the struggle that is important and creates the poetry. To live is to dance with your demons and in the process throw your heart at the horns.

It is a great pleasure to open Blood Wedding across the hall from The Just, shows Frank Cox O’Connell and I have worked on together and alongside each other for the past two years. These shows have shared a conversation and development here at Soulpepper. Thank you to Daniel Brooks for his guidance and mentorship throughout the process. Thank you to László Marton for suggesting Lorca and thank you to Albert and the entire Soulpepper company for supporting development and production.

Erin Brandenburg , Director of Blood Wedding

CREATIVE TEAM

BLOOD WEDDING

CAS T

Anna Atkinson Young Woman/Band

Caroline Gillis Neighbour/Maid

Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster Wife

Deborah Drakeford Mother in Law/ Woodcutter/Guest

Hailey Gillis Bride

Colin Palangio Leonardo

Celia Green Girl

Andrew Penner Moon/Band

Gordon Hecht Groom

Sophia Walker Young Woman/Woodcutter

Diane D’Aquila Mother/Beggar Oliver Dennis Father/Woodcutter

Richard Lam Young Man/Band

Produc tion

Erin Brandenburg Director

Richard Feren Sound Designer

Robert Harding Production Stage Manager

Guillermo Verdecchia Translator

Andrew Penner Composer & Music Director

Darragh Parsons Stage Manager

Anahita Dehbonehie Set & Costume Designer

Andrea Nann Movement Director

Jordana Weiss Assistant Stage Manager

Rebecca Picherack Lighting Designer

Kelly McEvenue Alexander Coach

SOULPEPPER PRODUC T ION

Jacqueline Robertson-Cull Head of Hair & Makeup

Natalie Swiercz Dresser

Greg Chambers Props Builder

Geoff Hughes Cutter

Paul Boddum Interim Head Scenic Artist

Bill Stahl Carpenter

Barbara Nowakowski First Hand

Ksenia Ivanova Scenic Painter

Michael Ahn Carpentery Intern

Thank you to Tamsin Kelsey, Richard Sanger, Miranda Mulholland (Harrow Fair) for music and inspiration, Howie Shia, all the artists who contributed to the creation, workshops and development of this production.

The video and audio recording of this performance by any means whatsoever are strictly prohibited.

ILLUSTR ATION : GR AC I A L A M

BACKGROUND NOTES

B

lood Wedding is the first of Federico García Lorca’s trio of dramatic masterpieces, followed by Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba. Lorca called them his “trilogy of the Spanish earth.” Elemental forces abound in this haunting tale of love and revenge: not only earth but water, flowers, the moon. Titanic emotions threaten; jealousy, rage, and love battle for supremacy. Blood Wedding was an instant sensation when it premiered in Madrid in 1933, going on to a production in Buenos Aires the same year. It remains Lorca’s most internationally produced work, its tragic simplicity and humanity striking a universal chord.

The inspiration for the play was a newspaper article Lorca had saved for years.

In 1932 he took the bones of the true story and in a single week he wrote this jewel, whose themes embrace the cycle of life, the progression of time, the tension between love and duty. With stunning depth and economy he explores what happens when individual desire comes up against the laws and norms of so-called civilized society. Nearly all the characters are nameless: The Bride, the Groom, the Mother, the Father, the Wife. The only exception is Leonardo Félix, the man the Bride loves but cannot marry. Woven through the play, an integral part of the spell it casts, are songs, chants, poetry, music, and folk dancing. Imbued with the rhythms of the Flamenco and gypsy traditions Lorca studied, rich with his astute observations of the depth and constriction of village life, Blood Wedding unfolds with a viral inevitability.

Three short years after the premiere of Blood Wedding, Lorca disappeared, killed

by Nationalist forces for his activism and his rumoured homosexuality. The conflagration of the Spanish Civil War claimed his books, burned publicly in his home town of Granada, and banned from Franco’s Spain. But the Fascist guns could not silence the power of his words or blast the clarity of his vision. They live on, as bright and fragrant as the Bride’s crown of orange blossoms.

Playwrigh t Biograph y

Federico García Lorca was a poet, playwright and director. Born near Granada in 1898, he later moved to Madrid, finding success in the ’20s as a poet. His great plays were performed for rapt audiences in the early ’30s. In 1936 Lorca went missing.

Officials called his death “an accident of war” but in 2015 newly released documents revealed that Franco’s soldiers had abducted Lorca, driven him deep into the countryside, and executed him by firing squad. He was buried in an unmarked grave that has never been found.

T R ANSL AT OR Biograph y

Guillermo Verdecchia is a Resident Artist and Head of New Play Development at Soulpepper. A Chalmers and Governor General’s Award-winning playwright, teacher, director, actor, and translator, he is currently developing a new piece called Galicia and preparing to work with Soulpepper’s next group of Academy playwrights.

Background Notes by 2016 Soulpepper Resident Artist Paula Wing

THANK YOU FOR AT TENDING!

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