Yerma by Federico García Lorca
adapted by Ursula Rani Sarma

“Theatre is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair.” - Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca is considered to be one of Spain’s greatest writers, and is one of the most translated Spanish language authors of all time. He was born in 1898 in the Andalusian countryside in the small farming town of Fuente Vaqueros near Granada, Spain. His father (Federico García the 1st) was a very successful (and well-off) landowner who made much of his fortune in sugar, and his mother Vicenta Lorca was a teacher.

In 1915 he began attending the University of Granada as a law student, but found the life of an artist was much more appealing, and began studying music under composer Manuel de Falla. De Falla sparked Lorca’s already keen love of the Spanish countryside with a love of Spanish folk and folklore. This led to the two organizing a flamenco festival in Granada, and a lifelong obsession for Lorca with the concept of “duende” - a Spanish term for the heightened state of emotion and expression evoked as a physical and emotional response to art. 

In 1919, Lorca moved to Madrid to continue his studies, now as a young poet and author. It was there that he became friends with filmmaker Luis Buñuel, and surrealist Salvador Dalí. He and Dalí were said to have had an affair around this time, but when questioned in 1969 about the veracity of this rumor, Dalí denied it fervently. This could also be due to the fact that homosexuality up until the last two decades of the 20th century was still considered a mental illness and aberration in much of the western hemisphere, and wasn’t decriminalized in Spain until 1979. Whether or not the affair occurred, surrealism and Dalí’s influence on Lorca’s work were immense - as was Lorca’s unabashed openness of his own sexuality in his work.

His poetry gained praise and recognition with his most famous work Romancero gitano - a collection of 18 romance poems about the Andalusian countryside and the Romani people and their culture. He was praised for his mastery of metaphor, and the work highlighted much of the symbology and themes that he would continue to touch on in his playwriting (e.g. the night, death, the moon, etc.).

After spending some time in America and absolutely hating New York, he returned to Spain where rumblings of fascism had begun to show. Lorca never claimed any particular political party, but his outspoken socialist views in his works and his sexuality made him a target for the far political right. From 1931 to 1935 he worked on and completed what is now known as his rural trilogy of plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba. All three tragedies had common themes that explored aspirational but ultimately oppressed women who sought freedom in various ways from a patriarchal culture that enforced cloistering them.

The beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 saw the rise of nationalist militias supporting General Francisco Franco, and in the early weeks of the war those militias set out to execute anyone they deemed “leftist” in the areas they had captured (such as schoolteachers, union organizers, intellectuals, artists, etc.). Lorca was captured by one such militia, and was shot without trial on either the 19th or 20th of August 1936. His body was thrown into a pit, and despite many attempts over the following decades, still has not been found. He was 38 years old.