Lorca, and Other Stars

Last night I went to see a play in a beautiful theatre. A tragedy called Bodas de Sangre, a play that I was already very familiar with (the English translation anyway) by Frederico Garcia Lorca. Originally it premiered in Madrid in 1933, and although it was not anywhere near being one of Lorca’s favorite, it remains one of his most well-known and successful plays.

Basic plot summary: A young couple is engaged, the groom’s mother is kind of a wreck because all the other men in the family have been violently killed, the bride has been engaged before to a man named Leonardo (the only character who gets a name) who is now married to someone else and has a son, the wedding happens, during the reception party the bride and Leonardo run away together, they are searched out in the woods and both Leonardo and the groom are killed, leaving his mother terribly grief-stricken and alone, and the bride claiming her virtue is intact and begging to be killed too.

The theatre itself set an excellent atmosphere for the production: An open aire courtyard with a fountain surrounded by two floors of arched walkways. Vines were growing up the sides of the walls and creeping a little bit over wires across the open roof, and when the wind blew all of the leaves rustled a little bit, without fail sending chills down the spines of half the audience.

This particular production took quite a lot of artistic liberty, and while this produced some very interesting effects (including lots of really cool percussion) I felt that a lot of it was just for the sake of being ‘new’ and ‘different’ and didn’t particularly add to the story. Most of the acting was very good, the mother was absolutely outstanding, and the singing was phenomenal across the board. I enjoyed it very much.

I have also been working in the bar a lot more this last two weeks, which has been nice, but still a bit frustrating to get used to not being called in until 11 p.m., therefore thwarting any tentative plans. On Tuesday a friend named Gerard came into the bar- he and I had met when I worked for the Civic Theatre of Allentown in Pennsylvania, and has been traveling with friends around Spain for the summer. It was wonderful to see a familiar face, and not only that, but one of the nicest and most sincere people I have ever known. What a small world!

My only other adventures as of late have both been in the mountains. Last week during the Llorar de Estrellas, Angel, Gusana and I drove up into the Sierras a little bit, just far enough to escape the city lights and watch all of the shooting stars, as well as searching out planets and constellations, and even make up a few of our own. The amount of stars we were able to see was unbelievable!

Again on Monday we found ourselves with an afternoon off and decided to hop on the moto and just drive up. We drove for about an hour and climbed almost all the way to the tippity top of the Sierra Nevadas-past the ski resort- until we weren’t allowed to drive anymore and continued on foot a little. I was shocked to see that there are still a few patches of snow up there, even in this insane heat! On the way back down to Granada we stopped in the coolest bar- my favorite kind. It was very plush; in the middle of nowhere on the side of a cliff overlooking the mountains (the sun happened to be setting when we arrived). There is an indoor bar, which is lovely, but the outside part is incredible- a pool surrounded by spacious white tented-cabana beds (alternating square and round) and modern colored lights juxtaposed with Moroccan lanterns. We lounged in one of these sipping beautiful cocktails and listening to the mix of jazz and house music. Marvelous!

SABES QUE…
The Irish bar that I am working in was the first of many Irish bars to be found in Granada. It opened in 1994.