ONCE FIVE YEARS PASS ( Legend of Time)
Written by Federico Garcia Lorca
Translated by Murat Uyurkulak, Claude Leon, Mahir Günşiray, Zerrin Yanıkkaya
Directed by Mahir Günşiray
Music Turgay Erdener
Stage Design Claude Leon
Costume Design Çağla Ormanlar
Light Design Ruzdı Alıjı
Musical Director Kerem Berkalp
Costume Assistant Nilgün Öztunalı
Assistant Director Sibel Akdeniz Demirtaş
Make-up Elif Girgin
Hair Design Özgür Şahİn
Production Manager Nilgün Kurt
Performers Yurdaer Okur, Şebnem Köstem, Selva Erdener, Canberk Uçucu, Selen Öztürk, Zekeriya Karakaş, Özlem Turhal, Murat Taşkent
On the production
Lorca completed his play ‘Once Five Years Pass' on 19 August 1931. It is a tragic coincidence that he was executed by a firing squad of fascists exactly five years later on the same day. Both his view of life and his love of ‘man' were found dangerous and he was killed. ‘I am not a political person, but I am a revolutionary,' said the poet, and he always advocated change in his work also; and the work he left behind when he was killed at the age of 38 presents a wide spectrum.
‘Once Five Years Pass' and ‘The Audience', two plays that are quite different from his more famous plays, ‘The Blood Wedding', ‘Yerma' and ‘The House of Bernarda Alba' have never been staged in Turkey before, and only rarely throughout the world. However, in a speech he made in his final years, he says his real intention lies in these ‘impossible' plays. These texts are the indicators of what Lorca really wanted to do theatrically and are attacks on the pioneering naturalist theatre approach of Spain in that era. With a structure that allows for versatile readings and stagings, it can be said to be a pioneering theatrical text and is a great ‘duel' both for theatre people and the audience. One of the greatest poets of our age, Lorca relates love and death with an extraordinarily fantastic language, by stopping time in an imaginary world. And lashes an essential question across our faces: To live love now, risking everything, or to wait, delay, idealize, so as to meet real love you hope you will find some day? Delaying love is a crime against nature according to Lorca and ends with death. Be they men or women, Lorca's characters continue their search to meet the love they dream of and the body they desire, risking their lives, they look for a way out, they try to liberate their bodies under the threat of being disciplined.
In Once Five Years Pass, time stops; the viewer is left in an imaginary world confronted with the ironic and theatrical side of love and death. While the young man's tragedy is enriched with comic elements in the play, poetic language combines with music to take a step towards the theatre Lorca was aiming for. ‘Theatre is the school for crying and laughing, where old and false moral values are questioned, where human emotions which always preserve their validity are expressed with living examples, it is a platform open to all.' It is the place where emotions are experienced in the most real and intimate manner. There is no room for lies and ‘as if's in the theatre. The actor remains detached, like a clown in a circus, so s/he can mock everything. ‘Theatre is a poem that rises from the page and becomes human; it talks, it shouts, it's desperate, it cries. Theatre needs its characters to take the stage dressed up in poetic clothes and also for its characters to be manifested in flesh and bone.' Lorca felt that his country was being dragged towards a huge disaster, and that death was close. He tried to express this by finding different means of expression in each of his plays. In ‘Once Five Years Pass', the warning of the Second Friend is the voice of Pierrot within Lorca: ‘We just go on, gently waking things up. Unfortunately, in four or five years, we'll all fall into the well that's waiting for us.' The Old Man responds by exclaiming ‘Silence!'. And indeed, Fascism prevails in Spain and the country sinks into a great silence. Lorca shows, with the stance of an artist, that one cannot remain indifferent to this: ‘The only thing poetry can not bear is indifference. What wanders the street with a grotesque dress of indifference, arrogance and culture is the seat of the devil.' ... ‘An artist, and especially a poet, is always an anarchist. And before listening to other voices, must always listen to three important voices that arise from his/her own being: The voices of Death, Love and Art, with all their indications.'