Locura

Locura – will be performing the work of Spanish poet and dramatist, Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936).  García Lorca was the best-known of all Spanish poets, and leading member of the 'Generation of 27', which included Pabluo Neruda, Salvador Dali, Luis Cernuda, Jorge Guillen, Pedro Salinas, Rafael Alberti, and others.
 
García Lorca made his debut with LIBRO DE POEMAS (1921), a collection of fable like poems.  In 1922, he found inspiration from the traditions of folk and gypsy music, POEMA DEL CANTE JONDO (1931, Deep Song), and PRIMER ROMANCERO GITANO (1924-1927), and became the poet of Andalusia and its gypsy subculture.

After a short visit to Cuba, García Lorca became the head the traveling theatrical company, La Barraca, which brought classical plays and other dramas to the provinces. After the death of his friend, a bullfighter, García Lorca wrote Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter (1935). It has been regarded by most critics as his greatest poem.

García Lorca's theater rebelled against the realistic theater of the middle class and involved such puppet plays as TÍTERES DE CACHIPORRA (1949) and EL RETABLILLO DE DON CRISTÓBAL (1938).  In 1933 he wrote two surrealistic dramas, EL PÚBLICO, an attack on commercial theater and the entire social order.  Mariana Pineda (1928) was García Lorca's only historical drama. Its central character, a Spanish national heroine, was a historical figure - she was executed for embroidering a revolutionary flag. The play portrays her as a martyr to liberty and love.  The first version of the surrealistic drama EL PÚBLICO (The Audience) dealt with homosexual love, a taboo subject on the Spanish stage for many years.

García Lorca's central themes are love, pride, passion and violent death, which also marked his own life. The Spanish Civil was began in 1936 and García Lorca was seen by the right-wing forces as an enemy. The author hid from the soldiers but he was eventually found. An eyewitness has told that he was taken out of a Civil Government building by guards and Falangists belonging to the 'Black Squad'. García Lorca was shot in Granada on August 19/20 of 1936 without trial. The circumstances of his death are still shrouded in mystery. He was buried in a grave that he had been forced top dig for himself. Accroding to some sources, he had to be finished off by a coup de grâce. One of his assassins later boasted, that he shot "two bullets into his arse for being a queer". Most probably, García Lorca wrote under pressure his last words on a note for a member of the 'Black Squad': "Father, please give this man a donation of 1000 pesetas for the Army." Don Federico, his father, carried the note in his wallet for the following years. He died in voluntary exile in New York.