Federico García Lorca's Theatrical Legacy: A Deep Dive

Federico García Lorca's Theatrical Legacy

Federico García Lorca, a prominent member of the Generation of '27, created plays that are considered as valuable as his poetry. He wrote his most famous works after 1930. Thematic coherence was maintained throughout his work, and loneliness, pain, and death were constant themes. His dramatic creation began in his youth, with certain modernist influences and the drama of Eduardo Marquina (The Hex). He created puppets for farces such as Tragicomedy of Don Cristobal and Password Roseta.

Surrealist Works

His more surreal, so-called "impossible theater" works, are: If Five Years Pass, The Public, and Play Without a Title. These works broke with traditional staging and some logical aspects, hence the difficulty in representing them.

Major Tragedies and Dramas

The three most important works of Lorca's theater are:

• Blood Wedding (Bodas de Sangre): An allegory of passion dominated by fate. It involves passion, hatred, and conflicts between families, leading to the death of the protagonists. The bride escapes with her former boyfriend, Leonardo, on her wedding day, leading to the tragic deaths of the groom and Leonardo in the presence of the bride.
• Yerma: The tragedy of a barren woman whose only dream in life is to be a mother. Fate makes her kill her own husband, who did not want to have children.
• The House of Bernarda Alba (La Casa de Bernarda Alba): Presents the clash between Bernarda's authoritarianism and her daughters' desire for freedom, especially Adela's relationship with Pepe el Romano, who is promised to her sister Angustias. In a stifling atmosphere, full of symbols, tragedy strikes when Adela commits suicide, believing that her mother has killed her lover.

Style and Themes

Lorca's theatrical style maintains the stylistic and thematic line of his poetry. Freedom, love, death, and social and moral standards are the basis of his theater. His plays are imbued with a language full of metaphors and symbolic images. The author seeks to involve the viewer emotionally in the tragedy lived by the characters, combining prose and verse. The female characters stand out in Lorca's work, as he felt a special attraction to disadvantaged social groups.

Other notable authors and their works:

• Enrique Jardiel Poncela: His major works written before the Civil War were *Angelina o el honor de un brigadier*; *Usted tiene ojos de mujer fatal*; and *Cuatro corazones con freno y marcha atrás*. In 1940, he premiered his finest work, most recognized by critics: *Eloísa está debajo de un almendro*. His style is characterized by improbable approaches; his dialogues are intelligent, full of humor and irony, and combine the absurd and equivocal with the bourgeois and popular. The author sometimes used the theater to criticize the society of the time.
• Alejandro Casona: Known works include *La sirena varada*, *Otra vez el diablo*, and the poetic drama *Nuestra Natacha*. *La dama del alba* is one of his most important works, mixing realistic and fantastic elements, such as the personification of death as The Lady of the Dawn. In this situation, Death comes to take a member of the family. His style is characterized by great formal perfection and the use of a lexicon with very careful didactic and sentimental nuances. He combines the presence of supernatural elements and customs. His characters do not have serious existential conflicts and reflect everyday situations of the society of the era.