The House of

Bernarda Alba
By Federico Garcia Lorca
Translation by David Hare

Directed by Lisa Ann Goldsmith

Scenic Design by Karen Glass
Costume Design by Susan ONeill
Lighting Design by Regina Tvaruzek
Sound Design by

Official Study Guide

Compiled by Mari Boyle, Intern
Edited Denise Pullen, Associate Professor of Theatre and
Kellee Van Aken, Program Director
Prepared for the Seton Hill University Theatre and Dance
Program
in conjunction with this production:
November 9 14, 2012

This study guide has been prepared for

teachers and other patrons who attend the
Seton Hill University Theatre and Dance
Program production of The House of Bernarda
Alba, presented November 9 through 14,
2012 at the William Granger Ryan Theatre,
100 Harrison Avenue, Greensburg, PA.

Tickets are available from the Seton Hill

University Theatre and Dance Box Office at
724-552-2929 or setonhilltheatre.com.
For information concerning this production and
future Seton Hill University Theatre and Dance
Program events and productions, please
contact Box Office or Dr. Kellee Van Aken,
Director of the Seton Hill University Theatre
and Dance Program at 724/552- 2934 or
vanaken@setonhill.edu.

Table of Contents
The House of Bernarda Alba

Frederico Garcia Lorca

Ideas and Themes

Lorcas Vision

12

Spanish Civil War

13

Symbols

14

Production History

16

Adaptations

17

Enrichment Activities

18

Works Cited

19

The House of Bernarda Alba

Immediately following the funeral for her husband, Bernarda Alba

announces to her five daughters that they will observe an eight-year
period of mourning in which they may not leave the house. The
young women are devastated.
The three middle sisters, Magdalena, Amelia, and Martirio, begin
discussing the rumor that a handsome young man, Pepe el Romano,
will propose marriage to Angustias, the eldest and wealthiest sister.
Magdalena remarks sadly that Romano is interested in Angustias
only for her money. When Adela (the youngest) hears of Romanos
intentions, she is dismayed.
At the beginning of Act II, Poncia and the sisters (except for Adela)
discuss Angustias impending marriage to Romano and his courtship
at her bedroom window the night before. Although the other sisters
insist that Romano remained outside the house until just before
dawn, Angustias swears that he left her window at 1:30 in the
morning. Later, when Adela and Poncia are alone, Poncia questions
her relationship with Romano. Adela, defiant, vows to continue her
clandestine affair.
Act III opens in the evening. Suspicion, jealousy, and frustration
among the sisters have been mounting. Poncia warns Bernarda that
the volatile emotions in the house will surely explode, but Bernarda
refuses to believe that her control over both her house and her

daughters is not absolute, and she goes to bed. Meanwhile, Adela

sneaks outside for a liaison with Romano, unaware that Martirio has
followed her. After a heated argument, Martirio wakes the household
and exposes Adelas transgression. Bernarda descends upon Adela,
but Adela, seizing her mothers cane and breaking it in two, declares
that she will henceforth take orders only from her lover.
Bernarda calls for a gun, and she and Martirio rush out into the yard.
A shot is heard. Believing her lover dead, Adela hangs herself. Upon
discovering Adelas lifeless body, Bernarda orders that it be dressed
in white. Insisting loudly that Adela died a virgin, Bernarda attempts,
above all, to avoid the public shame she would face if the village
discovered the truth. As the drama closes, Bernarda calls for silence
and for crying to cease as she regains control of her house.

Federico Garca Lorca

Federico Garca Lorca is possibly the most important Spanish poet
and dramatist of the twentieth century. Garca Lorca was born June 5,
1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town a few miles from Granada.
His father owned a farm in the fertile Vega surrounding Granada and
a comfortable mansion in the heart of the city. His mother, whom
Lorca idolized, was a gifted pianist. After graduating from secondary
school Garca Lorca attended Sacred Heart University where he took
up law along with regular coursework. His first book, Impresiones y
Viajes (1919) was inspired by a trip to Castile with his art class in
1917.
In 1919, Garca Lorca traveled to Madrid, where he remained for the
next fifteen years. Giving up university, he devoted himself entirely
to his art. He organized theatrical performances, read his poems in
public, and collected old folksongs. During this period Garca Lorca
wrote El Maleficio de la mariposa (1920), a play which caused a great
scandal when it was produced. He also wrote Libro de poemas (1921), a
compilation of poems based on Spanish folklore. Much of Garca
Lorca's work was infused with popular themes such as Flamenco and
Gypsy culture. In 1922, Garca Lorca organized the first "Cante
Jondo" festival in which Spain's most famous "deep song" singers and
guitarists participated. The deep song form permeated his poems of

the early 1920s. During this period, Garca Lorca became part of a
group of artists known as Generacin del 27, which included Salvador
Dal and Luis Buuel, who exposed the young poet to surrealism. In
1928, his book of verse, Romancero Gitano ("The Gypsy Ballads"),
brought Garca Lorca far-reaching fame; it was reprinted seven times
during his lifetime.
In 1929, Garca Lorca came to New York. The poet's favorite
neighborhood was Harlem; he loved African-American spirituals,
which reminded him of Spain's "deep songs." In 1930, Garca Lorca
returned to Spain after the proclamation of the Spanish republic and
participated in the Second Ordinary Congress of the Federal Union of
Hispanic Students in November of 1931. The congress decided to
build a "Barraca" in central Madrid in which to produce important
plays for the public. "La Barraca," the traveling theater company that
resulted, toured many Spanish towns, villages, and cities performing
Spanish classics on public squares. Some of Garca Lorca's own plays,
including his three great tragedies Bodas de sangre (1933), Yerma
(1934), and La Casa de Bernarda Alba (1936), were also produced by the
company.
In 1936, Garca Lorca was staying at Callejones de Garca, his country
home, at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was arrested by Franquist
soldiers, and on the 17th or 18th of August, after a few days in jail,
soldiers took Garca Lorca to "visit" his brother-in-law, Manuel
Fernandez Montesinos, the Socialist ex-mayor of Granada whom the
soldiers had murdered and dragged through the streets. When they
arrived at the cemetery, the soldiers forced Garca Lorca from the car.
They struck him with the butts of their rifles and riddled his body
with bullets. His books were burned in Granada's Plaza del Carmen
and were soon banned from Franco's Spain. To this day, no one
knows where the body of Federico Garca Lorca rests.

Class

Ideas and Themes

Bernarda's family is a landowning family and as such is wealthier

than other families in the village. This explains much of both
Bernarda's disdain for lower class people and her daughters'
aloofness. La Poncia makes clear that the Alba family is only rich in
the terms of a poor village, suggesting that they are not as wealthy as
they believe. Lorca then is making a critical observation about the
human need to keep others below, to find a way in which we can
consider ourselves superior. The poor characters (the servants and La
Poncia) are corrupted by these class distinctions and are made bitter
in no small part because of their envy and their belief that the world
has treated them unfairly by forcing poverty on them. Overall,
Lorca's sympathy lies with the servants, in a tragic rather than
political way: they are the underdogs, the ones whom fate has left
with less freedom.

Sex/Love
Lorca's play, set in the deep heat of a remarkably hot summer, drips
with sexuality. To some extent, this theme is inseparable from that of
repression, since it is the sexuality of the daughters that is most
strictly repressed. But it deserves its own consideration since Lorca's
insights on sexuality are many. He seems to suggest that sexuality is
an entirely natural facet of humanity - something all of us, women
included, face in severe ways, but that does not mean it lacks danger.
On the contrary, sexuality seems to be the driving force that brings
tragedy to the play, and some of the stories told highlight how lust
and desire have led to terrible ends in the past. For certain, the play
stresses the importance of acknowledging our sexual desires and not
hiding them behind veils, whether of religion, morality, guilt, or fear.
Love deserves a bit of its own consideration if only because it is
almost never discussed outside of its sexual component. Whether
that is a symptom of the repression that has corrupted love, or the
natural state for all humans, is a subject worth discussion.

Repression

Because it is perhaps the most intense theme of the play,

understanding repression is the key to understanding both the
characters and the story. Bernarda seems to understand that her
children are capable of sexual desire, but she makes it her explicit
purpose to tyrannically keep them from expressing those desires.
They are forced into an eight-year mourning period at the beginning
of the play, and she is terrified they might give in to the demands of a
man like Pepe if they are not kept from exploring their desires. Even
when La Poncia tells her that the children will break free the second
they are given an inch of freedom, she believes she is doing the right
thing. The claustrophobic atmosphere of the play is a reflection of the
steady bitterness and hatred that exists between these sisters because
they are so repressed. Their animosity towards one another is easiest
to understand when one considers how desperately they all need
Pepe as an object of admiration in their repressive world. Lorca might
be ambivalent about the powers of human sexuality, but he is clear
about the cost of repression: it causes people to shrivel up into
suffering, which ultimately makes us into worse, uglier people.

Individuality
On the flip side of repression is the idea of individual freedom.
Perhaps the most severe cost of repression is that it keeps a truly
poetic soul, like Adela's, from flourishing. She shows time and time
again that she is an eccentric with her own ideas of love and life. She
ends the play willing to give up any security and safety just to be
Pepe's mistress, arguably a decision more about freedom from
Bernarda than about love for the selfish Pepe. Throughout the play,
we see her attempt to flaunt her individuality, leading her to eventual
suicide. As a poet in a conservative country, Lorca clearly
sympathizes with this woman who is unable to realize her true
personality and who dies for having tried to realize it.

Death
The play begins and ends with death. While the characters do not
discuss the topic at length, their awareness of impending doom
hangs like a shroud over the whole play. Martirio's depression can
easily be attributed to an attitude of just filling the time, a suffering

hunchback, until she dies. Where Adela equates repression with

death, La Poncia suggests that giving in to one's sexuality leads to
death. Indeed, Adela's tragic end confirms La Poncia's perspective. It
is as though you cannot escape the force, an idea which indeed falls
in line with Lorca's common use of the theme. In a way, one can read
the play as a question: considering we are all to die at some point,
how is it we should live our lives? By subscribing to a set of moral
codes that limit us, or by courting danger through unfettered
individuality?

Gossip
Bernarda herself exemplifies the provincial attitudes of the village
where the play is set. Though she is criticized by the mourners in the
funeral scene for gossiping too freely, it is clear that other neighbors
are also interested in learning each other's dirty secrets. Fear of being
seen as wicked by neighbors seems to motivate Bernarda's tyranny
more than any particular moral code, in fact; her biggest concern
when dealing with Adela's body at the end of the play is that the
neighbors have woken up. Because of the harshness of gossip - and
the physical danger that the group dynamic can cause, like with the
young girl who murders her baby to avoid censure and then is
herself killed - Bernarda seeks to have a squeaky clean house,
unconcerned with the ironic darkness that bubbles up due to her
demands.

Religion
Though not an explicit part of the story, religion permeates the world
of the play. It can be understood in several ways. First, it is the
primary cause of the strictures that lead to repression. The play opens
immediately after a visit to the church for the funeral, and Bernarda
expresses her belief that the church is the only place where women
can look at men, suggesting that sexuality can only be hinted at in the
confines of extreme respectability. Further, the church-related
sacrament of marriage is understood to be the only outlet for a
woman to show love for a man. Prudencia's visit in Act III poses the
influence of religion as a larger duplicity that society uses to hide
itself. Prudencia goes to church to deal with her sadness and shame

10

over having banished her daughter, suggesting that it can be used as

a salve for us to avoid action (in her case, opposing her husband's
wishes to banish their daughter). Of course, as Prudencia is soon to
leave her church ritual because she is being mocked there, Lorca
again reminds us that as an institution of man, religion is subject to
the pettiness of man.

11

Lorcas Vision

The Play as a Photograph

As Lorca worked on The House of Bernarda Alba, he told a
friend that it had not a single drop of poetry. Rather, Lorca
characterizes the play as a photographic documentary,
highlighting the importance of the visual impact and staging of
the scenes. The Reps production, like most others, uses a
black, white and gray color palette to strengthen the
association with photography. In his stylized approach to
realism, Lorca gives us snapshots of passion pictures of
oppression in the same way that a photograph documents
reality but does not, by itself, explain reality. The House of
Bernarda Alba layers impressions one over another in order to
conjure the mysterious nature of human longing.

12

Spanish Civil War

(1936-1939)
Although he claimed to be apolitical, Lorcas liberal ideals marked
him as an enemy of the fascists and made him an early casualty of the
Spanish Civil War. The war was a conflict in which conservative
forces in Spain overthrew the Second Spanish Republic. It pitted the
Nationalists, led by the landed aristocracy, Roman Catholic Church,
military leaders, and the fascist Falange party against the Loyalists,
consisting of liberals, anarchists, socialists, and Communists. In July
1936, General Francisco Franco led an army revolt in Morocco and
invaded Spain to support right-wing rebels. The Nationalist army
overran conservative areas in Northern Spain, while the Loyalists
remained strong in Catalonia and the Basque Provinces. Volunteers
abroad formed International Brigades to fight for the Loyalists, who
received supplies from the Soviet Union. Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany aided the Nationalists with modern arms and some 60,000
troops. The Loyalist side was divided by factional strife that was
exacerbated by the Communists suppression of anarchists and
Trotskyites. Nationalist forces, unified under Franco, gradually wore
down Republican strength, conquering Barcelona and Madrid in
early 1939. For Italy and Germany, the war was a testing ground for
modern armaments and techniques to be used in World War II. For
the youth of the 1930s, saving the Spanish Republic was the idealistic
cause of the era. But the civil wars huge death toll, human suffering,
and material devastation were unparalleled in Spanish history. The
war also ushered in a long era of right-wing dictatorship that ended
only with Francos death in 1975.

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Symbols
Heat in this case, often mentioned and referred to at the height of
Bernarda's oppression and fury. Therefore, a symbol for Bernarda's
dominating nature. Heat is also another reference to sexual desire
represented by the fans and lemonade.
Black and white The common Western connotations. Black
represents everything bad (death, mourn, oppression, being closed
in...) while white represents all things good (the truth, life, freedom).
Black is mainly associated with Bernarda and all the daughters who
wear black throughout the play, except Adela. . As is already said
above, in her craziness she says what all the girls won't dare to say.
Another possible interpretation is that white represents sterility or
purity, as in the "pure" and "immaculate" appearance of Bernarda's
home, and black represents oppression.
Green The symbol of future death and, in Hispanic culture, hope: it
is worn by Adela when she confesses her love for Pepe el Romano.
Can also represent jealousy, i.e. as between the sisters as they find
Adela is the lover of Pepe, and over Angustias' engagement with
Pepe. The passionate personality of Adela as well. In addition, for
Lorca, green represents erotic passion.
The fan Adela gives Bernarda a round fan decorated with red and
green flowers a symbol of Adela's uniqueness.
The cane Symbolizes the power and sovereignty of Bernarda over
her daughters. Adela finally breaks it near the end of the play.
Some of the characters' names:
Amelia From Latin and Old German for "industrious"; Hebrew:
"labor of God"
Martirio "martyrdom"
Angustias "anguishes" or "torments"
Adela from the Spanish verb "adelantar" meaning "to go forward"
or "to overtake".

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Magdalena another name of anguish, i.e., the Spanish idiom: "llorar

como una Magdalena" ("to weep like Magdalene").
Mara Josefa From the names of Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph
Prudencia Suggesting the virtue of prudence

15

House of Bernarda Alba Production History

The play takes place in the house of Bernarda Alba in a small
Andalusian village during a sweltering hot spell in the summer of
1936.

Characters
Bernarda, age 60
Maria Josefa (Bernardas mother), age 80
Angustias (Bernardas daughter), age 39
Magdalena (Bernardas daughter), age 30
Amelia (Bernardas daughter), age 27
Martirio (Bernardas daughter), age 24
Adela (Bernardas daughter), age 20
Maid, age 50
Poncia (maid), age 60
Prudencia (Bernardas friend), age 50
First performed in Buenos Aires by Margarita Xirgu's theatre
company in 1945

16

Adaptations
Film adaptations include:
La casa de Bernarda Alba (1987) and its English made-for-TV movie The House
of Bernarda Alba (1991)
1991 Indian film directed by Govind Nihlani, Rukmavati ki Haveli
In 1967, choreographer Eleo Pomare adapted the play into his ballet, Las
Desenamoradas, featuring music by John Coltrane.
In 2006, the play was adapted into musical form by Michael John LaChiusa.
Under the title Bernarda Alba, it opened at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse
theatre on March 6, 2006, starring Phylicia Rashad in the title role, with a cast
that also included Daphne Rubin-Vega.

17

Enrichment Activities:

Students create interview questions and ask their friends opinions regarding:

1. If parents are too strict is that better or in the end worse?
2. Should parents raise their children to hide or flaunt their individuality?
3. How much freedom should parents give to children in choosing their friends
and significant others, relative to the age of the characters in the play?
4. Should parents impose cultural practices that inhibit their childrens
individual choices in love and marriage?


Research and discuss the Spanish Civil War and how it is expressed through the
story and characters in THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA.

View the wonderful blogs, websites, and research provided by the Seton Hill Theatre
design team. Links:




http://bernardashouse.blogspot.com/



http://shu12alba.blogspot.com/


Discuss instances where you see the themes expressed in the drawings and
renderings. After seeing the play, discuss how and why you think the final decisions
were made for the visual and sonic designs that appeared in the production.

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Works Cited - Pictures

The House of Bernarda Alba
http://designarchives.aiga.org/#/entries/%2Bid%3A78/_/detail/relevance/as
c/0/7/78/the-house-of-bernarda-alba-poster/1

Playwright and his work-

http://www.poets.org/images/authors/fglorca.jpg

Lorcas Vision picture

http://ridgewine.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/lorca.jpg

Spanish Civil War

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Spanish_11_interb
rigada_in_the_battle_of_Belchev._1937.jpg/300px-
Spanish_11_interbrigada_in_the_battle_of_Belchev._1937.jpg

Production History

http://everitas.univmiami.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/House-of-Bernarda-
Alba.jpg

Adaptations

http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_b/logos/bernadaalba.jpg

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Works Cited - Info

Adaptations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_Bernarda_Alba

Glossary of Terms
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-house-of-bernarda-alba/study-guide/glossary-of-
terms/

Production History -
http://projects.ups.edu/granada2008/Span_301/html/unit5/bernarda_about.htm

Ideas and Themes

http://www.gradesaver.com/the-house-of-bernarda-alba/study-guide/major-
themes/

Lorcas Vision -

http://projects.ups.edu/granada2008/Span_301/html/unit5/bernarda_about.htm

Spanish Civil War -
http://projects.ups.edu/granada2008/Span_301/html/unit5/bernarda_about.htm

Symbols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_Bernarda_Alba

Frederico Garcia Lorca

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/163

House of Bernarda Alba -

http://projects.ups.edu/granada2008/Span_301/html/unit5/bernarda_about.htm

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