''Play Without a Title'', or ''Untitled Play'' (''Comedia sin título''), is an
unfinished
Unfinished may refer to:
*Unfinished creative work, a work which a creator either chose not to finish or was prevented from finishing.
Music
* Symphony No. 8 (Schubert) "Unfinished"
* ''Unfinished'' (album), 2011 album by American singer Jor ...
experimental play by the
Spanish twentieth-century
modernist playwright
Federico García Lorca. Lorca conceived the work as a three-act drama and had referred to it by the title ''The Dream of Life''
[Edwards (1994, xxxi).] (echoing, perhaps,
Calderón
Calderón () is a Spanish and Sefardi occupational surname. It is derived from the Vulgar Latin "''caldaria''" ("cauldron") and refers to the occupation of tinker.
Calderón, or Calderon, may refer to:
* Alberto Calderón, Argentine mathematician ...
's classic
Golden-Age comedy ''
Life is a Dream''), but he completed only the first act. Lorca's play was probably written in 1935, but remained unpublished until 1978; it received its Spanish-language première in 1989 at the
Teatro María Guerrero
Teatro may refer to:
* Theatre
* Teatro (band)
Teatro, Italian for "theatre", is a vocal group signed to the Sony BMG music label. The members of Teatro are Jeremiah James, Andrew Alexander, Simon Bailey and Stephen Rahman-Hughes.
Band members ...
in
Madrid, in a production directed by Lluís Pasqual.
[Edwards (1994, xxxi-xxxii)]
Gwynne Edwards, the English-language translator of the play, argues that it differs in important respects from many of Lorca's other works, insofar as it attempts a series of transgressions of the traditional boundary separating
stage from auditorium. The play tackles "issues of
class
Class or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...
and
ideological division, of intolerance and hatred, all of them acted out in a theatre where the actors are as much the audience as the audience the actors."
[Edwards (1994, xxxv).] Lorca's experiments in this direction echo the work of
Pirandello (whose ''
Six Characters in Search of an Author'' (1921) attempted to stage a similar transgression), though Lorca develops the effect in a far more politically orientated, almost
Brechtian
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
direction.
In 2014 the Liberal Arts College Theatre Society (LACTS) adapted Lorca's play to Montréal's unique political setting. Five performances were given at Mainline Theatre in Montréal. Under the direction of Alex Enescu and co-direction of Ryan Tellier the production was voted as the #1 play of 2014 by the prestigious ''Cult(ure) Montréal'' magazine.
References
Works cited
* Edwards, Gwynne. 1994. Introduction. In ''Plays: Three'' by Federico García Lorca. London: Methuen. . p.xi-xxxv.
* García Lorca, Federico. 1994. ''Play Without a Title''. In ''Plays: Three''. Trans. Gwynne Edwards. London: Methuen. . p. 105-124.
* http://mainlinetheatre.ca/en/spectacles/play-without-title
* http://cultmontreal.com/2014/05/best-of-mtl-2014-film-arts/
Plays by Federico García Lorca
1935 plays
Metafictional plays
Unfinished plays
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