Negotiating cultural exchange. Federico García Lorca on the British stage from the Spanish civil war until the mid-fifties

Abstract

This article seeks to reconstruct and explore the initial theatrical reception of Lorca in the UK, focusing on why and how his texts entered the British theatrical ecosystem, and how they created connections among artists in and beyond Britain. This exploration of a largely ignored archive of the past also opens new gates for future theoretical reflections surrounding the complex symbolic weight of the author and his work. This, in turn, offers an insightful case study for analysing the role of theatre in forging national imaginaries and creating cultural exchange between artists of different countries in the tumultuous decades of pre and post-Second World War, a period of crisis of national/European imaginaries and realignment of global geopolitical powers that in many ways mirrors our post Brexit COVID 19 present.