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The Directorial Function in the Theatre of Federico García Lorca

Throughout his prolific writing career Lorca explored themes that were simultaneously close to his own heart yet of universal significance, for in his theatre and poetry we can see his almost obsessive concern with the nature of human sexuality, the frustration that he discerns at the core of all human relationships, and his desire to understand the nature of individual identity, especially in relation to society and its expectations, norms and conventions. Central to Lorca’s creative universe as these substantial concerns may be, however, they are by no means the only ones that surface in his work, as another fundamental preoccupation, manifested primarily in his dramatic works, is the very nature of theatre itself, the complex relationships between author and director, production and audience. The metatheatrical dimension of his drama has already been discussed by Silver, Vitale, and Soufas, but it is on one specific aspect of Lorca’s metatheatrical enquiries that this analysis will focus, namely his exploration of the role of the directorial function, an examination that is clear for all to see in some of his experimental works, but which is also present in his rural trilogy where, though camouflaged, the dialectic between author and character, director and actor underpins the staging and dialogue. Wright correctly observes that, ‘in a number of Garcı́a Lorca’s plays, the figure of the Autor/Director/Poeta appears as an agent provocateur who dazzles with his display of verbal wit and light and show’. Nevertheless, as this discussion will attempt to demonstrate, these characters are not just vehicles for toying with the audience, but also embodiments of a very real attempt on Lorca’s part to examine the nature of the relationships