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ABOUT YERMA: "Federico Garcia Lorca's play, set in cracked earth and harsh sunlight, tells the tale of a woman, Yerma, intentionally kept barren by her dried-out husk of a husband. With her husband's every attempt to dry up her tremendous life force, Yerma fights more desperately to be quenched. It is not just children she wants, but the sense of self and meaning which comes from the independent, actualized identity of which she is being deprived. The entire action of the play is that of a woman dragging herself across an infinite desert, by sheer will alone, until she gets that one sip of water. On the face of it, the action of the play proceeds realistically until the "laundresses" scene. Here, the stifling masculine presence that has dominated the play up until this moment vanishes. A group of washerwomen sings songs of Yerma's childless marriage. At this rushing river, we are suddenly in a universe of only women. And strangely the songs are not merely songs that these women sing, but pagan hymns of fertility – songs not of the earth but of the heavens. Abruptly, we realize that what we are watching is not realism. Lorca was an intimate of Salvador Dali's and the surrealist's influence is unmistakable in the Spanish poet's work. The washerwomen function as a pantheon of goddesses. They are no different than Hera, Athena and Aphrodite at the Judgment of Paris. They reclaim the play to the mythic world. These washerwomen, these disguised goddesses, pronounce a verdict that wrenches the play away from its linear course. Like re-routing a mighty river, or exploding a dam, the second half of the play is a torrent toward tragedy, reclaiming everything in its path. |