The House of Bernarda Alba doesn’t fit the typical “girls night out” stereotype, but you won’t see any males in this show.
The production, directed by Jessika Malone and assistant director Rebekah Reimer, will be playing Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays starting Feb. 17 at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 4:30 p.m. at the Troutt Theater. Belmont students can go to the play for free with their student ID.
The production will be performed by Belmont student actors and professional actors from the Actors Bridge, a professional theater company in Nashville.
“Some of our faculty members are actually in Actors Bridge, so they bring in professionals to act in the play with the students so they get to have a professional credit on their resume, and they get to say they worked with professionals,” said Reimer.
Professional help was essential to the show as it is a powerful production, and each role has a challenging story to share.
Federico Lorca wrote the play to display the oppression Spain experienced during their country’s civil war. After the play was published, he was killed in 1936 for writing the play and expressing his political beliefs.
The play follows five women confined to their house in Spain; their story is a parallel to Lorca’s perception of the Spanish revolution.
“It describes the strictness of tradition and how tradition can suffocate a household. It’s a parallel with the Spanish revolution and the idea that having to have things be a certain way can suffocate and cause revolution,” said Reimer.
While all five women eventually fight over one man, he never appears on stage. The entire production is centered around the same five women who are bound to eight years of mourning.
“The women are pressed so far into a repressed state that they become like animals. The extent to how far these girls go with their roles and their willingness to fight for their own piece is awesome,” said Reimer.
The story line centers around a man, but the play covers issues such as women’s rights, oppression, war, Catholicism, and the dysfunction that can develop in relationships.
“I want the audience to feel changed in some way by these girls and have some sort of realization about something in their own life. What is it that they truly want and would fight for? What could inspire them and create this kind of fire in them that created this kind of fire in these girls? I want them to think about things in a different way,” said Reimer.