Performances+and+Staging

**Speaking of Lorca: An Interview with René Buch** [|**[1**]]  René Buch, the Artistic Director of Repertorio Español since its inception, has had extensive experience in directing Lorca. To be more precise, he has directed five productions of //Blood Wedding// (four of them at Repertorio), four of //The House of Bernarda// //Alba //(three at Repertorio), three versions of //Yerma//, plus //Don Perlimplín and Doña Rosita// //the Spinster //and Lorca's challenging late play, //The Audience (El publico)//.  In 1999, Buch finished a new production of //Bernarda Alba// that completed another cycle of directing the three great rural tragedies: //Bernarda, Blood Wedding, and Yerma.// In 2000, Repertorio Español plans to greet the new millennium by reviving all three recent productions and //The Audience// to run in repertory.  In this gathering of interview material from the 1990s, Buch reflects on his experience and his recent productions.   Q: Your theme of the repressed instinctual life and its revenge-does that recur in Lorca's <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> other tragedies? <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> A: Yes. It's the point in //Bernarda Alba//, where Adela accepts her fate. She wants her sexual life fulfilled, and the tragedy in this case is that she does it. But Bernarda is the tragic figure because she has done everything, and everything that she's done is wrong. At the end, I think she's destroyed by the death of Adela. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> Q: In your 1999 production, is the fiercely dominating mother still the tragic heroine? <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> A: I haven't changed my point of view. She's like a communist who believes in the communist party, and by following instructions she's destroyed her family. When she comes to cry "Silencio" at the end of the play, she's aware of her tragedy and her destruction. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> I don't like Bernarda to be a monster all the time. I see her as a victim. They're all victims of the society, the "black" Spain, the people who don't give in to sexuality. Puritanism is the greatest horror. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> Q: Certainly different actresses create difference versions of this interpretation. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> A: This one is more simple, far more intense. Because I don't have Ofelia González [who acted the lead for many years], but a new Bernarda, an actress from Cuba. She's young and very pretty and a powerful actress. So I have to change my approach. This woman is <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> younger, more human, less the monster. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> Q: What about the progress of your imagery in producing //Bernarda Alba//? <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> A: The first time we did //Bernarda//, we had enormously thick styrofoam walls and a roof of styrofoam, with holes for doors. People would come through the doors as if they were rats coming from holes. But for the second one we just used a wall of black mesh that made a corner. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> Q: Is the new //Bernarda Alba// of 1999 another "black" production like //Blood Wedding// and //<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Yerma //<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">, another stark and spare production that highlights the poetry? <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> A: It sure is. The scene is a labyrinth of things hanging-all black. It's like walls made of hanging things-ladders, etc.-and it covers the whole stage. Later, when the daughters are sewing, the material the girls sew covers the whole stage, too. There's no sitting down except in the third act, when they are supposed to be eating, but they're not eating, they're sitting on black cubes. It's far more abstract, it's less Spanish. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> Q: Do you mean the characters and themes seem more universal? <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';"> A: Yes. The Moral Majority in this country has given me a hint that this could take place anywhere.

[|[1]]  <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">www.repertorio.org/education/pdfs/**lorca**.pdf