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!
416 866 8666 soulpepper.ca Young Centre for the Performing Arts Toronto Distillery Historic District
facebook.com/ SoulpepperTheatre
Soulpepper is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (pact), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tapa) and Theatre Ontario, and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. Scenic Artists and Set Decorators employed by Soulpepper are represented by Local 828 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. 
@soulpepper
youtube.com/ SoulpepperTheatre
soundcloud.com/ SoulpepperTheatre