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Yerma

Yerma is a free translation of a play by Garcia Lorca. It was a co-commission from the National Theatre and the West Yorkshire Playhouse. The brief, from director Roisin McBrinn, was to write a translation to reflect the lyricism of the original text. A specific research challenge was to make the play relevant to contemporary audiences and to make the central character more sympathetic and engaging. It was decided to move the setting to 1950s Ireland, requiring some rewriting. Research practice involved spending 6 weeks at the National Theatre Studio where I studied five different translations of Yerma, both dramatic and literal. As the play includes a number of songs I also researched the challenges of writing text to be sung. The conclusions of the research process was to change the emphasis of the play. In most of the versions I read, Yerma’s inability to have a child was tied to the social implications of her being unable to ‘perform’ as a woman should at that time. She was also quite repetitive as a character and her constant complaining made her unsympathetic. I replaced her obsession with being unable to ‘perform’ as a woman with the frustration of not being able to get what it is that you most desire, a concept which I felt a contemporary audience could relate to more easily. Yerma premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in March 2011 and is published by Oberon Books. It will get its second production in March 2013 in London by RADA.