UGA women strike a serious note in play

Por: AshLo | |

By Ashley Speagle
Old story discusses current issues
A stirring, diverse range of female characters talked about love, body issues, sexuality, and freedom in “The House of Bernarda Alba.”

Students of the University of Georgia’s Department of Theatre and Film Studies delivered an honest message about these issues through Federico Garcia Lorca’s beautiful play.

The play, about two hours in length, ran March 25-29 at The Chapel on North Campus. Lorca’s play, from the early 1900s, shows how a family copes under tight constrictions in repressive Spain after the death of Bernarda’s husband.

The play opens right after his funeral, and Bernarda declares to her children that no one will leave the house and must continue to morn in black, although several of them wish to be free and love the men they want to be with.

Junior Marisa Skolky, an English major, composed the entire score, accompanying the dramatic opening with lyrics from Missy Higgins’s “Where I stood.”

The song, about finding female identity apart from a man, set the play’s tone alongside the choreography.

The actresses slowly entered the theater under soft, low lighting and abruptly collapsed to the ground, a reoccurring symbolic action in the play, representing society’s oppressive hand keeping the women down.

The all-female cast portrays the characters using minimal props, settings, effects, and space.

Although the women tend to the dialogue with care, they could have applied the same consideration to the props in their hands. According to the characters, the house was hot and humid, but the black lace fans played as an accessory to the sparse scenery rather than a tool to help depict the setting.

The actresses seemed oblivious at times to the emptiness in their body language, which should complement the dialogue in articulating the mood. They often hung their arms at the sides of their rigid bodies, at odds with the intense, emotional conversations.

However, with only a small stage, the cast efficiently used the entire theater, running through isles and along the stage.

Lacking ample effects, an extra cast of black-clad women stood in the upper balconies creating sounds of stallions stomping, dogs barking and villagers whispering.

These women helped create a very beautiful moment, ringing bells and floating petals to the audience seated below when the characters listened to men returning to harvest.

Skolky’s backstage voice accompanied the scene, with a hint of quick Spanish strumming to her guitar. Skolky’s light, feminine voice and bubbly, acoustic songs reminded me of Lisa Loeb and helped mold the serious story into something for a younger, college generation, like an MTV adaptation of the play.

Although the casts’ youth made it difficult to envision aged, weathered women (this is where makeup and hair could help), there were very strong characters portrayed by some in the cast.

Graduate student Shana Youngblood, earning her Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Performance and playing Bernarda Alba, controlled the stage with an angry and loud presence, commanding attention with every thud of her cane.

Her servant and opposite in many scenes, Poncia, played by Junior Antonia McCain, a Theatre and Advertising major, drove the play with an experienced presence, interacting with other actresses like a pro. Other actresses peaked in performance when dueling with her persuasive skills.

The play itself was an excellent choice for the Theater department’s repertoire of performances this season due to its thematic topics.

Director Kristin Kundert-Gibbs, and assistant professor in the department, said in the program that the themes of repression, for any group, are still very relevant today.

“The ideas of repression and constraint were highly personal to Lorca. He was a homosexual and spent much of his life having to deny and hide his sexual orientation,” she said. “Many scholars believe that one of the key reasons Lorca was killed was his homosexuality.”

She added that the idea of freedom, like artistic freedom, is especially relevant to the University currently as people reach to squeeze out some arts and humanities classes in the wake of budget constraints. The cast successfully relayed this message through this outstanding story.

I laughed along with the audience at the right places, I felt the distress of the characters, and I rolled around the larger ideas in my head hours after it all ended.

Considering the production restraints on the play itself, because it did not have a budget according to “The Red and Black,” I was impressed with what many of the talented cast accomplished.