ABOUT THE PLAY
The House of Bernarda Alba was written in 1936 during a flurry of creative activity for Lorca . He liked to say that his plays took years to form in his mind , and then a matter of weeks to write . Though this claim is not represented in the process of all his plays , it certainly rings true here .
The first inspiration for The House of Bernarda Alba was a woman who lived in one of the villages where Lorca grew up . This woman , whose name was Frasquita Alba , had five unmarried daughters whom Lorca would see walking sadly through the village . But as with all of Lorca ’ s real-life inspirations , his goal was less to reproduce the inspiration than to use it as an archetype and symbol , putting it to use to explore his prevailing themes of repression , sexuality , and tyranny .
Lorca had been writing about women for a long time , both because that subject matter allowed him to explore the above themes and because the theatre scene in Spain had more female actors than male actors . He swore that this play – which has no men on stage at all – was going to eschew his poetic and symbolist aesthetic in exchange for “ not one drop of poetry ! Reality ! Pure realism !” He sub-titled the play , “ Drama of Women in the Villages of Spain ,” and notes that the work should resemble “ a photographic document .” Yet despite his claims , Lorca ’ s natural poetic sense and command of musical rhythm still create a highly stylized play suffused with symbols . However , unlike his earlier plays , this play is heavily indebted to the use of silence and shows a notable lack of the lyrical language for which he had been known .
Lorca never got to see his play produced , as he was assassinated by the conservative Nationals in the Spanish Civil War before it could even be accepted by a company . The play ’ s depiction of tyranny evokes the tyranny of Franco ’ s party that led to Lorca ’ s own death . And yet what makes the play so timeless is its near-perfection , the way almost every line works in the service of its themes and how the atmosphere grows more and more claustrophobic , so that an audience leaves not with mere ideas of repression but with a sense of the experience of it .