Doña Rosita the Spinster – Federico García Lorca

Katerina Vassilakou’s “Panellinio” Theatre Company

First performance: Lycabettus Theatre, July 8, 1995

“[…] In the first act, Rosita, an orphan girl who lives with her aunt and uncle, is twenty years old. Her fiancé leaves for Tucumán in Latin America. She will wait for him. In the second act, she is thirty years old and still waiting. In the third act, she is an elderly spinster trying to convince herself that he still loves her and will return. He, however, has married someone else. That’s it. Nothing more. But this is the shared tragedy of Spanish girls against the backdrop of Granada. “Spain is a place filled with decent unmarried girls, pure girls sacrificed to their own social surroundings… After Yerma and Blood Wedding, I wanted to create a simple and lovable comedy, but I think that this poem seems closer to tears than either of those two dramas… The calm external life of a girl from Granada, as she breaks and gradually transforms into this ridiculous and touching caricature known as the old Spanish spinster.” […]

Marcelle Auclair, Lorca, translated by T. Tolia, Kedros Publishing, 1976. From the performance programme.