Inspired by The House of Bernarda Alba by Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca.
Deepest Spain at the beginning of the 20th Century. There are still eight years ahead of severe mourning in the house of Bernarda Alba. Adela, the youngest daughter, wants to be free.
Bernarda's Backstage is a no spoken words version of the Lorquian tragedy. It makes visible what in the original version by Lorca is not seen. A tribute to Freedom, always in danger and a tribute to the bravery that means to live against the social repressive rule, even on the risk of losing one´s life.
Bernarda's Backstage is a cross-road performance, it explores with different theatrical languages such as puppetry, the performer as an actor and a puppeteer, dance, video projections and different sources of lighting to place the tragedy and to highlight those themes that we want to expose here to question.
Our Bernarda's Backstage centers in Adela, the youngest daughter of Bernarda, she is our heroine, her trip was our roadmap in the search of images, without words, through the body, the object, and the sounds. Adela fights to get out of the small microcosms where Bernarda and her daughters live. She wants to open to the outside world, the physical world, the world of passions, also the world of Nature, with no mourning and prejudices, leaving behind the fear to the constant threat, the punishment and the repressive rule.
Bernarda's Backstage has been developed as a project in Residence in Centro La Laboral in Gijón, and Centro Párraga in Murcia, both in Spain in 2010. The premiere was at La Laboral in February 2011.
It has been performed in Madrid at sala La Grada, in Prague Festival (awarded as best dramaturgical proposal), in Cádiz at the FIT “Encuentro de Mujeres” and also has toured to the Puppet and Animation Lalka Też Człowiek Festival at Warsaw in November 2012, at the Ishara Festival in New Delhi in April 2013 and in Milano at the IF Festival in Teatro Verdi in March 2014.
Press Clippings, Milano (March 2014)
Press Clippings, New Delhi (April 2013)
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Photographer: Pilar Ferré