A Wedding in Blood

This spring, the Austin Community College Drama Department will be putting on "Blood Wedding," a show with ample amounts of family feuding, gore and death.

"Blood Wedding," written by Federico Garcia Lorca (1933), is the story of a bride who runs away with her lover and subsequently is murdered by her husband. Blood flows as two Spanish families become embroiled in a feud.

"The play is a classic of 20th century drama," said ACC Drama Department chair Shelby Brammer. "It's [based] on a newspaper story out of 1920s Spain."

"I try to choose plays that speak to the moment or seem timely in some way [and] Blood Wedding could come straight off of cable TV news, [it has] obsession, violence, love, sorrow and vengeance," said Brammer. "It's also a lot about the repression of women, and what happens to society when women are tightly controlled or kept down, something still very much with us today."

Like Cole Porter's "Anything Goes," which the Drama Department produced last fall, "Blood Wedding" will be performed with music. But it is not considered a musical. Francisco Chavez, a professional composer from Mexico City, has set Lorca's poetic lyrics to music and guest singer/artist Kitty Scott.

Scott recently performed in Border Radio, a show in which Texas artists get together with radio stations just over the U.S.-Mexican border to tell stories and make music.

"We like to bring in more experienced performers from the community so that our students may learn from them [and] it encourages an outside audience for our performances," said Brammer. Students also showcase their musical talent.

In addition to the music composed by Chavez, there will be an additional fight scene done in slow motion between ACC students Joseph Hartfield (the bridgegroom) and Javier Arista (Leonardo), although the original play only infers a fight between the two.

Former ACC student Brittney Salaiz, who plays the Bride, proves to be passionate and is able to successfully exhibit and communicate her feelings of sorrow and grief over the deaths of her husband and her lover Leonardo.

"It was really depressing," Salaiz said. "After we rehearsed, [I would go] home sad."

Blood Wedding exhibits passion, love, vengeance and the injustice of fate. The sultry strings of the Spanish guitar, music and lyrics provided by Francisco Chavez and Kitty Scott, and the dream-like forest all transport the audience to the world of rural Spain.

The play opens Friday, Feb. 24, at the Rio Grande campus and will run until March 5. Tickets are available 30 minutes before the show.