''So Let Five Years Pass'' ( es, Así que pasen cinco años), also known as ''If Five Years Pass'' and ''When Five Years Have Passed'', is a play by the 20th-century

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

dramatist A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...

. It was written in 1931 (

Trader Faulkner Ronald "Trader" Faulkner (7 September 1927 – 14 April 2021) was an Australian actor, raconteur and flamenco dancer, best known for his work in the UK on the stage and television. Early life Faulkner was born in Manly, Australia, the son of ...

noted that the play was finished on 19 August 1931, five years to the day before Lorca was killed) but was not given a professional theatrical production until several years after Lorca's death, despite plans to stage it in 1936. It was produced in an English-language translation at the

Provincetown Playhouse The Provincetown Playhouse is a historic theatre at 133 MacDougal Street between West 3rd and West 4th Streets in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is named for the Provincetown Players, who converted the former ...

in New York in April 1945. It received its Spanish-language première in 1954 at the

University of Puerto Rico The University of Puerto Rico ( es, Universidad de Puerto Rico, UPR) is the main public university system in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is a government-owned corporation with 11 campuses and approximately 58,000 students and 5,3 ...

, directed by Victoria Espinosa. In September 1978 it opened at the Teatro Eslava in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

.Edwards (1980, 93-94). The critic for ''ABC'', Lorenzo López Sancho, wrote in his review of the Madrid production: "It seems to me that in ''When Five Years Pass'' we see the true depth of the great theatrical personality that García Lorca would have become and, probably, his most original and

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...

contribution to the theatre."Quoted in Edwards (1980, 94); translation of title of play amended.

Works cited

* Edwards, Gwynne. 1980. ''Lorca: The Theatre Beneath the Sand.'' London and New York: Marion Boyars Publishers. .

References

Plays by Federico García Lorca 1931 plays {{1930s-play-stub