Last year's premiere and Festival success, the play Blood Wedding directed by Franka Perković Gamulin and performed by the Festival Drama Ensemble, returns to the programme of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival from Thursday, 27 July to Saturday, 29 July on the Island of Lokrum, with 9.30 p.m. being the starting time of all performances.
In July 1928, for days the Spanish newspapers and weeklies would report on the tragedy which happened in the field near Nijar, in the province of Almería; the bride escaped from the wedding ceremony with her cousin to mock the groom. A masked person with a gun approached the runaways and killed the man. The true tragedy that made the newspaper headlines and news drew the attention of Federico García Lorca who saw the potential for a great poetic drama placed in the social context of struggle between passion and tradition, need and duty.
The characters in Blood Wedding are victims of their own passions and inevitability of their wrong choices or tragic destinies. A double curse is upon them: within the confines of their social class, passion remains their only space of freedom, even at the cost of damnation or death.
Embodying Lorca’s characters are Festival Drama Ensemble: Jadranka Đokić plays the Mother, Lana Meniga and Luka Knez the Fiancées, Ksenija Marinković the Mother-in-Law and the Beggar, Nikola Baće Leonardo, Iva Kraljević his wife, Nikša Butijer Fiancée’s Father and the Moon, and Tanja Smoje who plays the Maid. The choir are Jelica Čučević, Maro Drobnić, Tonći Đurković, Marko Capor, Ivo Letunić, Tajana Martić, Mara Metković and Vanesa Vidaković Natrlin, led by choirmaster Mojmir Novaković.
Director Franka Perković Gamulin has already met with challenging and great authors like Lorca in her previous theatre work, and her creative team for this play consists of dramaturge Goran Ferčec, set designer Igor Vasiljev, costume designer Doris Kristić, music composers Mojmir Novaković and Ivo Letunić, lighting designer Elvis Butković, associate for stage movement Matija Ferlin, assistant director Toma Serdarević, assistant costume designer Linda Mihaliček and stage manager Roko Grbin.
Franka Perković Gamulin is known to Dubrovnik audiences for her staging of Saved by Tomislav Zajec. She studied Comparative Literature, Linguistics and Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. In 2005 she received her degree in Theatre Directing and Broadcasting from the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb. Over the last twenty-five years she has directed dozens of theatre plays. Along with Dora Ruždjak Podolski, she is the founder and longtime Artistic Director of the KUFER Theatre Company, and then of the Ruždjak i Perković artistic organization. From 2000 to 2005 she was Artistic Director of Children’s Theatre Dubrava in Zagreb. Since 2009 she has served as a lecturer at the Acting Department of the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb.
The boat to Lokrum will depart from the Old Town Port at 8.45 p.m., and the return is immediately after the performance.
Tickets for the play and other Festival events are available via the festival website www.dubrovnik-festival.hr or the service www.ulaznice.hr, at the box office in the Festival Palace (Od Sigurate 1) every day from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and in front of the DTS building (Vukovarska St) from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Photos (c) Marko Ercegović