Friday, April 18, 2008

Play of the Week: Blood Wedding

Imagine feeling helpless against the fates. Imagine reliving the same awful experience again and again. Imagine reliving the same awful experience and knowing that it only happened because of ignorance, hatred, and fear.

Sounds like something that can be applied to several situations in our world right now.

In Frederico Garcia Lorca's poignant allegory, Blood Wedding, a mother is forced to watch the same cycles of violence. She has buried her husband and her sons - all died young and all died blood. Yet she is willing to let her youngest son go off to be married, despite knowing what will inevitably happen next. It is her strength in the end that allows her to persevere, but maybe angrier and less optimistic.

The story of this small town in rural nowhere poses a question for the whole world: why can't we learn from our mistakes? Why do we continue to do things out of hate that distance us and lead to tragic loss of life?

And these questions don't have to only apply to regions of the world that suffer from genocide, war and other immense tragedies. There are thousands of small deaths and wounds that we suffer through every day. All of them preventable. All of them needless, yet we choose to continue down that path. Will it take an intervention from the gods to make us let go of this pattern? Or is there a way to rise above the dirge and start to make a better life?

No comments:

Post a Comment