An audience guide

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY THEATRE PRESENTS...

3

4

6

8

10

12

14

Welcome Letter

The Spanish Poet: Federico García Lorca

Director's Lens: Valerie Williams

Spanish Romani Culture

Exploring the Elements of Yerma

Sounds of Fuente Vaqueros

Further Reading

AUDIENCE GUIDE CURATED BYAlissa Klusky

EDITED BYDeAnna Toten Beard

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROME Carnell, Caroline Munsell, Valerie Williams

PRODUCED BY

I N D E X

2

POST SHOW DISCUSSIONFriday, February 21Join us for a Post Show Discussion with Yerma Director Valerie Williams and Baylor Professor of Spanish Dr. Paul Larson!

POST SHOW DISCUSSION

3

W e l c o m e

Alissa Klusky is a senior BFA Theatre Performance major at Baylor University. She has performed in the Baylor productions: Crazy for You, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, Godspell, Peter and the Starcatcher, and Matilda: The Musical. Her dramaturgical credits include: Cobwebs by Kevin Coval (staged reading, Access Theatre NYC), A Woman by Chris Cragin-Day (staged reading, Baylor Theatre), Monument, or Four Sisters; A Sloth Play by Sam Chanse (Assistant Dramaturg, Ojai Playwrights Conference). In the summer of 2018, she was a Literary Intern at Samuel French and the following summer she was a Production Assistant at Clubbed Thumb.

It is my pleasure to welcome you to Baylor Theatre's 2019-2020 season and our production of Yerma by Federico García Lorca. Our program nurtures a close-knit community of intellectually curious and artistically daring students whose work will be displayed on our stage tonight. When you visit Baylor Theatre, you can expect to see work grounded with the thoughtful examination of history and renewed by urgent questions of today.

As you peruse the following Audience Guide, I invite you to engage your curiosity surrounding the world of Yerma. You'll find fascinating background on the playwright, Federico García Lorca, and the possible muse behind the play's main character. You'll read important cultural context surrounding the Romani people. Take a peek inside the different elements mentioned throughout the play! Special care was taken to highlight the work of our students who are afforded the opportunity at Baylor to design at an undergraduate level. You’ll learn more about them in special behind-the-scenes interviews. And you’ll read about the ideas and experiences that have kindled the imagination of Yerma’s director, graduate student Valerie Williams.

The story of this play has inspired everyone on the artistic team. The characters in Yerma struggle with the conflict of deep internal and external desires. Yerma believes her life will not be complete until she has a child, and the world around her echoes this idea. But she is faced with choices in the play that ask her to confront the question:

IswhatIwantworthsacrificingmyhonor?

Though most of us do not inhabit villages like Yerma's where we are being watched intimately and constantly by our neighbors, we still live in communities where our social behavior is clocked by others. We face the constant pressure to be perfect on social media. We must decide whether or not to risk confronting a family member at the holiday dinner table. We feel pressure from culture or religion to dress, speak, or act in a specific way. The choice between our honor and our deep, personal desire is still a prevalent human struggle. I invite you to embrace and wrestle with this conflict over the course of your time watching and reflecting on Yerma.

And once again, welcome!

Federico García Lorca was born to be an artist. Depictions of his childhood in the striking countryside of Fuente Vaqueros, Spain show him with a drive for artistic fulfillment that is sustained throughout his entire career. As a child, he was known for putting on puppet theatre in the village with cardboard cutouts and performing for his neighbors. His inquisitive love of nature and the arts stretched over multiple genres leading him to be regarded not only as a poet and a playwright, but also a musician, painter, and director. Lorca wrote passionately and prolifically about whatever he found fascinating.

Throughout his lifetime, Lorca had great success in the realm of poetry and theatre. He often wrote stories set in the Spanish countryside that focused on groups of people who were marginalized by the machismo dominated culture of Spain in the early 20th century. Such works include Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads), a collection of poems about what it means to live on the outskirts of society and struggle against the governing philosophy; and The House of Bernarda Alba, a play about a group of women struggling between a duty to mourn their father and desire to be free.

“When he came to our place…we used to gather a whole flock of children and he would bring out a chair, and take a

handkerchief and put it on his head like a priest's beret, and then he preached to us. And we had to cry, otherwise he

didn’t like it. We had to cry.”–Clotilde García, his cousin

T H E S PA N I S H P O E T : F E D E R I C O G A R C Í A L O R C A

Title Unknown by Federico García Lorca

Leonada Costume by Federico García Lorca

4

At the age of 38, Lorca was arrested by the Nationalist Militia on the charge that he was a socialist and engaging in homosexual and abnormal practices. A week after his arrest he was shot alongside several other prisoners. His body was buried in a mass grave. After his death, his work was deemed dangerous and censored by the government until 1953. In the years since, a memorial has been built at the site where he was believed to have died, and his plays have had hundreds of modern day performances. Lorca's position as a giant of Spanish literature, is now secure.

Lorca was interested in exploring the tension of impossible desire. The conflict between what one should do or be and what one deeply desires is the source of much anguish in Lorca's work. Lorca himself was struggling with having to conceal his sexuality. Not only was Lorca a gay man in the midst of a culture that heralded heterosexual marriage and masculinity, but he was also living in a time of political turmoil. Though Lorca himself was not particularly active politcally, his writing, as described by loyalist Roman Luis Alonso, was a kind of protest of its own.

“He’s done more damage with a pen than others have with a

pistol.” –RomanLuisAlonso

Elegy Elegy a poem by Frederico García Lorca, age 20

From a very young age, Lorca was interested in the plight of women who yearn for children yet seem unable to have them. This is perhaps connected to his fascination with his father’s first wife, Matilde Palacios. Matilde and Federico (the poet's namesake) married at the ripe age of 20. Not long into their marriage, it was discovered that Matilde was unable to bear children. Matilde and Federico were married for fourteen years, before she suddenly passed away from an ‘intestinal obstruction’ that was likely related to her gynecological problems. Lorca is often quoted as saying that he was obsessed with the photographs of “that other woman who could have been my mother."

In your white handsYou bear the thread of your illusions,Dead forever, and in your soulA passion hungry for kisses of fireAnd a love of motherhood that dreams far-offDreams of cradles in quiet places,Weaving with your lips the blue of lullaby.

Music and Mask by Federico García Lorca

5

I became aware of Lorca's work in undergrad and was fortunate to see a production of The House of Bernarda Alba in London. While at Baylor, I read and fell in love with Blood Wedding. Yerma is extremely relevant to our world now because it asks us to consider how we define womanhood. Lorca has great insight into oppressed people, in this case women, and exposes the difficulties of living in a world where gender roles are strictly and narrowly defined. Yerma feels a great desire and duty to have children. The fact that she has not become pregnant after two years of marriage is a primary source of conflict between Yerma and her husband. Throughout the play, Yerma defies her husband's wishes for her to remain at home. She seeks out advice about pregnancy from other women, defying the rules against discussing sex outside of familial relationships. Obviously, Yerma's journey is the heart of the play, but the Washerwomen really drew me in. The six Washerwomen meet at the river to do laundry and gossip, which is a fine art in the villages of Spain. Their friendship includes laughter, fights, and song in a way that many people will find relatable.

The experience really brought home the passion for Lorca that exists in Spain and the cultural traditions from the play which still exist. When I arrived and mentioned Lorca to the customs agent, his face and those of his co-workers lit up; everyone loved Lorca. I went to his birthplace, Fuente Vaqueros, to see his first home and get a feel for life in a small Spanish town, like the setting of Yerma. I spent three hours having dinner and talking with my Airbnb renter. She was originally from Northern Spain where she grew up in a very matriarchal region. She came to southern Spain where she raised her children and still works as a nurse. From her I learned that in the small towns particularly, there are still places where women do and do not "belong." After 18 years of living there, she had made friends but was still an outcast because she traveled by herself, went to cafes where women were excluded, and raised her children by herself. She described women in classes she taught who could not read or write; there was little expectation that women would need those skills. Her neighbors often called upon her when they needed to understand legal or government documents because they could not read and write well. She had earned nicknames in the town including "Hippie," the "Blonde Communist," and "Witch."

What initially drew you to directing Yerma? How did you first encounter Lorca's work?

I know you had the chance to travel to Spain this summer to see some of the places that the play references and for your own research. What did your travels in Spain illuminate for you?

D I R E C T O R ' S L E N S :VA L E R I E W I L L I A M S

Walking through the village of 4,400 people, I felt the community's gaze on me both because I was a stranger and a wom-an alone. It probably did not help that I would often be out at the hottest times of the day when stores were closed and most people were in their homes for siesta. The landscape surrounding the city was breathtaking. There were hills filled with olive groves, forests of cypress trees, and the Sierra Nevada mountains. As I explored the city limits, I was drawn to a herd of sheep by the dinging of the bells on their collars. They were huddled in the shade, beside the Genil River, which was basically a stream at the time due to August being the hottest time of year-- it was a perfect Yerma moment which I recorded and am a little obsessed with.

6

Valerie Williams is a third-year graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts in Directing program at Baylor University where she directed Dead Accounts by Theresa Rebeck in June 2018. Before that Valerie was a company member with Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, Minnesota, serving as Education Director and Grants Writer. For nine years she led the Winona Senior High School drama program as director and designer. Previously, Valerie worked as an AEA stage manager with Illusion and Mixed Blood theatres in Minneapolis, MN, and with Theatre du Mississippi in Winona, MN. Valerie is an Associate Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

Some of the most notable things about Lorca's writing are the moments of poetic suspension, where the play moves into a non-realistic, poetic space. How did you approach these moments as a director? What poetic moments in the play speak to you?

Lorca's progression through the three plays that make up his rural trilogy is interesting. Blood Wedding was the first of the three plays Lorca wrote; it contains the most surrealist moments of the three. He wrote Yerma in 1934 before going on to The House of Bernarda Alba, which is the closest to realism. He is quoted as saying he wanted to write realism in this final play before his death. Yerma falls in the middle of these two; it begins with a vision in Yerma's dreams of a shepherd bringing her a child. After this first moment of Yerma lost inside her own mind, there are many moments where she daydreams. The more I studied the play, the more I saw that, as a reader, I was viewing the world through Yerma's eyes; the world of the play is not real, it is distorted by how Yerma views it. I identified parts of the script that held the potential for surrealist expression and heightened romance then began to work on how to present these moments onstage.

What is relatable to you about Yerma's journey? In short, why this play, now?

With the help of a dynamic design team, our production uses sound, light, music, setting, and movement to express the strongest of Yerma's emotions. The moments when she dreams of what could have been if her life had taken a different path, of the child God seems to have denied her, and of the community's eyes on her. Every aspect is rooted in the culture and traditions of Southern Spain, just as every piece of text Lorca gave us is linked to real people and festivals he encountered while growing up in the small rural villages before his family moved to Granada. Along with surreal moments, Lorca uses the poetic language of the people of Andalusia in dialogue and song. The text is everyday speech with some flourish which enriches the audience's understanding of the story and the characters. The images the dialogue brings to mind is a beautiful landscape of life-giving water and, at times, death and despair. Our goal with the poetic language is to present honest, rural characters whose love of the land inhabits their vocabulary.

Yerma's journey in the play is multi-layered, allowing most people to find her relatable. Our concept of gender and feminism has been evolving, Yerma asks us to consider how we define womanhood. Are you a "real" woman only if you have children? Are you a woman if you forgo childbearing to have a career? Are you a good woman if you decide to be a stay-at-home mom? More couples are using in vitro fertilization to have children, is that due to personal desire or societal pressure? Beyond the question of womanhood, I believe anyone who has had a strong desire and pursued a goal can relate to this story. While it seems impossible that Yerma will become pregnant, she exhausts all possibilities. Many characters tell her she will be happy if she accepts her fate and changes her outlook. Yerma never settles for the status quo. In the play and our own lives we must ask, when is the time to give up on a dream and adjust expectations?

7

In English, “gypsy” is a kind of mythical descriptor for a wandering, artistic soul. Gypsies are at times seen as travelers, as members of tight-knit families, as talented performers, or as vibrant subculture. However, the idea of gypsies also carries a negative context: beggars, thieves, sly and secretive people, or even intruders. In fact, the term “gypped”, which many people use to mean swindled or cheated, originated as an ethnic slur.

In truth, “gypsy” is a word developed to reference an ethnic group more properly called the Romani people. The many stereotypes about them, as with most generalizations about ethnic groups, don’t scratch the surface.

TheRomapeopleoriginatedthousandsofyearsagoinNorthernIndia,notEgypt.ItislikelythataseriesofMusliminvasionsduringtheGhaznavidEmpire,dislocatedthepeopleoutofIndia.TheRomalanguagestillphonetically,grammatically,andlinguisticallyresemblesitsSanskritroots(HindiorRajasthani).Romani began migrating out of the Indian sub-continent a thousand years ago. There is evidence of the ethnic group in England, France, and Spain by the late Renaissance. In Spain, the Romani people were known as Gitanos. The word Gitano itself is an “exonym” – a term that is imposed on an ethnic group by outsiders. This is not unlike the British practice of referring to dark-skinned people as “moors.” Gitano is essentially a shortened version of the Spanish word Egipcio meaning "Egyptian", which is where they were thought to have originated.

S PA N I S H R O M A N I C U LT U R E

8

Amidst persecution, they have retained a rich and colorful culture. The Romani people still claim no home country, and have a history of living nomadic

lifestyles. However, there are large groups of Romani today that do live in established buildings. There is a strong emphasis on family in the Roma

culture, and the passing down of family customs and traditions is valued. For Romani in Spain, flamenco music is also regarded as central to

the culture. Flamenco music, like the Roma lifestyle, is noted for its blending of influences.

In the context of Yerma, the Gitano people exist on the outskirts of the village and are regarded by the rest of their neighbors as a

somewhat mystical minority. They are seen in the play when Yerma makes a pilgrimage to a shrine to pray for a child. This scene is based on an annual

event on October 5th in the village of Moclín. On this day, women journey to pray at a specific church orginated donated by Ferdinand and Isabella, believed to have miraculous powers. It is likely that the Gitano people celebrated this day with much ritual and festival, including rousing music, dance, and spectacle surrounding the prayers for the women to become with child.

Theterm“Roma,"whichisthepreferredwayofreferringtothispeoplegroup,translatesintheRomanilanguageto“humanbeing."

9

10

E X P L O R I N G T H E E L E M E N T S O F Y E R M A

“And if you hear a woman’s voice, it’s the broken voice of water.” -Victor,singing

“Sometimes, when I’m sure that never, never… a wave of fire sweeps up from my feet, and makes everything seem empty.” –Yerma

“The breeze offers dahlias made of the dreaming moon.” –Yerma

“I wish you’d go down to the river and swim, and go up on the roof when the rain is pouring down on our house.” –Yerma,toJuan

“I cannot put up with this con-stant grieving over unreal things. These things made of air. –Juan,toYerma

“What does the mountain want, Shepherd? There are bitter weeds on the hill. What child is killing you? There are sharp thorns on the hill.” –Victor,singing

L a n d F i r e

Ai r W a t e r

11

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

E Carnell is a Junior BFA Design a n d Te c h n o l o g y m a j o r f r o m League City, Texas. They were the Technical Director for Antigone, Assistant Scenic Designer for Peter and the Starcatcher, and Assistant Stage Manager for Ice Glen.

YERMA SET DESIGNER

Yerma Set Rendering by E Carnell

When you first start to design a project, what is your initial process for starting to imagine the set? How do you start to mine the play for ideas?

My initial process always starts with the script. I read it a couple of times through and when I start to feel comfortable with the play I begin to break it down with a scene breakdown, research, and a lot of very rough sketches. I tend to see bits and pieces of ideas in my head as I read the play, so it is very important to me that I get those down on paper as soon as possible.

The land is such a big character in this play; in both Lorca's beautiful descriptions and how the characters interact with it. How did the relationship to land in the play influence your process designing the set?

The relationship to the land in this play is so very essential to the life of the show, so it was important that I put a spotlight on that. The land had a huge influence, and more specifically the water motif that can be seen throughout the show. It was important that I give the actors a lot of that land to play on and interact with so the land became everything.

Yerma Found Object Model by E Carnell

What challenges did you face as a designer when you decided that you wanted to have real water onstage?

The first challenge was getting the okay from the Technical Director, Jordan Rousseau. Once we knew that water onstage was a possibility, it was all about the how. We went through several different renditions of a fountain and then we moved to a river. From there, we needed to figure out what it looked like and how it moved. In the end we came up with the idea that a raked stage was best because it allowed us to create a river without cutting into the actual architecture of the theater.

12

T H E S O U N D S C A P E O F F U E N T E VA Q U E R O S

STUDENT SPOTLIGHTYERMA SOUND DESIGNER

Caroline Munsell is a senior University Scholars Major from Lafayette, Louisiana, studying Theatre and Music Composition. Caroline composed original music for Baylor Theatre’s production of Ice Glen and has arranged for and sound designed several smaller scale projects. Yerma is her first full-scale sound design.

As the Sound Designer, you've been dealing with all of the noises that populate the Spanish village Yerma set. What is your process for identifying those natural sounds and crafting them specifically for the pro-duction?

One of the exciting challenges of sound designing this play was crafting a soundscape that was both aesthetically appropriate and realistic. In order to achieve this, I began by researching the rural environment of Fuente Vaqueros – the Spanish village in which our production is set – and its surrounding areas. Knowing the strength of [Lorca's] fascination and connection to the land, I was determined to portray the sounds of the landscape as accurately as possible.

In my research, I discovered a beautiful album of sounds recorded in a forest near the town of Fuente Vaqueros. The recording artist captured the wildlife of the forest from dawn to darkness, and noting different species of birds, the movement of deer, pollinating bumblebees, etc. and detailing exactly when each creature began to stir. This specificity not only served as inspiration, but provided me with a general timeline of daily bird, insect, and animal sounds. The scenes in Yerma feature several different times of the day, ranging from dawn to dusk, and the specificity of a soundscape can help differentiate these times. For example, afternoons in the village are more lively with scattered birds and sheep, while the evenings and nights are characterized by insects like cicadas.

Early sheep herding in Spanish countryside

13

How did you handle the challenge of how the sound shifts when the play moves into a poetic space?

Throughout the play, Yerma has several visions, fantasies, or “dream-like” experiences. In order to distinguish these more poetic, surreal moments of the play from the realistic moments, I composed several pieces of Musique Concrète. This type of experimental composition utilizes recorded sounds as raw material. Because the themes of fertility and nature are so important to this play, the compositions drew largely from recorded natural sounds, which were then digitally distorted and affected. These sounds were layered atop each other and spatialized to intensify and diversify the experiences of the audience. The compositions served as a window into Yerma’s subconscious and helped heighten the anxiety and emotion surrounding the scenes.

Many of these fantasy moments are distinguished through symbolic, choreographed movements of the actors. The Musique Concrète served as a way to compliment these movements, bringing to life some of the symbols created by the performers. For example, the opening of the show features the use of sheets by the actors. The sheets represent, at different points, water and wind. The Musique Concrète compositions furthered this symbolism by incorporating the sounds of (or sounds suggestive of) water and wind.

vHow did you and composer, Baylor faculty member Guilherme Almeida, work together when figuring out how the sound and the music interact in the play?

The original idea of incorporating Musique Concrète into this production was proposed by our composer, Guilherme Almeida. Guilherme brought this idea to me very early in the design process, suggesting it as a way to sharply contrast his original compositions within the piece. From there, we began to brainstorm collaboratively and develop our concept. We decided that compositions would feature sounds recorded from organic, earthy materials, to support the show’s emphasis on nature. Guilherme created “instruments” from materials including black beans, chia seeds, rice, and sand paper. I then recorded the instruments (and the sounds of additional natural elements like water and branches) and distorted them using different digital workspaces.

While the moments with Musique Concrète compositions do simultaneously feature Guilherme’s original compositions, most of these moments are sung acapella. This lack of instrumentation made space for the experimental sounds to create the accompanying layers.

Antique map of Granada, Spain

Lorca: Living in the Theatre by Gwynne Edwards

14

F U RT H E R R E A D I N G

vInterested in continuing to learn about Lorca and Spain? See below for a list of recommended reading to continue your reading at home!

Lorca's Rural Trilogy: Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba

NPR: Code Switch - Why Being 'Gypped' Hurts the Romani More Than It Hurts You by Janaki Challa

Federico García Lorca Video Documentary

Audience and Authority in the Modernist Theatre of Federico García Lorca by C. Christopher Soufas

Federico García Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson

vClick on the sheep to find links to these resources!

TEDxBocconiU - Romani or Gypsies? by Dijana Pavlovic