Bernarda Alba and Her House, from Lorca’s masterpiece

2015-16: Redtwist Theatre Guest Company, Poetry Is

Highly Recommended by Windy City Times

Recommended by Chicago Critic

2015: Hyde Park Players Staged Reading as “Mrs. bernarda Alba”

“I’m seeing in your eyes…it appears that I drink your blood slowly.”

Reviews: “Bernarda Alba and Her House”

“…this adaptation preserves and delivers the emotional core of what makes The House of Bernarda Alba such a fascinating character study, with a unique twist.” – Jacob Davis, Chicago Critic

“The results make for a tightly integrated 90-minute spectacle combining instrumental music, body percussion, song, dance, poetry and the spoken word in pursuit of (as Lorca himself once said) ‘lifting the text off the page and making it human.’” – Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City Times

“…in the shadowy, nightmarish world built mainly on imagination, it is much more frightening.” – Jacob Davis, Chicago Critic

“Bring four thousand yellow sparklers and put them on the bordering walls of the pigpen;

no one can prevent what will follow-

that has to happen.”

“All of the sisters are perpetually agitated, and besides being starved for sex, are cooped up with too many people and constantly on edge from lack of privacy. Shoemaker’s concept allows all the inhabitants of Lorca’s play to be sympathetic, while tragically flawed, and finds some beautiful stage pictures while doing so.” – Jacob Davis, Chicago Critic

“…this adaptation preserves and delivers the emotional core of what makes The House of Bernarda Alba such a fascinating character study, with a unique twist.” – Jacob Davis, Chicago Critic

“A concept difficult for modern playgoers to grasp is that of the full-out-take-no-prisoners emotion—sometimes called “duende”—mandatory to interpretation of Lorca’s aesthetic, without which the characters’ extreme actions quickly plummet into camp burlesque. Fortunately, this Poetry Is production (staged in association with the DCASE Lorca In America project) has assembled a company of intuitive actors capable of infusing the Creole dialects and colloquial vocabulary with the sensual darkness necessary to generate the requisite catharsis.” – Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City Times 

“It’s easy for cold-blooded English-speaking audiences to dismiss this dysfunctional clan with a scornful, “Well, that’s 1930s Spain for you!” After all, haven’t the warm countries al- ways been presumed to be writhing in the coils of repressed passions forbidden our phlegmatic peers? Robert Eric Shoemaker’s relocation of Federico Garcia-Lorca’s drama from rural Andalusia to the bayou regions of Louisiana…reduces the denial reflex significantly.” – Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City Times

“Tears when you’re alone!

We shall sink all in a SEA of mourning.”

“Lorca used the concept of duende to describe irrational, morbid emotions evoked by the flamenco, surrealism, puppet-theatre, and folklore he was fascinated by. However, his last play, Bernarda Alba, was a major shift for him stylistically. Lorca stated in the script that the play was meant as a “photographic document.” Shoemaker ignores that instruction. Four dancers sit in the corner of the theatre, and accentuate the action with stomping, singing, musical instruments, and occasionally, joining in the scene to interact with Bernadette’s senile mother, Mary Jo (Nancy Wai). These non-naturalistic innovations massively increases the play’s emotional force in its confined quarters; for while intimacy can strengthen an audience’s connection to a particular character,Bernarda Alba is a large ensemble piece, and music (composed by Przemyslaw Bosak) charges the atmosphere with all the characters’ feelings at once.” – Jacob Davis, Chicago Critic