Opportunity

A few days ago, I entered a poetry contest about honoring those who serve others. I just received an email that I am a finalist for the competition, so I am invited to perform my poem at the ceremony on Monday. I am really excited because this going to be a great opportunity for me to experience theatre in the making. Performing my poem will be just like acting in a theatrical production, so I am really excited to see how it goes!

Letter to Lorca

Finally, although Lorca is dead, we wrote a letter to him about our reaction to the text. This was perhaps the most interesting aspect of the project because it allowed me to pretend I was talking to the author. Usually readers can't share their feelings of a work with the author, so it was fun to be honest and pretend that I could.

Dear Señor Lorca,

I really liked reading your play Blood Wedding. I thought the lullaby scene was especially interesting. The first time I read it I was extremely confused. I had absolutely no idea what it meant. However, I read it a second time, and it began to make some sense. Then, reading it the third time I had an epiphany. I realized how brilliant it was. Perhaps you would find my interpretation incorrect, for I read the perspective of another director who had a completely different take on it. Yet, I thought my interpretation had some merit. In this scene, I observed that you set the scene of the room as pink. I found this to be very interesting because the seemingly cheerful pink proves a juxtaposition to the actually depressing nature of the lullaby. I also found it ironic that you decided to make the scene be a lullaby being sung to a child, when the actual meaning of the lullaby is actually quite dark. In addition, I noticed that you switched the lines of the wife and mother-in-law from the first to the second part. I thought this was effective because then the audience could see that the roles of the characters were changing as the well-being of the child was changing. I would like to congratulate for this scene. You had some very effective lines that really enhanced the scene. For example, you used this to employ the symbol of the horse for the first time. I although I interpreted the horse as death in this scene, others find it to be symbolic of passion. However, I think it is also important to note that it is the horse that carries Leonardo to his death. He and the bride escape on the horse, and that is the reason he dies. So bravo there! It’s brilliant foreshadowing that I only realized after I had finished the play. I love in literature when the author has foreshadowing earlier in the work that readers don’t even realize until the work has ended. I congratulate you on being able to use that without actually giving away the outcome of the play. Also, I applaud your ability to tie the symbol of water into this scene. They say blood is thicker than water, and this scene showed that idea. The stallion wouldn’t drink the water because it was bleeding. Usually when people are sick, they are supposed to drink a lot of water. But when they die, they cannot drink anymore water, so that was another aspect of the scene that was very well portrayed. Although this scene is fantastic, it also raises some problems for me. As I previously stated, I find the horse to represent death in this scene. However, in other parts of the play it represents passion. Is this to say that passion leads to death? I think that issue needs to be cleared up more. Also, this scene seems particularly depressing because the wife is losing her only child, and later in the play Leonardo dies, so it seems to say that death leaves her all alone. However, on the way to the wedding, the wife reveals that she is pregnant again. Therefore, this scene confuses me because it makes it seem like she is all alone, and although the death of her child is horrendous, she will also have another life coming to bring renewed joy. So the wife’s life is not totally rife with death as it seems. Thank you for taking the time to read my lead (even though  you are dead). I really did enjoy the lullaby scene. In fact, I enjoyed your whole play, it was quite an entertaining read.

            Sincerely,

                        Hali McKinley Lester

Coverting Script to Performance

We also used our interpretation of the script to talk about how that would dictate the performance of the scene:

Converting Script to Performance:

            In this scene, the playwright aims to create a paradoxically creepy atmosphere. Although the room is pink to try to convey an ambiance of happiness and innocence, the song is incredibly depressing. The play is a tragedy, so this is the first glance we get of tragedy. Although the mother has lost her husband and son, that tragedy is not felt so strongly by the audience. Instead this scene foreshadows the inevitable sadness. I think the horse represents death, so the imminent death of Leonardo and his wife’s child symbolizes the death of their relationship. The child is the result of their relationship. In fact, it seems as if the child is the only tether holding the couple together. Therefore, when his life is taken, the bond between Leonardo and his wife is severed. While the mother-in-law and wife are left to mourn and sing their lament, Leonardo escapes the death by riding away on his horse.

            Lorca uses this scene as an antithesis to the rest of the play. The play centers around the wedding of the bride and bridegroom, and then the running away of the bride and Leonardo. This scene shows that Leonardo has this sad life that he is escaping from. It also shows the struggles of his wife. Not only does she have to do deal with what may be the death of her child, but then her husband causes a great scandal by running off with another woman.

            As a director of this play my aim would be to present a paradoxically gloomy atmosphere. The entire room would be pink and the “sun” would be shining into the room, ,as if they are trying to make the space cheerful in the hopes of warding the illness of the child. However, all of the characters would be dressed in black, and the child would have a black lace blanket draped over him. The actors for the wife and mother-in-law would sing their lines in eerie, operatic voices. They would also make creepy movements, such as awkward hand movements and frightful caresses of the child’s face. After Leonardo leaves, the atmosphere would become even more depressing, and the child’s condition would worsen. Throughout the lullaby scene, the wife and mother-in-law would both being trying to get the child to drink water. They would also cradle him protectively, as if trying to guard him against the disease, although they would actually be helpless. This would be a very difficult scene to direct because it would have to be sufficiently creepy and sad. There would need to be an ambiance of loss, and when the person comes in to take away the child’s body, the women would fall to the floor weeping. The scene would end with them lying on the floor, crying. I took a very different perspective on this scene, but I feel as if it would be an effective representation of the lullaby scene.

Actioning the Text

We also needed to include actions that the actors would perform along with certain lines in the text:

Actions to Accompany Text:

When the mother-in-law sings the part of the lullaby where she says “Sleep, my rose, the stallion is crying,” a recording of a baby whimpering should play.

When the mother in law says, “Wait, close the window” the wife should actually close it because there would be “wind” blowing in through it, moving the pink curtains.

When the mother-in-law says, “Don’t come here! Don’t enter!” she should cross herself and the child, as if trying to protect themselves from death.

After Leonardo leaves, the wife and the mother-in-law switch the lines they said in the previous part of the lullaby. So when the wife says “Don’t come here! Don’t enter!” she should fall over the body of her child in the cradle, as if trying to protect the child.

When the wife finally says, “My child is resting,” someone should come in and take away the limp body of the child, although the wife tries to still hold onto her child.

Comparison Statement to Buch Interview

We read an interview by a director who often produces Lorca's plays. He talked about his interpretation of the lullaby scene, and I compared that to my findings:

I did not see the scene in the same way as Buch. I would definitely still have the child present. Although it seems to be a sort of nightmare, the child is a part of that nightmare, so I would have it on stage. Buch said that the horse represents passion, but in this scene I felt as if it was a war horse representing death. It just doesn’t make sense to me to have the horse represent passion in this scene. Rather, I think it is the mother-in-law and wife’s lament of the child’s illness that eventually leads to his death. Perhaps it is a nightmare. Perhaps they are just imagining that the child is dying, but that make it all the more haunting. In this case, I apply the statement to each his own. I don’t think Buch’s interpretation is bad; I just would direct the scene differently.

Lullaby Scene

In Blood Wedding, there is a scene that seems a little strange to the plot of the play: the lullaby scene, in which Leonardo's wife and mother are singing a creepy lullaby to Leonardo and his wife's child. We did a project about the lullaby scene. Mrs. Burke asked us to pretend that we were directing the scene. How would we interpret it? How would the script influence the performance? In the subsequent posts, I will include my findings and interpretations.
This was a very difficult project for me because I have never really thought about directing before. I've always loved acting, so that was one of the main reasons I took this course. I certainly didn't expect to have assignments where I would need to think about the directing aspects of a production as well. So with this project, I was really nervous. I definitely struggle a lot because there were some things that I didn't even think about. For example, when we shared our findings with the rest of the class, my classmate Sam talked about his lighting choices for the scene. I'd never even thought of that before; I'm not used to thinking about lighting because I've always taken that for granted in productions. But looking back, I think about how there were so many lights at the set of Sweeney Todd at Penn State, so lighting is obviously something I need to consider. I thought this project was a good learning experience for me because it made me step out of my comfort zone, and as a result, I learned a lot more about the world of theatre. I'm excited for another experience of thinking about directing because I think I'll learn more each time and maybe get more comfortable with the aspects of directing.

New PPP

We have our new PPP assigned, and it is due February 1st! I chose the stimuli of "Teachings of the Seven Grandfathers." This is the teachings of a Native American people in how they should treat people in life. I chose this because I have always been fascinated with Native American culture. My great-grandmother is believed to be half Native American, but my grandmother refuses to talk about it, so we'll never know. Therefore, I've always wanted to learn more about my possible heritage, hence my interest in this topic. I'm really excited to get started. My plan is to write a play centering around these teachings. Each scene will feature one of the seven teachings, which are being taught to a young girl by her old grandfather. He wants her to appreciate their heritage more, while she longs to be a normal American kid. But eventually she realizes that the values her grandfather wants to instill in her are a good thing to learn.