Word: yerma
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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...
...play's poetry is brought to life in intriguing ways by its physical construction; light designer Ryan McGee '98 and set designers Mike DeCleene '98 and Dave Levy '00 have done interesting and creative work in a sparse setting. Lighting changes mark shifts in the movement from Yerma's inner world to the social world in which she lives: a cooler, bluer air surrounds her interactions in the social world. The outside world is marked from the world inside Yerma and Juan's house, and a warm orange light for her beautiful dreams of children. reminiscent of the dreamlike color...
...making concrete the unifying themes of the text: the village's washer-women are provided with a river, via the simple expedient of a roll of blue fabric, making visible the torrent of water that infiltrates areas of the play as a symbol of fertility and female power. Inside Yerma's house, the furniture is sparse--a rocking chair, a table, jugs for water--and the dominating element is the starkest one of all: a doorway, erected against the air, marking the boundary between the house to which Yerma is expected to keep--in her unbearable loneliness--and the outside...
Working with a recent English translation by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata, Baxindine has designed a languid, hauntingly lovely set of melodies to which several of the characters sing their poetry--Yerma's dream-monologues, a shepherd song by Victor, a complex six-part song by the village washerwomen--as well as incidental music. Exquisitely performed by Baxindine on piano and Marianne McPherson '01 on flute (filling in for regular Lori Sonderegger), the music fills the space of Old Library and combines with the delicate shifting of the light and the dreamlike lyricism of the poetry to create an atmosphere...