Blood Wedding

The focus of this lesson was to look at a scene from the play "Blood Wedding" by Federico García Lorca.

"Blood Wedding" is based around two feuding families, one the Felixes and another that didn't specify a name. The play begins with the Mother and the Bridegroom, which was the section of the play that we looked at and performed, where the Bridegroom is trying to persuade his mother to give him a knife to cut olives. At this, the Mother goes into a trance of sorts, and starts ranting about weapons and how her husband and son died - at the hands of the Felixes. The Bridegroom also tries to persuade his mother to go and visit the family of the girl he wants to marry, which was custom at the time the play was set in rural Spain.

Eventually the Bridegroom marries the Bride but unbeknownst to him, she is also in love with Leonardo (the only named character) who is part of the Felixes. On her wedding night, the Bride runs away with Leonardo which caused the Bridegroom to chase the Bride and Leonardo.

When the Bridegroom catches up to Leonardo and the Bride, the Bridegroom and Leonardo fight (which is also fueled by their families' rivalry) which ultimately results in both of their deaths. The bodies of both men are brought back to the village where the Mother and the Bride begin to prepare their bodies for burial. This links to part of the speech that the Mother says in the scene that we looked at, where she describes preparing her husband's and son's bodies for burial.

Federico García Lorca was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director who introduced European movements into Spanish literature. He was executed by nationalist forces at the beginning of the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. During his adolescence he was more musically inclined rather than literature where Spanish folklore became his muse. In 1921 his first poems were published, with themes surrounding religion, isolation, and nature. He also challenged the role of women in society and explored taboo subjects such as homosexuality, which may be a reason as to why he was executed (due to his sexuality).

To explore this play, we were first led into the drama space one by one and told to create a still image of what the atmosphere felt like. Upon entering the space, there were sounds of crickets or some sort of insect chirping which gave off a jungle or forest type feeling. In the middle of the space was a table and on the table was a knife which links to how in the first scene in "Blood Wedding" the Bridegroom asks for a knife from the Mother and also how the Mother suggests the way that her husband died. The lights were very dim which suggested that the scene that was perhaps about to unfold was set during dawn or dusk.

In pairs, we then created a scene where one person wants to take the knife, potentially to injure someone, and one person wants to prevent them from taking the knife. This links to the scene from "Blood Wedding" because in it, the Mother tries to prevent the Bridegroom from taking the knife for fear that he could be killed by a Felixe or could kill a Felixe, all rational fears to the Mother, despite the Bridegroom claiming he's only going to cut olives.

French knife


Extract:

Scene 1

Room painted yellow.

BRIDEGROOM (entering). Mother.

MOTHER. What?

BRIDEGROOM. I'm going.

MOTHER. Where to?

BRIDEGROOM. To the vineyard. (He starts to go out).

MOTHER. Wait.

BRIDEGROOM. Do you want something?

MOTHER. Son, your food.

BRIDEGROOM. Leave it. I'll eat grapes. Give me the knife.

MOTHER. What for?

BRIDEGROOM. (laughing). To cut them.

MOTHER (muttering and looking for it). The knife, the knife ... Damn all of them and the scoundrel  who invented them.

BRIDEGROOM. Let's change the subject.

MOTHER. And shotguns ... and pistols ... even the tiniest knife ... and mattocks and pitchforks ...

BRIDEGROOM. Alright.

MOTHER. Everything that can cut a man's body. A beautiful man, tasting the fullness of life, who goes out to the vineyards or tends to his olives, because they are his, inherited ...

BRIDEGROOM (lowering his head).Be quiet. 

We were told to memorise the above scene within 20 minutes and then to perform this extract to the rest of the group. I played the Mother, and Kathryn played the Bridegroom.

Positive: captured the trance like ness of the mother through gestures such as excessive hand motions (although they may have been a bit too excessive), could easily see point where I was snapped out of the trance. Kathryn captured the boredness od the Bridegroom well at around the 36 37 second mark

One positive of my performance in this piece was that I managed to capture the trance-like-ness of the Mother through excessive hand movements, although at some points they may have been a bit too excessive bordering on exaggerated. It is easy to see where I, as the Mother, snapped out of the trance like state. In addition to this, Kathryn captured the 'boredness' of the Bridegroom at around the 36 and 37 second mark which shows that the Bridegroom has to listen to this speech from the Mother constantly, perhaps every day or every other day.

We changed the slam of the crate to a gentler one. Originally the harsh slam was meant to be that of a cupboard door being slammed but as this was done with a crate, it didn't look as effective. However the smaller slamming of the crate between 53 and 54 seconds was more effective because it showed that the Bridegroom didn't want to fully frighten his Mother but showed that he knows exactly how to calm her down. This suggests that he has to calm her down, possibly from the same rant quite regularly.