TEHRAN – Federico Garcia Lorca’s famous play “The House of Bernarda Alba” is coming to Tehran’s Da Theater next week.

Director Mahtab Golkar’s troupe will give their first performance on Wednesday of the play based on a Persian translation by Najaf Daryabandari published by the Karnameh publishing house.

Golkar will also have a role in the play. The cast also includes Parisa Mohseni, Nilufar Omranifard, Zahra Derkhshan, Fatemeh Kowsari, Fatima Mortazavi, Helia Mehrpuya, Negar Ghaffari and several other actors.

The three-act tragedy was published in 1936 as “La Casa de Bernarda Alba: drama de mujeres en los pueblos de Espana” (subtitled “Drama of Women in the Villages of Spain”). It constitutes the third play of Lorca’s dramatic trilogy which also includes “Blood Wedding” and “Yerma”, and it was first produced in Buenos Aires in 1945.

The play tells the story of a repressive and domineering widow who forces her five unmarried daughters to remain in mourning for their father, sequestered with her on the family estate, for eight years. Frustrated and angry, the women respond in their individual ways to their mother’s cruelty, and the play ends in violence.

There are at least two translations of the play, one by prominent Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlu and another by veteran translator Najaf Daryabandari.

The play is a firm favorite with Iranian directors, one of which is Ali Rafiei whose performance was selected as the best play of the year by the Critic and Theatrical Writers Society of the Iranian Theater Forum in 2019.

His skills in staging “The House of Bernarda Alba” were portrayed in the documentary “Behind the Walls of This House” directed by Leila Jafari.

Jafari and producer Setareh Eskandari have previously said that the documentary can be a helpful source of information for students and theater enthusiasts.

In this documentary, Rafiei says that “The House of Bernarda Alba” is about Franco’s dictatorship and it is still a universal truth over 80 years since it was written. “Garcia Lorca talks about the dearth of love in that era and the violence in the play results from the dearth of love.”

“Behind the Walls of This House” premiered at the Iranian Artists Forum in Tehran in January 2022 as part of the forum’s program celebrating Rafiei’s 84th birthday.

At present, Iranian director Arash Amiri is also directing the play at the Chaharsu Hall of Tehran’s City Theater Complex.

Photo: A poster for  “The House of Bernarda Alba”.

MMS/YAW