Last week we were joined by the 10-strong female cast of The House of Bernarda Alba. All the way from Barcelona, our Assistant Director, Monica Bofill, will be sitting by Bijan Sheibani’s side in rehearsals and sharing the events of each week with us here.
The first week of rehearsals for The House of Bernarda Alba has come and gone! Days seem to fly at Commercial Street (our home until next week, when the Almeida rehearsal room will be ready for us). At the same time, that first read-through on day one, where so much was still such a mystery, feels now like ages ago.
Being from Spain, this is a play that has been a part of my background for a long time. I have read it, studied it, seen various productions of it… And yet as I listen to the actresses on their first read-through, this feels like something new.
On paper, the play is still very much that of Federico Garcia Lorca, in a wonderful version by Emily Mann that flows effortlessly and captures perfectly the spirit and rhythm of the original Spanish version. But this time around, Lorca’s Spain has turned into contemporary Iran. Already there’s a different energy to it, brought out by the truly extraordinary group of women that Bijan Sheibani has brought together (the one extraordinary man among all these women! Even our stage management team is all female). Rarely have I seen so much talent together and such powerful chemistry on a first day. It was truly exhilarating.
Without barely touching a word, for Lorca’s writing is indeed, quite universal, The House of Bernarda Alba is now set in Iran. All the ingredients that will make this happen are in the room. Now it’s just a matter of sorting them out.
Throughout the week, all the research we have been doing individually during the days prior to rehearsals, comes together. We talk about Lorca, we talk about the play and the characters, we talk about Iran and Islam. All of this we do through the exercises Bijan suggests, to help us dig deeper into the different aspects of the play. Not only on paper, but up on our feet as well, improvising around the atmospheres of the different locations evoked in the text and some character moments. We have books and movies in the room that we can all borrow to continue the immersion into the universe of this Iranian house of Bernarda Alba.
Bunny Christie, our set designer, shows us a stunning model of the set, our very own house of Bernarda Alba (including a surprise or two I can’t reveal!). On Friday, Dr. Robin Anderson, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, joins us to talk about the characters of Lorca’s play. What a privilege to have a professional shedding some light into the behaviour and possible pasts of these characters.
By the end of the week, we’ve asked five times as many questions as we have answers. And this is what’s exciting. With pages and pages of still unanswered questions, we do our second read-through and already it feels like the characters have come to life: their relationships are beginning to take shape, the house is starting to breathe on its own. I can’t believe how much we have all learned in only a week. This promises to be an amazing adventure.
By Monica Bofill
Read more about the production and book tickets here.
