A radical restructuring of Federico Garc铆a Lorca from Metta Theatre, tackles our preoccupation with knife-crime and highlights the writer鈥檚 relevance today.
鈥淪hocking new figures reveal the true scale of knife crime epidemic in the UK.鈥 鈥淢others of knife crime victims tell their heart-breaking stories.鈥 鈥淭eacher stabbed to death while walking her dog on playing fields.鈥 鈥淎lmost 17 people a day convicted for carrying a knife.鈥 *
This is just a selection of headlines from the past couple of years. Federico Garc铆a Lorca, writing in 1932, expanded on these issues in a manner that reminds us of the cylindrical nature of contentious issues over the ages. A radical writer of his time, and cohort of seminal figures in 21st Century culture, including Salvador Dali and Luis Bu帽uel, Lorca鈥檚 work straddles genres. Originally a work on Spain鈥檚 rural community, Blood Wedding lurches into the surreal, social criticism, and occasionally into feminism. Poppy Burton, director and founder of Metta Theatre, coins their latest production 鈥淟orca for the 21st Century.鈥 A writer once so revolutionary, still has a damming comment to make on our contemporary society: 鈥淲e鈥檙e in a city [London] now where knife crime is endemic, to make that link with Lorca seems obvious.鈥
Founded in 2005, Metta Theatre 鈥渨ears its theatricality on its sleeve鈥, embellishing a lineage of postmodern 鈥渕etas鈥, which serve to enhance the subject鈥檚 role in a fiction. Meta-fiction, meta-film, and meta-theatre welcome an awareness of the fiction through, for example, narrative impositions by the author, the audience or other real life figures, alternative endings, non-linear narrative, or audience participation. The production is rooted in the overlaps in art and culture: 鈥淭heatre is about telling stories in a way that visual representational art isn鈥檛 but you can analyse it using the same scores. I paint the stage with light, with people, with different levels and with sound.鈥 Burton has always been attracted to this hyper-awareness: 鈥淚鈥檝e always been interested in theatre that鈥檚 really honest about its theatricality. Television and film do a brilliant job of very close, subtle, natural realism and theatre offers something slightly different.鈥
Blood Wedding explores the knife culture and gang problems of rural Spain. Tellingly, for the femi-centric slant of Lorca鈥檚 work, the cast list begins with the play鈥檚 women who are very much central to the play despite the themes of gangs, violence, and masculinity. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 true in Lorca鈥檚 time, our time, possibly several generations in between, is that often it鈥檚 men and male culture that enables this culture of violence, honour killings and fighting and it鈥檚 the women who become the victims of that because they鈥檙e the ones who have been left behind having lost their sons and their husbands. That鈥檚 something special about Lorca, he really does tell the story from the women.鈥
Immediately opening with the Mother鈥檚 laments on her lost son and husband, the focus on the women left behind is immediately clear. These crimes lie at the hands of the Felix family. While the Groom plans his forthcoming nuptials, the Neighbour tells of the Bride鈥檚 earlier affair with Leonardo Felix. The Mother鈥檚 anger and resentment still linger and she is immediately suspicious of her future daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, the audience catches a glimpse of the now married Leonardo鈥檚 unhappy existence with his wife, mother-in-law, and child. Leonardo is brusque and resentful, the brooding, ill-suited romantic hero. The nuptials and wedding party begin, a blaze of song, dance and celebration until the Bride goes astray. It quickly transpires that the Bride has escaped on horseback with her ex-lover Leonardo and a search party ventures into the woods, where the action departs from peasants鈥 realism to surreal escapades between the Moon, onlooking Woodcutters, and Death as an old woman.
Burton relishes this momentary lurch towards the outlandish for the new qualities that it can bring to the production: 鈥淚t gives you this incredible opportunity to do fantastic and bizarre things, and give the audience a snapshot of something rather crazy even if it is just for a split second before going back into a more real world.鈥 The lovers鈥 dialogue tells of their forbidden desires but the Moon and Death have already conspired to end the scene in a bloody battle. The women of the search party return with the Bride and the bodies of her two lovers, the Mother once more lamenting the violence of masculine bravado and the in-fighting across the countryside. Only Leonardo, surrounded by stock characters such as the Mother, the Bride, the Groom, the Servant, takes a name in Lorca鈥檚 play, emphasising the universality of the text. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e archetypes, that鈥檚 what makes it universal and gives us licence to create our own theatricality rather than complying either with Lorca鈥檚 intentions, or with this contemporary world that we鈥檝e set up. It becomes something almost Greek, these are the archetypes, these are their symbols or ciphers to project our own thoughts and feelings on to.鈥
Embracing this universality, Burton鈥檚 adaptation takes us beyond Lorca鈥檚 woodland mysticism, urbanising the setting to transform woodcutters into road workers, rivers into canals, folk songs into hip hop: 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 in the spirit of Lorca as well because he was breaking moulds, breaking boundaries in his day. Hopefully he would applaud that it didn鈥檛 become an archaic piece of period drama, because there鈥檚 something so much more contemporary and relevant about it, particularly in terms of knife crime.鈥 Lorca鈥檚 text had a fairly radical re-write at the hands of Metta Theatre, with the structure adapted to more easily incorporate the audience鈥檚 involvement in the play, with guests entering directly into the wedding celebrations, and a movement into more private scenes after the audience鈥檚 first big role. Burton is cautious, however, of making this universality excessively apparent: 鈥淚 can鈥檛 bear those plays that update themselves by being painfully contemporary and reference Gordon Brown and particular tube stations in London. Hopefully we鈥檝e straddled both worlds in that it has the real feel and flavour of contemporary urban London, but at the same time the passion and the colour speaks to a kind of earlier Spanish, even Latin American feel.鈥 The wedding in particular becomes a celebratory explosion, with eating and drinking, music and colour, and Burton has used the mixed ethnicity of the cast to embellish this. 鈥淎 lot of music is referencing their heritage, the wedding numbers are slightly gospel influenced and calypso, often those Afro-Caribbean elements fit very well with Spanish rhythms,鈥 but she鈥檚 keen to add, 鈥渢he thing is, it鈥檚 all open to revision, when we get into rehearsals it might all change and develop into something else.鈥 Somehow the whole idea and production behind Blood Wedding feels very off the cuff and organic, enhancing the lack a daisy, party feel for the wedding guests/ audience to embrace the moment.
On entering the Southwark Playhouse 鈥済uests鈥 are given a drink, food and a song sheet. 鈥淭here鈥檚 an expanding out into the space and everyone鈥檚 a part of that as audience and performer. The audience become participants in the drama and there鈥檚 a sense that they鈥檙e in some ways culpable for the murders that happen because they鈥檙e chivvied into looking for the Bride and Leonardo, joining the search party. So hopefully the audience will go along the journey with the characters.鈥 Metta Theatre practice in a popular tradition of participatory theatre alongside Punch Drunk and Shunt, but Blood Wedding provides a variation on this theme by contextualising a 1930s script. 鈥淚 was interested in doing something that was a classic text and being true to that classic text, there must be a world where you can retain the story and still use the audience in a way that it becomes interactive and immersive.鈥 This is theatre as event, socialising and interacting with a different time, and finding a common thread.
Blood Wedding was staged at the Southwark Playhouse until 15 August 2009.
Pauline Bache
* [Headline credits: Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph].
