"Blood Wedding" is spring Theater offering
Tradition, passion, and violence are at the core of this true story about a love that can never become a marriage. Blood Wedding is rooted in the land and in its people’s desire to cling on to tradition in changing times. Underneath the landscape of this play are rumblings of the early days of the Spanish Civil War and Federico García Lorca’s poetic resistance.
The play is based on a 1928 newspaper account of a wedding that ended in tragedy near Almeria in southern Spain. García Lorca clipped the article, reread it five years later, and in a week finished his play, which instantly became a hit in Madrid, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires.
Skidmore's production emerged from a Lorca-centered lab course taught last fall by theater faculty members Carolyn Anderson and Will Bond. For the seniors with acting roles, this production is a culmination of a year’s study. “I’ve loved exploring in such depth the history of this play, García Lorca’s life, and his tragic assassination,” says Alex Chernin ’16, who plays the bride around whom the story revolves. “We feel like we’re honoring him.”
This is the first production that Anderson and Bond have co-directed. Dramaturg Nick Graver ’16 helped provide historical and theoretical materials for the cast and re-create García Lorca’s world in the script.
• Friday–Saturday, April 10–11, and Thursday–Saturday, April 16–18, 8 p.m.; Sunday, April 12 and 19, 2 p.m. Bernhard Theater. $12 general admission; $8 students, Skidmore community, and senior citizens.
