Abstract

Drama

The fourth production in the A.N.T.A. series is a play by the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, "The House of Bernarda Alba." The play is described in the printed version as "a drama about women in the villages of Spain," and as in other plays of Lorca's the weight and the fateful aspect of folk experience are consciously invoked both as a frame of reference and as silent commentary on the particular drama which is being unfolded. The particular drama here is the conflict of the wills and passions of six women, a mother and her five daughters; and it illustrates the other, and saving, feature of Lorca's preoccupation with folk experience. While his characters are in a sense folk characters and their "destiny" is in a sense foreknown, they are individuals as well and their destinies are convincing in terms of their individuality.