MIEDO ESCÉNICO
FEDERICO
GARCÍA
LORCA
y first contact with Lorca's work was in 2011, at the age of 12, when I was part of a student production of La casa de Bernarda Alba, and I played the supporting role of Amelia, one of Bernarda's daughters. Two years later, I had the opportunity to learn about the stories of Bodas de Sangre and Doña Rosita la Soltera, as part of my training as a classical theatre actress. In 2013, also as a student, I played the role of the Old Lady in a Yerma production. That same year, I became part of the main cast of the professional production of La casa de Bernarda Alba, this time in the role of Adela, Bernarda's youngest daughter. This production continues to perform on stage nowadays; in fact, the last performance took place last January. Besides, it was selected by the University of Oxford to illustrate one of its books about this Lorca's play.
Lorca's works have had a huge influence on my training as an actress, but also on my relationship with the arts and culture. This author has been a reference for me and his plays have formed a very important part of my life, so it is reasonable that he has become one of my theater authors par excellence. It is true that my dream had always been to adapt La casa de Bernarda Alba to cinema, as for me this is the most special play of his repertoire. However, it is true that I consider essential to show the audience those works that have not yet been represented by the audiovisual industry.
M
Lorca is undoubtedly one of the most important authors of Spanish theater. Many of his works are studied in high school; however, not all students have the enough attachment and passion for theater or culture to enjoy them at all. For this reason, it gives me a great illusion to be able, through an entertaining and accessible format such as TV series, to transfer his plays to the youngest, so that they do not see this art as an obligation imposed on them from school, but as a form of fun and entertainment, which at the same time constitutes a valuable source of learning for them.
POETA EN NUEVA YORK
TV Series Project
What is it about?
Poeta en Nueva York, published four years after his death, is a poetry book that Lorca wrote between 1929 and 1930, during his stay at Columbia University in New York and his subsequent trip to Cuba. In order to hold a series of conferences, Lorca left Spain in June 29. However, a previous sentimental failure and, above all, the internal conflict he suffered because of his homosexuality, aspects that had plunged him into a deep depression, were also important reasons for him to want to escape his country for a while. This work of Lorca is considered by its transcendentalism one of the most outstanding poetic works of our art and represents a strong criticism and complaint against the injustice and discrimination of its time.
This poetry book was for Lorca a cry of horror, a denunciation against injustice and discrimination, against the dehumanization of modern society and the alienation of the human being, while at the same time it was a calling for a new human dimension where freedom and justice, love and beauty predominated.
Adaptation into a TV series
The project of adaptation of this book into a TV series is based on the idea of reflecting Lorca's poems in a series of self-conclusive episodes that tell the experiences of a young writer of fictional novels of the 21st century, just one hundred years after Lorca's experience in New York. This young writer, more or less like Lorca, travels to this american city to attend a creative writing seminar for new authors at Columbia University, and to escape from an existential and artistic blockade that he was suffering in his native Spain. The young writer of the series will become a reflection of Lorca himself, with the same personality and internal conflicts. This young man, through his experiences in New York and the characters he meets, will show how many of the aspects that the author from Granada criticized in his poetry book, are still in force in one way or another a century later, such as the dehumanization of society, the horrors of capitalism or the discrimination of minorities. Just as Lorca lived in that city historical events that marked his way of seeing the society of his time, such as the Wall Street crash, the young writer of the series will also witness many economic and social changes, many of them derived from the global crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This TV series will have some elements of fiction, with the aim of making the product more audiovisual and commercial, as well as to be able to transfer the themes and symbolism of Lorca's poems to the present day. This project fits perfectly with my idea of trying to spread the art and culture provided by theater and literature among young people, especially.
