Federico García Lorca left a warning in writing at the beginning of Bernarda Alba’s house. Women’s drama in the towns of Spain. The three acts of that work had “the intention of a photographic documentary.” There are still those who, almost nine decades later, focus their “photographic gaze” to pay tribute to the poet. This is what the Cabaret Voltaire Collective has done, which, with this annotation as a starting point, has chosen to recompose some of the best-known scenes of the Granadan from movement, to approach the creation of semi-static images on stage.
The result: BERNARDA… Death must be looked at face to facea daring version that fuses different stage languages such as physical theatre, flamenco, gesture, half-mask technique, dance and singing, which premieres this Friday, June 28 at the Espacio Inestable in Valencia, where it will be performed until Sunday, June 30.
“I wanted to get away from the most traditional conventionalism, because my way of working is much more expressive, closer to the Commedia dell’arte or mime; to movement, in short,” acknowledges, in conversation with EL PAÍS, the director of this proposal, Yevgeni Mayorga, who has sought to approach expressionism in this work, with the gestural language of expressionist dance and film as a reference.
The idea, which had been germinating in his head for years since he organized a training laboratory in the technique of theatrical masks in November 2022, was finalized in March 2023 with a new workshop that served “almost like a casting” to select the five actresses in charge of playing the inhabitants of that house with thick walls, arched doors with jute curtains, cattail chairs and paintings of landscapes of nymphs in which no problem. That war houseimmersed in a hot Andalusian summer and captivated by eight years of mourning, where not even the wind from the street can enter.
Precisely, Colectivo Cabaret Voltaire’s proposal understands the house as another character, a “chiaroscuro space with crooked crossroads” through which the protagonists wander “in search of a more emotional and subjective expression of their human nature.” On the stage, some fabrics fall to form a fragmented spatial composition that offers the public an image of reality from different angles and superimposed geometric planes to simulate a “subjective”, “physical and emotional” labyrinth, a metaphor for the women who inhabit it. . Or, in the poet’s words spoken in the mouths of two of Bernarda’s daughters: “Being born a woman is the greatest punishment. And our eyes don’t even belong to us.”
Claudia Sinisterra, Leticia Ripoll, Iaissa Morató, Fabiola Camacho and Berta López give their energy to this work of “collective creation”, in which, Mayorga explains, flamenco acquires a constant presence, “not necessarily as a dance, but as a passion.” . They act, dance and even start singing some verses of the poem The legend of time to remove from the audience the anguish that hovers over the room after Bernarda’s “I don’t want tears. Death must be looked at face to face” to her daughters. The proposal is complemented by gothic-inspired costumes and cubist masks. And, in an almost gloomy vision of the scene, invaded by black and some grey, white, green and red shine unmistakably. “Colours are important because they tell us things. In Lorca, green is hope and love,” says the director.
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Mayorga admits that it generates “a lot of vertigo” and “a little fear” for him to present a “different and novel” version that practically completely respects the original text, although he jokes when explaining that he faces the challenge by “enduring” and assures that Lorca, “As a character, as a poet, he was also a disrupter at the time and, in some way, people may like this proposal a lot or not at all. I think the middle ground here is going to be a little left out.”
“It is a tragedy, it begins with a death and ends with a death,” says the director, aware that, not only his proposal, but also Bernarda Alba’s house, “it’s scary.” But he clarifies that Colectivo Cabaret Voltaire wanted to “give an agile, youthful, in quotes, and dynamic color” to the work to “not fall into something slow” and compose an “energetic” scene.
For the actresses, who are mostly facing their first professional theater job, it was a “gift” to receive the offer to be part of BERNARDA… Death must be looked at face to face and they did not hesitate to accept. Iaissa Morató says that the creation process began with the movements and, as a result of these, “the intentions emerged and the characters were created, based on how we expressed things.” Leticia Ripoll adds, and her colleagues support her, that, under Mayorga’s direction, they have been “creative actresses” and numerous scenes have been born from her head and her own creation to then “continue and evolve” until they take shape.
“Between us all, we have achieved a very specific aura,” says Claudia Sinisterra, who feels a certain respect for taking on this project, as she does not lose sight of the fact that “there are many opinions about taking classical works and remodelling them.” “Lorca said that theatre should be playful and for everyone and, in the end, I don’t know if he would have liked our version or not, but I interpret it that way and I think that this proposal is for people to take and make it their own,” she reflects.
Berta López is grateful for the freedom they have had to “be able to treat the text from wherever we want” and build the characters “in their own way,” while Fabiola Camacho adds that she has chosen not to “think too much” about the text and its author and to focus on the creation as a whole: “Even though it is a super important, imposing and large text, I am more interested in how we are creating it.”
One last note. “You have to consume theater,” Sinisterra says, and all of her classmates nod to support her intervention. It seems they have agreed. Minutes before, her director had invited the public “to enjoy the theater. To see theater, to read theater. To consume theater.”
