The House of Bernarda Alba

Immediately after her second husband is laid to rest, Bernarda Alba imposes an eight-year period of mourning on her household and locks the door. Her five adult daughters are cut off from the outside world. Encounters and desires are strictly controlled for the eldest daughter, and just as strictly forbidden for the others. The house becomes a closed system, with Bernarda acting as the enforcer of tradition and honour within it. Village life is shut out of the house, and the fear of gossip seems only to grow as a result. Constricted in mourning clothes, the daughters keep a watchful eye on one another and begrudge each other the slightest glimpse of the freedom they dream of. They are allowed to spend only the evening in the courtyard, where they hear the stallion in the stable stamping his hooves because he has caught the scent of the neighbour’s mare. Yet alongside the oppression and rivalry, a craving for sensuality also grows within the house – a longing for love and touch, for freedom and a life beyond the walls. It builds up, becoming uncompromising and threatening, rearing up to shatter the system.

Federico García Lorca wrote “The House of Bernarda Alba” in 1936, shortly before his murder by fascists at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Not only his last, it is also arguably also his most radical play. Told in a symbolically condensed form, this “drama of the women in Spain’s villages” recounts very concrete fates, thereby revealing timeless connections. Where do we accept rules that are meant to protect us? When does this set of rules begin to suffocate us? Who benefits from a system that prioritises order over vitality? Which longings are suppressed, pathologised, morally sanctioned? And to whom is a self-determined life granted?

Salome Schneebeli and her team explore the world of Bernarda Alba’s house in a choreographed production on the Main Stage. Schneebeli has worked internationally as a dancer, performer, and choreographer at numerous venues. As a director, her most recent productions include work at the Staatstheater Nuremburg and, now for the fourth time, at Schauspiel Leipzig. Together with Heta Multanen and Demian Wohler, she forms the collective “Das morphologische Institut”.