THE HOUSE OF
BERNARDA ALBA
By Federico García Lorca
Translated by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata
November 2021
Oklahoma City University School of Theatre’s Stage II
Director: Laura Susana Tapia
Stage Manager: Madeleine Pugh
Photography: Hal Kohlman
Lighting design: Halcyon Piper
"Pretend we have sealed up the doors and windows with bricks."
“I’d like to be a harvester, so I could come and go. Then I could forget what’s eating away at us.”
“Your advice is useless—it’s already too late! I wouldn’t fight you—you’re just a servant—I’d fight my mother, to put out this fire that rises from my legs and mouth.”
“I know it’s a lamb. But why can’t a lamb be a child? It’s better to have a lamb than to have nothing.”
“This is what I do with the tyrant’s rod! Don’t take one step more.”
“I want no weeping. We will look death in the face.”
In a time of desperation and suppression, five vulnerable women pursue romantic love by means of lust and secrecy to attempt to escape their mother’s tyranny.
Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba is a story about oppression. Bernarda’s five adult daughters have been under her control for their entire lives, and her tyranny has dramatically increased in the time since the death of the daughters’ father. The oldest daughter, Angustias, has nearly attained liberty from her mother through her impending marriage to Pepe El Romano. The younger daughters, particularly Adela, are jealous of Angustias and lust over Pepe because he represents a path to freedom. Adela’s lustfulness conflicts with Bernarda’s tyranny; this friction culminates in Adela’s suicide and an irreparable spike in Bernarda’s oppression of the remaining sisters.
Emotional Research:
lust, passion, summer heat
Research: windows, shadows
Research: Picasso’s Celestina,
a grieving woman.
Production Photo: Adela overcome by emotion
Production Photo: the sisters long to escape the prison of the house.
Production Photo: Bernarda, overcome by grief, begins to slip.