Three Plays: Blood Wedding, Yerma, The House of Bernarda Alba

Few modern playwrights rival Federico García Lorca in the creation of poetic drama. In these three plays, his acknowledged masterpieces, he searched for a contemporary mode of tragedy and reminded his audience that dramatic poetry or poetic drama depends less on formal convention than on an elemental, radical outlook on human life. His images are strikingly beautiful and poetically exact, but no American translator has ever been able to make his characters speak unaffectedly. Here, Michael Dewell of the National Repertory Theatre and Carmen Zapata of the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts have created versions that are both performable and readable. This edition is introduced by Christopher Maurer, the general editor of the Complete Poetical Works of García Lorca.