Yerma

by Federico García Lorca, Gwynne Edwards

Overview

Yerma is married to an honest man, but her life runs with blood. Written in 1934, the play tells the story of a childless woman in a time when women's value came entirely from bearing children. Her desperate desire for motherhood becomes an obsession that eventually leads her to commit a horrible crime. The dilemma of this work is Freudian in nature: If someone loves but does not have desire, can they make someone else happy and give her a meaningful life? At the same time, if she cannot articulate what she wants in the terms of modernity, we never know whether she wants to be a mother, wants to be desired, or wants to be fulfilled? Fortunately, the talent of Garcia Lorca goes above and beyond and creates a work that reveals new facets of personal growth and frustration with each reading

La vida corre por la sangre de Yerma y está casada con un hombre honesto. El dilema de esta obra es freudiano, ¿si alguien ama y no desea, puede hacer feliz a alguien y puede, incluso, darle una vida intensa? A la vez no puede articular qué quiere en los términos de la modernidad. ¿Quiere ser madre, quiere ser deseada, quiere ser plena? Nunca sabremos del todo qué quiere. Por suerte el talento de García Lorca va más allá y a haciendas de todo esto cada lectura de esta obra nos revela otra arista de las búsquedas personales y la insaciable incapacidad para encontrar alguna forma de epifanía.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780713683264
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/27/2008
Series:	Student Editions
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Federico García Lorca was born in 1898, in Andalusia, Spain. A poet and dramatist, and also a gifted painter and pianist, his early popular ballads earned him the title of 'poet of the gypsies'. In 1930 he turned his attention to theatre, visiting remote villages and playing classic and new works for peasant audiences. In 1936, shortly after the outbreak of Civil War, he was murdered by Nationalist partisans. His body was never found.

Gwynne Edwards has prepared a new free adaptation of the play, from a literal translation by Jennifer Bakst. Gwynne Edwards is a specialist in Spanish theatre and cinema and, until recently, Professor of Spanish at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. He has also translated and adapted more than forty plays from Spanish, French and Italian, many of which have been staged at major theatres in Britain and the United States. He has published three collections of Lorca's plays with Methuen Drama, and also collections of seventeenth–century Spanish and contemporary Spanish–American plays adapted from the correspondence and prose writings of Dylan Thomas. His books include Lorca: The Theatre Beneath the Sand, Lorca: Living in the Theatre, Dramatists in Perspective: Spanish Theatre in the Twentieth Century, The Discreet Art of Luis Buñuel and Almodóvar: Labyrinths of Passion.

Gwynne Edwards has prepared a new free adaptation of the play, from a literal translation by Jennifer Bakst. Gwynne Edwards is a specialist in Spanish theatre and cinema and, until recently, Professor of Spanish at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. He has also translated and adapted more than forty plays from Spanish, French and Italian, many of which have been staged at major theatres in Britain and the United States. He has published three collections of Lorca's plays with Methuen Drama, and also collections of seventeenth–century Spanish and contemporary Spanish–American plays adapted from the correspondence and prose writings of Dylan Thomas. His books include Lorca: The Theatre Beneath the Sand, Lorca: Living in the Theatre, Dramatists in Perspective: Spanish Theatre in the Twentieth Century, The Discreet Art of Luis Buñuel and Almodóvar: Labyrinths of Passion.

Jenny Stevens was an Associate Lecturer for the Open University and currently combines educational consultancy work with teaching and writing. She is the co-author with Pamela Bickley of Essential Shakespeare: The Arden Guide to Text and Interpretation (2013) and Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance (2016).

Gwynne Edwards has prepared a new free adaptation of the play, from a literal translation by Jennifer Bakst. Gwynne Edwards is a specialist in Spanish theatre and cinema and, until recently, Professor of Spanish at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. He has also translated and adapted more than forty plays from Spanish, French and Italian, many of which have been staged at major theatres in Britain and the United States. He has published three collections of Lorca's plays with Methuen Drama, and also collections of seventeenth–century Spanish and contemporary Spanish–American plays adapted from the correspondence and prose writings of Dylan Thomas. His books include Lorca: The Theatre Beneath the Sand, Lorca: Living in the Theatre, Dramatists in Perspective: Spanish Theatre in the Twentieth Century, The Discreet Art of Luis Buñuel and Almodóvar: Labyrinths of Passion.

Chris Megson is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has taught and published widely in the field of modern drama, and is editor of The Methuen Drama Book of Naturalist Plays. Other works include: Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (with Alison Forsyth, 2011), and Modern British Playwriting: The 70s: Voices, Documents, New Interpretations (2012).

Matthew Nichols graduated from the University of Birmingham in 2003 and has been teaching and leading outstanding Drama and Performing Arts departments for over a decade. Matthew also has extensive experience at a senior level with several exam boards, and was responsible for writing one of the reformed GCSE qualifications in Drama. In addition, Matthew works with schools, colleges, universities and theatres across the country. Matthew is a successful and sought after Drama education consultant, and was one of the founders of Drama Defined, which specialises in delivering high quality Drama education courses to staff and students. Matthew is currently Head of Drama at Manchester Grammar School. You can reach him on Twitter @matthew_drama.

Table of Contents

General Introduction by John Lyon
Intorduction to Yerma by Jacqueline Minett
Notes to the introduction
Act I
Act II
Act III
Notes to the play
List of illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

The translation was made for the Peoples Theatre in Newcastle by Professor I.R.Macpherson and Dr J. Minett (University of Durham), and is presented alongside the original Spanish text in which the dramatists own voice is there to speak for itself." The book is enhanced by John Lyons "excellent introduction to Lorcas life and work... and Minetts perceptive discussion of the play"

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