The house of Bernarda Alba arrives at World Scenarios
I begin by imagining as if Federico García Lorca were here, in a night where he will see one of his twelve works written for dramaturgy, La casa de Bernarda Alba, this time directed by Carmen Vázquez and Angélica Galarza, for the festival, Escenarios del Mundo .
Tonight a group of dancers from the Dance Company of the University of Azuay plays that family, whom Lorca saw from her house, that neighbor wrapped in dark looms, Doña Bernarda, the widow.
And he also saw shadows, those dark, black shadows, marked by hatred, hatred for his mother, he saw Bernarda's five daughters. All of them trapped in their mother's matriarchy, in her house, in her rules and in her mourning, mourning that would last eight years. And beyond that gap between theater and reality, Lorca said to his friends: "Look, look, not a drop of poetry. It is pure reality."
Tonight that body disappeared in the Spanish Civil War, dusted, gets up, to look again at the family he called "A silent and cold hell in that African sun."
Everything has been dyed red, and all of a sudden you can hear the sobs and tears of Bernarda and her daughters, who, wrapped in sombre costumes, express their sorrow for the death of their father.
As they approach the stage, the music changes, and becomes an explosion that produces movement, now the daughters and Bernarda, lower their black cloaks and all the bodies dance, follow a movement of light that fuses the emotions of each daughter: the anger, repression, hatred, anguish and resentment of imprisonment.
The work continues, and until now we all know, the anger of the daughters and the control of the mother. Some hide and suffer, others mock, but all run away from Bernarda. Each movement of the dancers evokes and without words, the boredom of isolation.
Suddenly, a word comes out of Bernarda's mouth: Silence! And all the daughters begin to scream, breaking the calm. Now they all say what they think of their mother, selfish! witch! alone! Bernarda goes crazy, her steps are accelerated and the movements of her daughters have transformed into a struggle against the mother.
Lorca is still here, watching as the end approaches, waiting expectantly for the rebellion of the daughters, who already desperate for the authoritarianism of their mother and the impediment to manifest their sexuality, dance, and drop their dresses to manifest with sensuality the forbidden pleasure female.
Then when the daughters have already been seen by the mother, they run, they hide, door after door of Bernarda. Suddenly, the scene changes, now the thick fog covers it, and like ghosts, the daughters come out wrapped in white dresses, the music accentuates the melancholy and dismal air, because a daughter, Adela, has committed suicide.
Bernarda makes a cry that dyes red. After the white dresses, the daughters return to the blacks, to cover themselves, and to follow again that mother, and that family, which continues with its pain.
We see the light again, and now we can only hear the applause, the whistles, which accompany a group of women who, with tears in their eyes, are grateful, because they have given everything.
