SOU Theatre presents: Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca, Directed by Paul Barnes. Performances run May 22, 2025- June 1, 2025 on the SOU Main Stage Theatre.

Tickets are available online at https://sou.universitytickets.com or by calling the OCA Box Office at 541-552-6348. Accommodations for wheelchair seating and assisted listening devices are available by request via email: boxoffice@sou.edu

Blood Wedding is a fiery tale of a bride torn between her fiancé and a forbidden lover, set against a backdrop of family feuds and societal pressures. It dives into love, lust, and violence, unraveling the darker side of marriage in a world where duty outweighs desire.

PERFORMANCES:
Thursday, May 22 - 8:00pm (opening)
Friday, May 23 - 8:00pm
Saturday, May 24 - 8:00pm
Thursday, May 29 - 8:00pm
Friday, May 30 - 8:00pm (Talk back w/ actors after the show)
Saturday, May 31- 2:00pm
Saturday, May 31- 8:00pm
Sunday, June 1 - 2:00pm (closing matinee)

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: Federico García Lorca is considered one of Spain's greatest poets and dramatists. He was born June 5, 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, Spain. He went to Madrid in 1919 where he met Salvador Dali who would later design the scenery for a production of Lorca's play.

Dali would later design the scenery for the Barcelona production of Lorca's play Mariana Pineda (1927).

Lorca's two most successful poetry collections were Canciones (Songs), published in 1927, and Romancero gitano (the Gypsy Ballads), published in 1928. Romancero gitano was especially daring for the time with its exploration of sexual themes and made Lorca a celebrity in the literary world. In the 1930s, Lorca spent much of his time working on plays, including a folk drama trilogy Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) in 1933, Yerma in 1934, and La Casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba) in 1936.

During the Spanish Civil war he was shot to death by supporters of General Francisco Franco.

From Paul Barnes, Director
I believe a director is a storyteller, the conduit from the playwright to the audience. When I enter the rehearsal process I try to know more about the play than anyone else; by the time I slip out the back door on opening night, I should know less than those who will carry the play forward. For each production, I strive to provide a clear and specific vision and to promote a rehearsal environment of rigor, safety, humor and ease.

I’ve directed Shakespeare, musicals, revues, new plays and classics in all sorts of venues with resources ranging from minimal to lavish. I’ve worked with large casts and small, with accomplished professionals and artists in training. No matter the particulars, I ask the same questions: “What’s the story? What is the most compelling way we can tell it?” Ultimately, I want productions I direct to proclaim “Playwright!” “Audience!” - not scream “Director! Director!”

Along the way, I intend for everyone to have a challenging, transformative experience from which we all derive deep and lasting satisfaction.

About the Director
I’m bi. . . coastal. Connecticut childhood; California adolescence; Oregon adulthood. And I’m “that guy who drives” (as Ben Barnes put it one morning when we happened to sit next to each other in the café at the Plaza Hotel in Milwaukee). It’s in my blood; not to be denied.

I grew up in a small town close enough to New York City to experience its glories and opportunities with the fearlessness of a kid who didn’t know any better. My family and my friends’ families enjoyed Carnegie Hall concerts and Broadway shows, but we came home to a town still rural enough that locking the door was never a necessity. I studied piano, took ballroom dance lessons, went ice skating and sledding in the winter, swam and chased fireflies in the summer, and first appeared on stage as a flower – really! -- in my second grade class’s production of The Nutcracker at Evangeline M. Post Elementary School. But life really began to change in the third or fourth grade when I got to go back stage and shake Amahl’s hand after attending a local theater’s production of Amahl and the Night Visitors.

A few years later, transplanted to the other side of the country, I saw my high school theater department’s production of You Can’t Take It With You on the same weekend I attended Gypsy, performed by a semi-professional theater company in Palo Alto. That was it. Hooked. Drama elective the next school year, roles in my first-ever school plays, my maiden voyage as playwright-director (“The Orphans Christmas,” performed in my garage by an unsuspecting group of kids who lived on the block). Few detours ever since. I started directing almost as soon as I began acting; it just took some time to realize that it was behind rather than in front of the table where I felt most at home. I’ve taken directing classes, but it’s been in the observation and in the doing that I’ve acquired whatever craft I bring to the room. If I’m an artist -- well, I can only thank natural instinct, DNA, whatever gifts with which I have been endowed, and my love of a good story – along with the tempering that a life not without its ups and downs has provided. Dick Cavett once asked Hal Prince how you become a director. Prince replied: “You announce to the world that you’re a director, and then you get someone to hire you.” Or words to that effect. I’ve been lucky that people have hired me, and I’ve been fortunate to have great teachers and role models to emulate: David Buck, Tom McKenzie, William Ball (and his entire San Francisco ACT company), Jerry Turner, Pat Patton, Peggy Rubin, Jim Edmondson. . . and I’ve been fortunate to have been able to practice my craft pretty steadily. Although I have a theatre degree – and studied directing as an undergraduate at California State University at Fullerton -- my training has been in the practice: as a high school drama teacher in Stockton, California, as Associate Artistic Director/Conservatory Director at PCPA Theaterfest, as Producing Director of the Great River Shakespeare Festival, and as a free-lancer traversing the country, blessed with a diverse, mostly non-stop array of assignments.