Female Power: Wild Rice’s The House of Bernarda Alba

PUBLISHED March 10th, 2014 02:00 am | UPDATED January 20th, 2016 03:11 pm

It seems appropriate following International Women’s Day to talk about Wild Rice’s upcoming production of The House Of Bernarda Alba, a production that brings together Singapore’s best actresses. The piece stars a veritable who’s who of female acting talent that spans generations (Margaret Chan, Claire Wong, Neo Swee Lin, Karen Tan, Noorlinah Mohamed, Serene Chen, Jo Kukathas, Sharda Harrison, Glory Ngim and Sharon Lim).

The House of Bernarda Alba is a masterpiece of modern European theatre by Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca. It is the story of a woman whose tyrannical oppression of her daughters transforms her house into a powder keg of tension, jealousy, anger, and fear. In the village, where everyone knows everything about everybody, honour is serious business.

For Wild Rice’s production, the action is transposed from 1930s rural Spain to Singapore’s rigid, rule-bound Peranakan community in an internationally acclaimed adaptation by Singaporean playwright Chay Yew. To keep up appearances after the death of her husband, tyrannical mother Bernarda resolves to seal her family off from the world to mourn for eight years.  It is a decision that effectively compels her five daughters to give up love and happiness for a life of duty and obligation.

We asked Director, Glen Goei, to give us his insights on the play:

Why did W!LD RICE choose to present Lorca’s ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’?

I’ve actually been wanting to do it for over ten years now. Chay Yew, a very good friend of mine, wrote his adaptation in 2002 while he was staying with me in London. The play’s themes of patriarchy, control, oppression and repression are issues that keep coming back to me in my work. And I do think these themes and Lorca’s ideas will resonate in Singapore and with Singaporeans too.

Why transpose the play into a Peranakan setting in Singapore?

Peranakan culture is so rich in traditions and it’s quite rule-bound, all tied up with notions of class, morality and religion. The same can be said of Lorca’s play and his characters. Bernarda shuts her five daughters up to mourn for eight years! That’s really extreme, but this idea of adhering to tradition and social convention – sometimes to a radical extent that your community doesn’t even require of you – underpins much of the emotional drama and truth of The House Of Bernarda Alba.

It has been mentioned that Lorca’s characters are their own worst enemies in this play – would you agree?

That’s definitely fair to say. The characters in this play are living in a patriarchal society, one with strict rules and traditions about morality and religion. So, of course, they are oppressed and forced to do things they don’t want to do. But, to a large extent, a lot of what happens to them is self-imposed. The patriarch is gone! The death of Bernarda’s husband is what kicks off the entire play. Do they still need to keep to the old rules, the old ways?

What is your greatest challenge, as the director and what are the cast’s greatest challenges?

The challenge for the entire company is the same – trying to communicate both the story of and the symbolism in Lorca’s play. The House Of Bernarda Alba can be read as a straightforward kitchen-sink domestic melodrama, but that would be to do Lorca a huge injustice. There are so many themes he’s woven into the structure of his play. We need to communicate so many things to the audience: Lorca’s big ideas, his questioning of accepted authority and tradition; while also bringing the individual characters to life. It’s tricky!

Why should we see this play and what can the audience look forward to?

I think the obvious answer is to say that you must see this incredible cast perform together onstage – I doubt we’ll see the likes of this ensemble again in the near future! How could anyone resist? But, to be honest, I think the play itself deserves to be seen. In Singapore, we’re not as familiar with Lorca’s work as we are with the plays of William Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde. But he deals with such universal ideas, in so sensitive and poetic a way, that it’s a crime he and The House Of Bernarda Alba aren’t better-known.

So don’t miss this production of one of the world’s greatest plays – it’s definitely going to be one of the highlights of 2014!

You can see Wild Rice’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba at the Drama Centre from 12 March to 29 March 2014.  For more information, please visit www.sistic.com.sg and www.wildrice.com.sg.