Lorca Plays: 3: The Public; Play without a Title; Mariana Pineda

Description

"Lorca is one of the few indisputably great dramatists of the twentieth century" Observer Mariana Pineda achieved immediate critical success on its first performance in Barcelona in 1927. The Public is a powerful and uncompromising demand for sexual, and specifically homosexual, freedom - as predicted it was never performed in Lorca's time - it was first performed in this country by Theatre Royal Stratford East in the 80s. Play Without a Title, an unfinished Lorca rarity, realises his wish 'to do something different, including modern plays on the age we live in'.

Federico Garcia 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 Bunuel and Almodovar: 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 Bunuel and Almodovar: Labyrinths of Passion. After two years at Liverpool University and a stint in the RAF, Henry Livings took to the boards. Provincial rep was followed by a formative period as an actor with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. His television work included a minor role in Coronation Street, still remembered by friends who call for the return of Our Lily's Wilf. He also played an important part in Alfred Bradley's Northern Drift, a showcase for new writers in the North of England. His writings for stage includes 'Stop It Whoever You Are', 'Eh?', 'Big Soft Nelly', 'Nil Carborundum', 'Honour and Offer', 'The Little Mrs Foster show', 'The ffinest ffamily in the Land', 'Don't Touch Him He Might Not Like It' and 'Stop the Children's Laughter'.

"Lorca is one of the few indisputably great dramatists of the twentieth century" --Observer