A Window Closes

One night about a year ago, during an intellectual gabfest in Madrid's Cafe Gijon, two young authors, Jose Maria Da Quinto and Jose Gordon, thought up a way to skirt the government censorship of the stage. Why not form a private club to put on shows for members only? Franco's rules did not forbid it. So the club La Caratula (The Mask) was born.

Hundreds joined, paying monthly fees of 20 pesetas ($1.84). Playwrights took no royalties. Directors and actors donated their services. Within a year La Caratula staged single performances of a score of modern plays banned from the public theater (e.g., Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie). Madrid's top critics attended and wrote much-discussed reviews. Author Da Quinto exulted: "A small window has opened out on the world."

The Censor Sees. Last week Da Quinto & Co. put on their most daring show--The House of Bernardo, Alba, by Spain's late great Federico Garcia Lorca. The Andalusian poet, a symbol of intellectual opposition to Francisco Franco's regime, had written the play a few months before his murder in 1936 by Falangist gunmen.

A sultry tragedy of village life, it centers around the bigoted, domineering Widow Bernarda Alba. After the funeral of her second husband, she shuts her five daughters off from the outside world for eight years of mourning.

Envenomed by repression, all the sisters fall madly in love with Pepe El Romano, who is engaged to the eldest, Angustias. Night after night the youngest, Adela, slips outside to make love to Pepe in a barn. The ugliest sister, Martirio, informs Bernarda. In an outburst of fury the widow shoots Pepe. Adela hangs herself.

Lest the censor interfere, La Caratula did not make any public announcement of the show. But word seeped through the cafes. The club's membership quickly expanded. When the curtain rose on a simple cardboard backdrop depicting Bernarda Alba's village home, a capacity audience was on hand. In the front row sat the supreme censor himself, bespectacled Garcia Espina, Director General of the Theater and Cinema.

When the final curtain fell, applause rang out loud & long. From the spectators a voice called: "Garcia Lorca!" In response, the curtain rose on an empty stage. Everyone understood, and cheered.

The Censor Says. Critics rushed out to write their reviews. They were stopped cold by an order already on their desks. It was from Censor Garcia Espina: "No reviews permitted, now or in the future, of La Caratula shows. Only short news items."

Next morning Da Quinto and Gordon pleaded with the censor. "This means." they said, "a final blow to the theater in Spain." Shamefaced Censor Garcia Espina shrugged. "I'm just as sorry as you are," he said. "But orders are orders. You think I'm the boss, but I'm just an egg between two stones." Mumbled Da Quinto: "The Bernardas of Spain have the last word. The window is closed once more."

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