LORCA is a poetic tribute by Joost Oomen & The Poezieboys to Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, who met a gruesome end.
LORCA was the big hit at Oerol 2023. Audiences also fell en masse for an abridged version of the play at De Parade 2023. Now the play will come to theaters this fall!
About the Performance
The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca is widely known for writing theater pieces like Yerma and Blood Wedding. What people usually don’t know is: Lorca, in the last months of his life, was working on a Surrealistic stage play, The Public. This ‘secret’ piece was the starting point for Joost Oomen and the Poezieboys to write a Poetic Tribute to the murdered poet.
It was weirder and way more evocative than all his other works. He toiled away at this odd piece on a ship somewhere between Cuba and Spain. He wrote The Public as a Surrealistic piece because—after a months-long journey, driven from home by all-consuming heartbreak—he was finally returning to the land of the Great Prince of Dreams: Salvador Dalí. To let this dadaist with curly mustache know who’s boss, Lorca wrote a play full of horses, a red nude, men with beards, an upside-down Christ, an inspector, a tambourine, a mother, a wine-o and a blizzard of glacé gloves.
There was no way for him to know that he would later have to hide that piece at a friend’s house because of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. There was no way for him to know that no one knew how to play his strange piece because he would be shot by fascists. And there was no way for him to know that eighty-seven years later his piece would become the starting point for a wild, poetic adventure—an adventure of three guys (four if you include Federico himself) who would kick the stale theater scene in the teeth.
Agenda
In the media
“LORCA is an empathetic and striking theaterfest full of Love.”
Theaterkrant, Sander Janssens
“I thought it was beautiful, bemusing, and moving.”
Frits Spits in Opium op Oerol
“One of the most humorous and layered performances this year.”
Cornald Maas in Opium op Oerol
Credits
Concept Joost Oomen, Joep Hendrikx, Jos Nargy Direction Ellen Goemans Play Joost Oomen, Joep Hendrikx, Jos Nargy Design Pleun Verhees, Sjaan Hofstede Lighting Iain Hoeffnagel Executive Producer Sanne Priem Production Lead Thijs ten Berge Production Coordinator Thijs ten Berge Technique Dario Giustarini Marketing Mathé Többen, Dieke van der Spek
Made possible by: Station Noord, We the North, Ministerie van OCW, Oerol, De Parade, Het Nationale Theater – Zaal 3, gemeente Leeuwarden, provincie Fryslân, and the Dutch Foundation for Literature.
