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Blood Wedding Lesson - 14/09/16

We started this lesson by creating a short series of abstract movements with a partner that represented the feeling of falling deeply in love for the first time. Within these movements we had to keep contact with one another as we went from position to position, so as we went from back to back, to face to face (foreheads touching), down to one knee and back up again for the sequence to be repeated continuously. This was interesting because the intimacy between the pairs from the constant touch portrayed an instant idea of romance and intensity. Within my group we were then able to be creative with the facial expressions, pace and tone of the piece to create a more dynamic and interesting piece.

After this exercise we were asked to explore a stimulus: a white wedding dress upon a deep red cloth with a knife on top of it. From this we tried to infer the time, setting and brief plot of the play 'Blood Wedding' by Federico Garcia Lorca. Our initial thoughts were that the play was set around the 19th century in rural Spain and that there were strong themes of love, unrequited love, affairs and murder. After this discussion, we made a sequence of 3 images that displayed what we thought were the 3 main events of the play. These scenes consisted of an initial meeting of two characters and the instant deep love that formed between them, a wedding, and then a final destruction of the relationship with a murdered bride. This sequence was created in only 3 minutes but we were able to show the building of the relationship with levels and proxemics, the two characters becoming closer and more intimate between the first two images (using techniques from the previous exercise) and falling apart suddenly and dramatically between the 2nd and 3rd. 

Before given our final task we were told thoroughly of the plot of 'Blood Wedding' by Lorca and given the first scene to read through. Here we were able to grasp a greater understanding of the story and the way the previous tasks linked into the play. With our greater knowledge of the plot and context of the play we then made a series of 5 images that show the story of the play to fit a set lighting sequence which we were shown previously. The final product is shown in the video below. 


The first image shows the two young protagonists and the love between them, then the parents of both the characters standing behind them, showing their control and power over Leonardo and the Bride, the tension between the two sides of the family is also very evident in this initial scene. Then during the transition to the next image we see the love between Leonardo and the bride become deeper and more intense, this in-turn creating a greater tension between the two families. When the young love is at its strongest (and the two on the floor are kneeling upright), the bride's Father then forces an arranged marriage with another man upon the bride. At this point the lighting changes from the warm orange to a more intense, sharp red reflecting the sinister act of the parent, a cold blue light also appears on the left of the stage, signalling the change in tone in the story. After the Bride and Bridegroom have been married, my character steps back, at this point I am unseen by the audience, if i were to do this again I would move further right so that I was visible to the audience. At the same time we see Leonardo's mother become intimate and possessive over him whilst he keeps his eye contact with the bride. Leonardo then slowly moves toward the bride and takes her hand, at this point the Bridegroom, Bride's father and Leonardo's mother all fall suddenly to the floor, showing the impact this act had on them. Leonardo's mother then distances herself as she slowly rises, keeping intense eye contact with the Bride's father during the transition to the final image. The Bridegroom rises fully to his feet, showing his anger and eager to find the eloped couple. The couple, meanwhile, do a sequence of movements from the first exercise of the lesson which showed both their deep, undeniable love for one another yet also their frustration and anger with one another's actions. The piece ends with one line spoken by the bridegroom from the Moon's monologue at the end of the play  and the final image is shown, both parents on the floor (although the bride's father still active in the search for his daughter) and the two men with their knives drawn facing one another with a harsh red light foreshadowing the bloody end to the play.







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