Blood Wedding

BLOOD WEDDING
New Brunswick, NJ
April 2010

written by Jackie Du and Judah Levenson
This project sprang from desires to collaborate with friends and beautiful people in general. The play itself is an organic representation of our New Brunswick/Rutgers social network. The nature of our institutional academic setting has divided creative endeavors into somewhat arbitrary categories, each completely separate from the other; fine arts, performance, music, poetry, etc. Therefore, groups are often compelled to develop events as 'collaborations', meaning cross/inter-disciplinary. Organizing Blood Wedding is an experiment in formally uniting profound individuals and connecting to our (temporary) home as a full community. The relationships between the archetypal fictional characters mirror relationships among friends, and actually more so vice versa, given Lorca's belief in the highly symbolic nature of his characters.

Blood Wedding came to us on accident, in the same way that ones creative genius seems to appear out of nothing or nowhere- by the force of the mystical muse of art that Lorca called "duende". The original setting of rural Spanish gypsy culture renders surprisingly well into our own transitory world. This is because the setting is inconsequential- the play thematizes the predestinations of forbidden love in the context of a socially and religiously repressed world. As a theatrical piece, narrative is inherent and the pre-existing relationships between the characters and their actors complicate the tale. The story is constituted of a buildup of outbursts of intensity which work to express a sense of progression that is fated, and determined from Act One.

Lorca was a poet entranced by the beauty of pure, natural song. Blood Wedding is no exception; it is in a sense one long poem. Like Lorca, we are able to rely on only the ephemeral stories which are told through entrancing visuals and resonances.

We are also:
Kate Illes
Alan Sytnik
Amanda MacLeod
Annalee Switek
Tammer Ibrahim
Joe Castellano
Kate Maley
Amanda Bullis
Heather Yaden
Naqeeb Stevens
Ethan Sherman
Alex Watt
Jenny Katz
Ben Reilly
Kristina Centore
Lisa Festa
+ all the friends that helped out, donating props and sharing their ideas.
+ tent state