Book Description

"Critical and historical discussions of the life and work of Federico García Lorca often prioritize his stunning modernist poetry and popular dramas while obscuring the author's more avant-garde dramatic works. In Lorca's Experimental Theater: Breaking the Guardrails of Convention, 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, according to Anderson, some of them are nevertheless more approachable than others. The four considered here are the works that challenge theatrical conventions most forcefully, both thematically and technically. The introduction offers a brief overview of Lorca's entire dramatic output and the place within it of his four most experimental plays. The first chapter, "Staging the Unstageable," gives details concerning the chronology of the plays' composition, what Lorca had to say about them in newspaper interviews, and, most importantly, his numerous attempts to get what he called his "unperformable plays" actually performed. After a chapter on the pervasive role of undecidability in Amor de don Perlimplín, two further contextual chapters cover what Anderson considers the most significant factors that encouraged Lorca to continue experimenting in his dramatical works, namely his exposure to theater in New York over 1929-1930 and his increasing familiarity with expressionist drama that he both read and heard about from other theater professionals. From there, El público and Así que pasen cinco años each receive two chapters devoted to their themes and symbols, and the book ends with a final chapter on how audiences could experience a staging of El sueño de la vida. By synthesizing materials drawn from theatrical practice, artistic modernism, and the historical avant-garde, Lorca's Experimental Theater gives an integrated picture of this corpus by providing detailed readings of the plays, surveying their textual and performative history, and examining the most important contemporary influences on Lorca's creation of these expressive, innovative works"--