About the Play

Frederico García Lorca wrote the original play in 1934, just two years before his murder by firing squad at the hands of right-wing Spanish militants. The American Conservatory Theatre commissioned the translation and adaptation in 2015, and the play received a world premiere at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston in 2019. The adaptation is “...approachable, even conversational, without losing the beauty of Lorca’s poetry” according to the arts fuse.

For director Katja Rivera, a longtime Shotgun Players company member, the play felt particularly resonant. She explains, “I’m setting this in Southern California, in a Mexican American rural community in the 30’s, as an homage to the San Fernando Valley where my father spent his youth. His mother, my paternal grandmother, died of complications from childbirth, the same year that Yerma was written and first performed. Once I discovered that connection, I knew I had to set it in this time and place.”

Rivera says, “In her adaptation, Lopez has changed the play in bold, and I think very cool ways. I would like to shift it back to California, with a Latine/Mexican-Californian lens. It’s why I cast Latine actors.” Castro Valley based actress and new mother Regina Morones plays the titular character of Yerma while San Francisco based Caleb Cabrera plays her husband, Juan.

Yerma explores the ways in which one’s greatest desire can become an all-consuming passion. Rivera describes Yerma’s journey, “There is a storm, a fire that consumes Yerma.” When asked how she would like audiences to feel after watching the sensual, powerful drama, Rivera says, “A catharsis. I want them to feel gutted.”
 

About Frederico García Lorca

Lorca was born on June 5, 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada province, Spain. He was a Spanish poet and playwright who, in a career that spanned just 19 years, resurrected and revitalized the most basic strains of Spanish poetry and theatre. He is known primarily for his Andalusian works, including the poetry collections Romancero Gitano (1928), and Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (1935), and the tragedies Bodas de Sangre (1933, Yerma (1934), and La casa de Bernarda Alba (1936). In the early 1930s, Lorca helped inaugurate a second Golden Age of the Spanish theatre. He was executed on August 18 or 19, 1936 in Granada province by a Nationalist firing squad in the first months of the Spanish Civil War.

About Melinda Lopez

Lopez is a playwright, actress and educator, and is the recipient of the 2019 Elliot Norton Award (Boston Theatre Critics Assoc.) for Sustained Excellence. She is currently the artist-in-residence at the Huntington Theatre Co., Boston, and was the inaugural Mellon Foundation Playwright-in-Residence, 2013-2019. She is a Professor of the Practice at Northeastern University, and teaches playwriting at the Boston University, Playwriting MFA Program. Ms. Lopez is active in the Cuban-American community and makes her home in Boston. Most recently, her play Mala was presented in both Spanish and English and toured to venues in Mexico and the San Diego community, as well as graced the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre at the Old Globe.

About Katja Rivera

Katja studied at Los Angeles City College Theatre Academy and the Drama Studio London at Berkeley. She first hit the Shotgun Players stage again with the production of Silence and the Storyteller. Other Shotgun productions include Three Sisters (Anfisa), We Won't Pay (Antonia), and King Lear (the Fool). She's also acted with the Magic Theatre, Theatre Rhinoceros, Center Rep, and Geoffrey Chaucer and Co. She has directed with Shotgun Players, Eastenders Rep, Subterranean Shakespeare, Boxcar Theatre, Custom Made Theatre, and SF Playground. She is also a proud member of A.E.A. and S.F. Playground.