Workshop: La Casa de Bernarda Alba
Description:
We offer an interactive Drama Workshop about “The House of Bernarda Alba” one the most famous plays of the Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. This workshop is aimed at Spanish students who are working on this text for their A Levels.
This workshop is divided in three areas: drama games aimed to encourage the use of the Spanish language by the students, a brief introduction about the playwright and the play “La Casa de Bernarda Alba”, analysis of the main topic of the play and performance of a selection of scenes.
We offer the workshop in Spanish exclusively or in Spanish and English, to ensure that every workshop is adapted to the students Spanish level. We also provide educational material to support their learning and preparation for A level exams.
The workshop is led by one facilitator, and can either be delievered at your school or hosted at our venue. The facilitator will guide some drama games to encourage the use of Spanish by the students. Following this, the facilitator will analyse the play with the students, explaining the main topics and characters. Then there will be a screening of some of the scenes of our professional production of the play and the facilitator will analyse with the students the symbols and topics. Finally the facilitator will prepare some of the scenes of the play with the students and they will perform them.
The duration of the workshop is 2 hours 30 minutes.
Facilitators/actresses: one actress acting as a facilitator
Number of students: Up to 25
Duration: 2:30h
Level: A Levels
Price £320 (plus travelling costs for 1 person if outside London)
CURRÍCULUM
Spanish A Level:
AQA (pgs 18 & 23): https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/spanish/specifications/AQA-7692-SP-2016.PDF
Edexcel (pgs 12 & 49):
How this workshops meets the curriculum’s demands:
- Develops a detailed understanding and appreciation of the play.
- Exposes students to features such as: key concepts and issues, characterisation, form and technique of presentation (e.g. by analising dialogue in the text and the different characters’ roles) and social and cultural setting.
- Presents different viewpoints depending on the characters’ perceptions that stimulate students to wage evidence and come to their own conclusions.
- Develops arguments and draws conclusions which are then evaluated in group.
- Equip students with the necessary knowledge to write critical and analytical responses.
- By the end, students will be confident to answer any A Level question related to the play.
WORKSHOP STRUCTURE
This workshop can either be delivered in Spanish or in a combination of Spanish and English.
0:00h – 0:10h – Calentamiento. Incluye los ejercicios “me llamo y me pica” y “¿qué haces?” (Warm-up. Includes exercises “I’m called and its itchy” and “what are you doing?”)
0:10h – 0:30h – Análisis de la obra (Analysis of the play)
Incluyendo: Argumento; personajes; temas (autoritarismo, represión de la mujer, miedo a las apariencias, clasismo, deseo sexual y libertad); símbolos (casa, bastón, agua, calor, caballo, colores: verde, blanco, negro). Including: Argument; characters; themes (athoritarianism, women represion, fear of appearance, social hierarchy, sexual desire, freedom); symbols (house, cane, water, heat, horse, colours: green, white, black)
0:30h – 1:15h – Visualización de seis escenas de la obra mediante la película de nuestra producción y reflexión sobre ellas (Visualization of six scenes of the play through the film of our production and brainstorming about them)
Acto 1: La Poncia y la Criada durante el funeral (Act 1 – Poncia and Servant during the funeral)
Acto 1: Amelia y Martirio (Act 1 – Amelia and Martirio)
Acto 1: Confrontación sobre maquillaje entre Bernarda y Angustias (Act 1 – confrontation over make up between Angustias and Bernarda)
Acto 2: Enfrentamiento entre Adela y Poncia (Act 2: clash between Adela and Poncia)
Acto 3: Enfrentamiento final entre Adela y Martirio (Act 3: final clash between Adela and Martirio)
Acto 3: Suicidio de Adela (Act 3: Adela’s suicide)
1:15h – 1:35h – Ejercicios sobre la obra: creación de imágenes fijas (Exercises related to the play: freeze frames)
Representando uno de los cinco temas de la obra tratados en la segunda sección del taller (representing one of the five themes of the play analysed on the second section of the workshop)
1:35h – 2:15h – Tres escenas recreadas por los estudiantes con la ayuda de la facilitadora (Three scenes performed by students with the help of the facilitator)
Escena en que se anuncia el luto (scene where the mourning is anounced)
Escena de los segadores (Scene of reapers)
Escena de la Librada (Scene about Librada’s story)
2:15h – 2:30h – Cierre: listado en cartulinas grandes sobre lo aprendido en el taller (Closing: listing in large cardboards about what has been learned from the workshop)
Workshop activities applicable and their relation to the curriculum
| CURRICULUM | WORKSHOP |
| Develop a detailed understanding and appreciation of the play. | After giving a quick summary of the plot, the workshop dwelves into an in-depth exploration of all the characters. It then focuses on several themes of the play and relates them to particular characters and scenes. It also illustrates them with quotes. |
| Be familiar with key concepts and issues, characterisation, form and technique of presentation. | The workshop examines the symbolism of the play – a key literary technique in Lorca’s poetic universe – relating them to aforementioned themes. In this way, students will appreciate how the author’s literary devices shape the thematic content of the text. |
| Know different viewpoints depending on the characters’ perceptions. | Our workshops features multiple different insights of the characters from the actresses that performed them at our production of the play. Often giving contrasting views, it creates a full picture of the complex interpersonal dynamics in the house and stimulates the students to come up with their own conclusions. |
| Develop arguments and draw conclusions about the text. | The workshop runs through several scenes of the play by showing parts of the film of our production. After each scene, the facilitator guides a group conversation that aims to analyse how the previously introduced themes, literary devices and character studies are discernible in the situation. In this way students are exposed to different views and are encouraged to think critically about the text. |
| Amass the necessary knowledge to write critical and analytical responses. | In the last section of the workshop, the students are encouraged to perform a scene. It is a chance for them to step into the shoes of a character and experience their situation. Finally, at the end of the session the students will write on a cardboard the key themes, characters and symbols of the play. This way they will have a holistic notion of how the different aspects of the play relate to each other, as well as know what to prioritise in an essay answer. |