Lorca's Experimental Theater

Breaking the Guardrails of Convention

Andrew A. Anderson, Anne J. Cruz

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9780807183243
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

Critical and historical discussions of the life and work of Federico García Lorca, Spain's foremost poet and playwright of the twentieth century, often obscure the author's more avant-garde dramatic works. In Lorca's Experimental Theater, Andrew A. Anderson focuses on four of Lorca's most challenging plays— Amor de don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín, El público, Así que pasen cinco años, and El sueño de la vida (previously known as Comedia sin título )—and on the surrounding context in which they came to be written and in only one case performed during his lifetime. While none of Lorca's plays can be considered conventional, these four works stand out in his corpus for challenging theatrical conventions most forcefully, both thematically and technically.With discussions of stagecraft, artistic modernism, and the historical avant-garde, Lorca's Experimental Theater provides detailed interpretive readings of the four plays, surveys their textual and performative history, and examines the most important contemporary influences on Lorca's creation of these expressive, innovative works.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS
• Introduction
• 1 Staging the Unstageable: Efforts to Perform the Experimental Plays, 1929–1936
• 2 Undecidability in Amor de don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín
• 3 García Lorca and the New York Theater, 1929–1930
• 4 Three Expressionist Dramas: El público, Así que pasen cinco años, and El sueño de la vida
• 5 Theme and Symbol in El público
• 6 Juliet and the Shifting Sands of El público
• 7 Destiny and Denial in Así que pasen cinco años
• 8 Así que pasen cinco años, Act 3, Scene 1: A Reading
• 9 Social Concern, Metatheater, and the Audience’s Experience in El sueño de la vida
• Epilogue
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX