Southeast Missouri State University student publication

'Blood Wedding': A surreal Spanish tragedy

Thursday, November 4, 2010

The unique Spanish tragedy "Blood Wedding" will be showing at Southeast Missouri State University from Nov. 10 through Nov. 14.

The second show in the Department of Theatre and Dance's fall lineup, "Blood Wedding" follows the story of a young man, his bride to be and a lover from her past.

"Five years before the play starts, the bride has a fling with this other man," said Robert Dillon, the play's director. "Now he is obsessed with her, arrives at their wedding and the bride runs off with him. The tragedy unfolds from there."

While the premise to "Blood Wedding" is straightforward, the steps the play takes to reach the end are anything but, according to Dillon. With surreal poetry worked into the dialogue, Moonlight and Death being actual characters and the use of red streamers to represent blood, the play takes a unique approach to the classic Romeo and Juliet story.

"The dialogue is surreal," Jazmin Patino, the bride in "Blood Wedding," said. "There is poetry throughout the show, some is sung and some is spoken."

In addition to mixing poetry in with regular dialogue, the audience can expect the language to switch between Spanish and English at any time. Patino, who speaks both English and Spanish, says performing parts of a production in Spanish is a different experience and that she feels a cultural connection to the play. "The small details really make a difference," Patino said. "From the way we say hi by kissing the cheek, to the way men stand like bull fighters, it all affects the show."

According to Dillon, while actors speaking Spanish in a play originally titled "Bodas de Sangre" may feel natural, audience members familiar with the production will notice an increase in singing and dancing.

"Federico García Lorca [the original play-write] was fascinated by flamenco and his plays were inspired by the dance," Dillon said. "I wanted to feature more dancing into the play than is required."

Some of these additions include a wedding entourage, a chorus and an original score composed by one of Dillon's friends. "It has a classic Greek feeling of combining music, dance and theatre," Dillon said.

The main theme of the play is about the sacrifices that a woman makes in her life and the show's inevitable outcome, according to Dillon.

"It's like a lot of life's experiences," he said. "It's not necessarily pretty, but it is beautiful."

"Blood Wedding" opens at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 10 in the Rust Flexible Theatre at the River Campus. The production will be open through Saturday at the same time and wraps up the week with a 2 p.m. showing on Sunday.

Pertinent information-River Campus Box Office 651-2265

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