Word: lorca
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Yerma is among Garcia Lorca's last says, and it seems to have been one of those which brought to him the unwanted attention of the Republican censors. As the centenary of the poet's birth approaches and his country gears up for a massive celebration of his life and work, it is appropriate that the dramatic pieces in which he developed a new lyrical idiom for the stage be brought back to light, and the recent production in the Leverett Old Library does the play the justice its power deserves...
...there are other elements in Yerma which make the play luminous. One of them is Garcia Lorca's astonishingly beautiful poetry itself; its delicate images and startling metaphors are rendered effectively by a cast which, with few exceptions, is capable of delivering the words without succumbing either to melodrama nor to the temptation to suffocate the lyricism out of embarrassment...
...elements which dominate both within the play's language and as a theme of the play itself is the sheer sensuality of emotion: passion, feelings, abstract thoughts, are conveyed in Garcia Lorca's poetry as physical, bodily experiences; the experiences of the heart and mind are mapped out onto the body. The dichotomy becomes visible when Yerma rages against the fact that her desire for a baby cannot be forced to translate itself to her body. "Wanting something in your head is one thing," she says, "but it's something else when your body--damn the body!--won't respond...
...idea of blood becomes a linking metaphor, a image that can be used to mean both the spirit and soul, and the body itself. Some of Garcia Lorca's most beautiful images derive from this juxtaposition. For instance, trying to describe the sensations she's experiencing, the newly pregnant Maria says to Yerma, "Have you ever held a live bird, tight, in your hand? Well, it's the same, but in your blood...
Equally vital is the musical element of the production. Garcia Lorca's text for the play makes occasional use of sung elements, and frequent use of monologues framed explicitly in the meters of lyrical poetry, rather than prose. The music used in Spanish-language productions of the play is usually based on traditional Spanish folk tunes, but setting the English translation to those melodies would have been difficult. Instead, Bar-Hillel worked with John Baxindine '00, a concentrator in English and Music, to compose an entirely new score for the play...