Transvestism and Sexual Transgression in Garda Lorca's The Public

Abstract

Of all Federico Garda Lorca's works, The Public is one of the plays that, in the last two decades, has aroused the widest interest in scholars and the general public, both in Spain and abroad. This interest is ironic given the hostility the play met when Lorca, as was his custom, read the manuscript in 1930 to a group of close friends. It is even more ironic when one considers the hermetic nature of the play and the structural and thematic difficulties it presents. For the first time in the history of Spanish theatre, a play deals unabashedly, even defiantly, with the subject of homosexuality. Whether or not its subject matter was the reason that the play was withheld from publication until 1974, the truth of the matter is that the manuscript has come down to us in a fragmented and incomplete form; only Acts Two and Five were published in Lorca's lifetime. The play was written during Lorca's stay in New York in 1929-1930 and was finished in 1930 in Havana, where Lorca spent four months on his way back to Spain. It was not staged until the 1986/1987 season in Milan and Madrid, in a co-production involving the Centro Dramatico Nacional, Madrid, and the Piccolo Teatro di Milan, directed by Lluis Pasqual and designed by Fabia Puigserver. Two years later, the play was staged in Paris and London.