Danielle Hind
Theatre Studies
“As a director, discuss how you would stage the following extract from ‘Blood Wedding’ in order to bring out your interpretation of it for an audience.”
I have chosen to keep my adaption of Blood Wedding in early 20th century Spain because I feel that this will allow my production to display all the strong themes that are highlighted throughout the play. The main themes which I am going to include throughout the duration of the play will be: love, death, conformity/non-conformity, tragedy and blame. My acting style will be naturalistic because I think by doing this I will be able to create the suspense that Lorca intends, also it will allow my audience to build relationships with each character, giving them the opportunity to make their own decisions about how they feel about the characters. My staging choice will be a Proscenium arch because by doing this I will be able to create a big, elaborate set to ensure that the audience are fully aware of the scenery changes. As well as this I want my audience to be able to see what is going on all the time, by using this staging layout it will allow me to do so. My setting will be quite surreal and not really follow what people will expect. One of Lorca’s inspirations for the play was the work of Salvador Dali and Picasso, who were both surrealist and cubist artists. I am going to use ‘surrealist style’, block coloured props and set design, as this will reference to Picasso’s tonal qualities, this will help the audience to understand the mood and tone of the scene’s, this will also be accompanied by lighting to ensure the correct feel is created. Their inspiration’s to the play are strongly are strongly shown towards the end of the play, when characters such as the moon are introduced.
Throughout Act Three, Scene Two, Lorca prolongs the suspense about what has just happened to the Bride, the Bridegroom and Leonardo. He does this by focusing on the little girls and gradually starts providing the audience with information, through the townspeople who pass. Rather than portraying the murders first hand, Lorca want the readers and audience not to focus on the violence, but to instead focus on the devastation these deaths have had on the people in the community. On of the most important things which I am going to show is the lack of privacy in which the Mother, the Wife and the Bride have throughout the scene.
The extract begins with a neighbour entering during a heated argument between the Mother and the Bride. This happened three times throughout the extract to highlight the invasion of the privacy which Lorca intends to imply. The setting of the room will imply the intended emotions, in which I want my audience to feel throughout the ending of the play. Lorca wrote that the room will be all white, and I am going to follow this direction because by using the white to wash out all the colour it will create the idea of emptiness that the present characters will be feeling. Also to contrast the white the present characters, apart from the Bride, will be wearing black, traditionally linked with death, the Bride will remain in her blood splashed wedding dress to show the intended irony. The actor playing the Mother will be a s short, helpless looking lady, I would want my actor to look like this in order to emphasise her personality, as throughout the play she is shown to be very angry yet helpless. I would want my Bride to be tall, beautiful and dark haired and the Wife to be the complete opposite, so short and blonde, I would do this so it would create a clear contrast between the two. There will be very minimal props and setting in this scene to reinforce the emptiness of the characters, a table and four chairs will be present at downstage left, where the neighbours will sit throughout the scene.
The mother's first line of the extract is "She isn't to blame! Nor me! Who is then?" , Lorca wrote that whilst saying this she appears to be being sarcastic, I would want my actor to turn her back on the Bride, walking towards down stage right facing the audience, in order for the audience to see her facial expression, which will resemble her sarcasm. Her body language will imply her sarcasm further, I would want my actor to speak the line as she shrugs her shoulders as she saunters over to downstage right. The lighting throughout the opening of the extract will be natural to help emphasise the emptiness of the room.
When the Bride begins to speak, “Be quiet! Be quiet! Take your revenge on me!”, a sudden lighting change will help to highlight her anger, at the moment she begins to shout the lighting will suddenly rise so the attention is brought away from the mother on to the Bride. As she speaks I would want my actor playing the Bride to drop to her knees and put her hands in her hair and clench her fists. On the line “Here I am! See how soft my throat is; less effort for you than cutting a dahlia in your garden!”, as she speaks this line, I would want her to speak with a pitiful tone and open her arms to the Mother whilst kneeling on the floor, to imply the offer to strike her dead there. I would want the audience to feel some sympathy for her at this point, even though she is the one who caused this situation. While the Bride is speaking this lines, I want the actor playing the Mother not to even turn around or acknowledge the Bride, I want her just to face the audience with her arms folded.
On the Mothers next line “What does your honour matter to me? What does your death matter to me? What does anything matter to me?” I want my actor to sharply turn round to face the Bride and throw her arms vigorously towards her in a gesturing manner and to speak in a very loud,harsh tone to show her anger. I want her to stand over the Bride slightly to create levels and the idea of her being more superior to the Bride. But as she reaches the third rhetorical question, I want her to soften her tone and drop to her knees facing the audience, this will resemble her giving up as she has nothing left. “Blessed be the wheat, for my sons lie beneath it.” as the Mother says this line, I want her to run her hands along the floor in front of her to resemble what she is saying about her sons, as she does this I want her to insinuate her crying, so the audience will pity her. I want the audience to feel sorry for all of the characters throughout the extract but the Mother more than any other of the present characters.
As the Bride says “Let me weep with you.” I want her to stand up and edge towards the Mother and put her arm around her to comfort her. However, the Mother reacts by pushing her arm away gently as she says “Weep. But by the door”. I want the Bride to then stand up slowly and make her way to the door at upstage left, turning back to look at the Mother, who doesn’t even lift her head to look at her, then stands by the door facing the mother. The Mother remains on the floor, looking blankly out into the audience.
As the Wife enters from upstage left, where the Bride remains at the door, soft guitar music will begin to play to resemble what the Bride is saying. As she enters the Bride and herself exchange glances but apart from that do not interact with each other at all, this will show the tension between the two. The Wife slowly walks towards downstage as she says “He was a handsome horseman, Now frozen in a heap of snow”, whilst speaking she I want her to keep her head down and speaks in a soft, depressive tone to relate to how she is feeling. “Now the dark moss of the night, Form a crown upon his brow” while she is saying this line the lighting will become very dim to represent the depressing atmosphere that is being created. The music will end when the Little Girl begins to speak.
When the Little Girl enters saying “They are bringing them now.”, she remains at the door whilst speaking, the lighting the returns to natural lighting, after the Mother and Wife have finished speaking. I’m not going to have the bodies of the Bridegroom and Leonardo on stage, I’m going to have the shadows of the bodies behind a gores tab at the back of the stage to create a slightly disturbing atmosphere.
The Mother’s final poem for her son is unlike any other poem in the play, it features violent imagery, this suggests she has stopped following what everyone expects her to say and do and returns back to her original opinions from earlier in the play. “With a small knife, That barely fits the hand, But that slides in clean, Through startled flesh”. As the Mother says this line I want her to be central stage and have the Bride and the left side and the Wife at the right, all facing forward. The lighting will be a red/orange colour to resemble death and love which are the two strongest themes towards the ending of the play. When the Mother speaks she speaks with a harsh tone at first but slowly softens her tone towards the end of the poem.
“So that on a day appointed, between two and three, With this knife, Two men are left stiff, And lips turned yellow.” while the Bride is saying her final line the soft guitar music slowly fades back in to soften the atmosphere. As she speaks all the women stand facing forward staring to the audience, this will hopefully make the audience feel slightly uncomfortable.
“Where trembles enmeshed, The dark root of a scream.” As the Mother says her final lines, she falls to her knees, puts her head in her hands and all the characters which are on stage turn by their left shoulder and walk off to upstage left, leaving the Mother alone on stage. This will create the final idea that the Mother is now totally alone, the shadows of the Bridegroom and Leonardo will remain on stage until the lights slowly fade to black.
In conclusion, the overall themes which I want to put across throughout this scene is betrayal of the Bride to the bridegroom and the mother, love which the Bride had for Leonardo and the Mother for her son. Also I want my audience to feel sorry for the women at some point during the scene because they have all suffered some sort of hurt at some point in the play.
