''So Let Five Years Pass'' (), 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 countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

dramatist A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between characters and is intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. Ben Jonson coined the term "playwri ...

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27, a g ...

. 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 4th streets in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is named for the Provincetown Players, who converted the forme ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

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

University of Puerto Rico The University of Puerto Rico (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Universidad de Puerto Rico;'' often shortened to UPR) is the main List of state and territorial universities in the United States, public university system in the Commonwealth (U.S. i ...

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

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

.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 whe ...

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 Marion Boyars Publishers is an independent publishing company located in Great Britain, publishing books that focus on the humanities and social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the b ...

. .

References

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