'House of Bernarda Alba' to finish run at John Waldron

The current Bloomington incarnation of Federico Garcia Lorca's final play, "The House of Bernarda Alba," will come to a close this weekend at the John Waldron Arts Center Auditorium. \nBut it will not soon leave the mind of the productions' director, Nasrin Hekmat-Farrokh.\nHekmat-Farrokh, a continuing student seeking a degree in opera directing, has never directed theatre before in Bloomington, although she has directed a few operas, including "Waiting for Godot." \nStill, she has experience, having directed theatre elsewhere, including Ohio, Belgium and Iran. In these latter two locales, she has brought the harrowing psychological terrain of "The House of Bernarda Alba" to life.\nThe play, the last Lorca produced before his brutal killing at the hands of Franco's falangists, details the existences of five young women in black garb, imprisoned by Bernarda Alba (Breshaun Bierne-Joyner). Their only contact with the outside world comes from the sights caught through a barred window and the songs of young men returning from their daily chores.\nHekmat-Farrokh's recurring interest in the Lorca work comes from his interest in all oppressed peoples.\n"(Lorca) was always for the freedom of minorities: Jews, Gypsies, women and homosexuals," she said. "And also at that time there was great poverty in Spain and he was very much against it, the class system and the differences of wealth.\n"The play (is) about the repression of women imprisoned in this house and symbolically the oppression of any society of man."\nAlthough it features such content, "The House of Bernarda Alba" is not a political work in the eyes of Hekmat-Farrokh.\n"The play is not a political play even though it's about freedom because he is such a great dramatist that he brings it about in a dramatic way because there is no propaganda ... ," she said.\nShe finds that this Lorca work is closer to another of his passions, poetry.\n"He uses poetry in a dramatic way," she said. "His prose has this vein of poetry in it."\nOne of the ways that Hekmat-Farrokh emphasizes the work's poetry is through music. \nAtanas Tzvetkov, a doctoral student, provides a stringed outlet for the women's woes. Dennis Meckler, a music school graduate, also composed music specifically for the play's opening nightmare sequence, a sequence that Hekmat-Farrokh added to reveal the future transformation of Adela (senior Heather Winter). Dancers move about in this dream sequence as well, furthering the poetic construct. \nThe poetic "The House of Bernarda Alba" is very similar to Samuel Beckett's absurdist "Waiting for Godot" in the eyes of Hekmat-Farrokh. "The women in this house are repressed and they have this ridiculous life," Hekmat-Farrokh said. "It's like 'Waiting for Godot' -- that in spite of their life, these hobos are standing at the road waiting for someone to come and solve their problems. The problem is that there seems to be no way to solve it."\nDespite the horror of their existence, the women carry on to the best of their abilities.\n"The women in this house are repressed and they have this ridiculous life, but we see that in spite of it, they try to make themselves happy," she said. "They do things to pass this boredom. These women, even though they are brought to death and so on, they try to laugh and talk and bring certain life into it. At least this is the way I interpret it." \n"The House of Bernarda Alba" runs through Sunday at the Auditorium of the John Waldron Arts Center, 122 S. Walnut St. General admission is $10, $8 for students and senior citizens. Curtain is 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.