Ballroom Marfa is pleased to present La Casa de Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca, directed by Richard Maxwell, for two performances on April 10 and 11, 2026 at Bull Room in Marfa, Texas. The production is presented by New York City Players and developed with New York City Players’ Incoming Theater Division, a program dedicated to creating space for newcomers to develop performance work. The play will be performed in Spanish with English supertitles.
First staged by Maxwell with the Incoming Theater Division in New York City in June 2024, where it ran for three sold-out weeks at 101 Greenwich, the production now comes to Marfa in the context of the U.S./Mexican borderlands. Presented in Spanish, the production speaks to Far West Texas’s deep-rooted Spanish-speaking and Latinx communities, affirming the importance of seeing one’s language and culture reflected on a professional stage. The Marfa presentation will feature members of the original ensemble. In addition to the NYC-based cast, select roles will be cast in Marfa through local casting.
In Lorca’s play La Casa de Bernarda Alba, Bernarda Alba, forever concerned with keeping up appearances, runs her household with an iron fist. As the play opens, she has just lost her second husband and imposes eight years of mourning on her five daughters and locks up the house. She is about to marry off her eldest daughter Angustias to Pepe el Romano; meanwhile, Pepe’s secret relationship with the youngest daughter, Adela, ignites a tragic unraveling. Though the play lays bare the forces that shape and constrain women’s lives, Lorca’s drama famously contains only female characters, making the house itself a pressure chamber of power, longing, and surveillance.
Maxwell’s work often embraces the directness and unpredictability of performers with varied levels of stage experience, an approach that aligns with the Incoming Theater Division’s ensemble-led practice. As Maxwell has said, “I like how my words come through a person who isn’t so interested in having command over a character. I have found that character is actually the audience’s job anyway.”
Artist Profiles
About the Incoming Theater Division
Founded in 2014, New York City Players’ Incoming Theater Division (ITD) fosters creative time and space for newcomers to develop performance ideas and build artistic community. Originally developed through company member Tory Vazquez’s work with students from Liberty High School for Newcomers in Manhattan, ITD is now led by Director Katiana Gonçales Rangel. In recent years, ITD has expanded to include full-length plays alongside its history of projects developed from participants’ stories.
About Richard Maxwell
Richard Maxwell is an artist and longtime Hell’s Kitchen, NYC resident and has served as Artistic Director of New York City Players since the company’s founding in 1999. He has received honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant. His work has been commissioned and presented internationally by institutions and festivals including ICA London, Barbican Centre, Festival d’Automne, Kunsten Festival, and the Vienna Festival, and has been shown at the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial.
About New York City Players
New York City Players is a theater company about people, relationships, and above all, feeling. NYCP is committed to expanding who has access to the stage and to redefining what “community theater” can be. Alongside Maxwell’s work, NYCP produces new writing through its American Playwrights Division and supports immigrant artists through its Incoming Theater Division. More information: nycplayers.org.
Images
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to The Lincoln Marfa for generous support.