Frida Kahlo has become an icon.
She was a great painter.
With indomitable spirit she maintained both personal dignity and a joy in living despite much suffering.
Her life became an inspiration to those around her. Through her art, it is now an inspiration to the world.
She celebrated the life of a nation - Mexico - and her art took its strength from the lives and creativity of "la raza" - the people.
A PLAY WITH MUSIC
Frida's life was full of drama. Well-known events include the accident that crippled her, her stormy marriage to Diego Rivera, her affair with Trotsky, her physical suffering and early death.
The play stays close to the true story, which is documented in many biographies and in the writings of the main characters. It also celebrates the Mexico she loved. The music is a combination of Mexican traditional tunes - many of them collected by friends of Frida and Diego - and some original music.
SYNOPSIS
The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 to an eccentric Hungarian-Jewish father and a fiercely Catholic Spanish-Indian mother. She spent several years at the most prestigious school in Mexico where she picked up the national enthusiasm for revolution as well as an excellent education.
Aged 18, she met with a terrible accident that would leave her permanently disabled and subject to ever-intensifying bouts of physical pain until her early death aged 47.
Through her involvement with Bohemian communist politics she met the artist Diego Rivera, well-known equally as an artist and a womanizer. After a short affair, Frida became his third wife, and no amount of bad behavior on both their parts would alter the fact that they were the most important thing in each others’ lives.
Frida began to paint, and Diego - not known for his humility - soon acknowledged her as the better artist. She painted ordinary people, sometimes in ordinary situations as in ‘The Bus’ (brought to life here in a popular song), sometimes in extreme situations as in ‘A Few Small Nips’ (brought to life here in a tableau). As physical disablement isolated her, she turned to painting self-portraits, some of which have become icons of twentieth-century art.
Meanwhile Diego had become the world’s most famous artist. The school of Mexican muralists was celebrated internationally as pointing a new way forward in art, and Diego was invited to paint huge murals for the American industrialists Henry Ford and Nelson Rockefeller in the United States. The cultural conflict between Mexico and WASP America underlies the central section of the work, which has Diego in conflict with America's leading capitalists. Diego’s fame peaked when Rockefeller ordered his gigantic mural featuring Lenin to be covered up, then destroyed.
Frida and Diego return to Mexico. Rivera invites the Russian outlaw Trotsky to come and live in Mexico, to save him from Stalin's assassins. Frida, in revenge at Diego’s seduction of her sister, begins a short affair with Trotsky. Diego finds out and is furious: he kicks Trotsky out of the fortified house and withdraws financial support. Shortly after, Trotsky is killed by one of Stalin’s assassins.
Frida and Diego were also estranged for a while. They divorced and Frida enjoyed success on her own in Paris and New York, where she is feted (and taught a song) by Picasso.
When Frida returns to Mexico, she and Diego marry for a second time. They enjoy some years of tranquillity together before Frida's last illness. The final scene of the drama records Frida’s faith in life and in art, and the world’s respect for a passionate life led in pursuit of the truth.
FORMAT: Two-act musical drama with interval.
CAST: The optimum cast would be fifteen, with most members doubling or trebling in various roles.
PRODUCTION HISTORY: 'Frida & Diego' was showcased at Goldsmith's College, London, in 2006 in a reduced version with a cast of seven.
THE MUSIC
Music and song are an integral part of the drama just as they were of Frida's life.
She loved Mexican popular songs. On several paintings she inscribed lines from
songs and onto one (Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair) she also copied the notes of the tune.
The tunes of these songs are some of the most beautiful ever created: the lyrics
are just as vivid and original. With these tunes - and translations of the
original lyrics - the drama of Frida comes alive on stage.