María Irene Fornés
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| María Irene Fornés | |
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| File:Maria Irene Fornes.jpg | |
| Born | 1930 Havana, Cuba |
| Occupation | playwright, director |
| Nationality | Cuban-American |
| Genres | Avant-Garde |
| Notable award(s) | 9 Obie Awards |
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www.mariairenefornes.com |
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María Irene Fornés (born May 14, 1930) is a Cuban-American avant garde playwright and director who is associated with the establishment of the Off-Off-Broadway movement in the 1960s. Fornes themes focused on poverty and feminism. In 1965, she won her first Obie Award for Promenade and her second for The Successful Life of Three. She was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize with her play And What of the Night? Other notable works include Fefu and Her Friends, Mud, Letters from Cuba and Sarita.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Fornés was born in Havana, Cuba, and emigrated to the United States at the age of 15 after her father, Carlos Fornés, died in 1945. She became a U.S. citizen in 1951. When she first arrived in America, Fornés did not speak any English and worked in a ribbon making factory. Unsatisfied with this work, she took classes to learn English. Later, she became a translator. At the age of 19, she formed an interest in painting and began her formal education in abstract art. During this time, she studied with artist Hans Hoffman in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts.[1]
In 1954, Fornés moved to Europe to study painting.[1] There, she was greatly influenced by a French production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot even though she never read the play nor did she understand French. This event shifted her creative ambitions towards playwriting.[1]
[edit] Career
In 1957, Fornés returned to New York City and roomed with writer Susan Sontag. They encouraged each other to write.[1] Her first play was titled The Widow (1961).[1] Her next major piece was There! You Died, first produced by San Fransisco's Actor's Workshop in 1963. An absurdist two-character play, it was later renamed Tango Palace and produced in 1964 at New York City's Actors Studio.[2] The piece is an allegorical power struggle between the two central characters: Isidore, a clown, and Leopold, a naive youth. This play established Fornés' theatrical production style, in which she was involved in the entire staging process. Like much of her writing during this time, Tango Palace stresses character rather than plot.[3] In the wake of this, Fornés' reputation grew in avant-garde circles, and she became friendly with Harriet Sohmers Zwerling, Norman Mailer and Joseph Papp.[citation needed] Her work was later championed by Performing Arts Journal (later PAJ).[citation needed]
In Fefu and Her Friends, Fornés deconstructs the familiar stage, removing the fourth wall and staging scenes in multiple locations simultaneously throughout the theater. Four sets (a lawn, a study, a bedroom and a kitchen) are used in the second Act. The audience is divided into groups to watch each scene, then they rotate to the next set, as the scene is repeated until each group has seen all four scenes.[citation needed] First produced in 1977 by the New York Theater Strategy at the Relativity Media Lab, its story concerns eight women who, on the surface, appear to be engaging in mishaps with men, and it climaxes in a murder scene. It is a feminist play that focuses on female characters and their thoughts, feelings and interrelationships and is told from a woman's perspective. Fornés portrays these characters as real women, in a shift in her play-writing style to realism and naturalism in settings, characters and situations.[4][5]
Another notable play, Mud, was first produced in 1983 at the Padua Hills Playwright's Festival in California.[citation needed] Set in a poverty-stricken environment, they play explores the lives of Mae, Lloyd and Henry, who all involved in a dysfunctional love triangle where gender roles are reversed. Fornés contrasts those who are content and those who seek more in their lives. The play exemplifies her familiar technique of portraying the female character's rise opposed by male characters. Education plays a central role of Mae's decision making process and her relationship with Henry. The piece also explores the way the mind experiences poverty and isolation.[4][5] Letters From Cuba had its premiere with the Signature Theater Company in New York in 2000. The play focuses on a young female Cuban dancer living in New York who corresponds with her brother in Cuba. The play is the first that Fornés identified as being drawn from her own personal experience of nearly 30 years of letter writing with her brother.[3]
Fornés became known in both Hispanic-American and experimental theater, winning nine Obie Awards in the playwriting and directing categories.[citation needed] She also taught playwriting.[citation needed] She continues to direct plays.[citation needed] Fornés received an honorary Litt.D. from Bates College in 1992.[citation needed] Playwright Nilo Cruz studied with Fornés, who recommended him to Paula Vogel.[citation needed]
[edit] Writing style
Fornés' plays address social and personal issues, while removing the playwright from the work itself.[citation needed] Her writing style employs avant-garde techniques developed in the early years of the Off-off-Broadway movement.[citation needed] Her experimental techniques include modern form, feminist perspectives, realism and allegorical elements.[citation needed] The spectator's identification and empathy with characters is seen as the core of Fornes' theatrical philosophy.[citation needed] She viewed the theater as a place in which to stage experience so that the spectator can "receive" that experience and achieve "identification."[4]
[edit] Plays
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[edit] Awards
- 1965 Obie Award for Distinguished Playwriting: Promenade and The Successful Life of 3
- 1977 Obie Award for Playwrighting and Directing: Fefu and Her Friends
- 1979 Obie Award for Directing: Eyes on the Harem
- 1982 Obie Award for Oustanding Achievement
- 1984 Obie Award for Playwrighting and Directing: The Danube, Sarita, and Mud
- 1985 Obie Award for The Conduct of Life
- 1985 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
- 1986 Playwrights U.S.A. Award for translation of Cold Air
- 1988 Obie Award for Abingdon Square
- 1990 New York State Governor's Arts Award
[edit] Reference
- ^ a b c d e Gainor, J. Ellen, Stanton B. Garnier, Jr., and Martin Punchner. "Maria Irene Fornes b. 1930." The Norton Anthology of Drama, Vol. 2 – The Nineteenth Century to the Present. Ed. Peter Simon, et al., New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. pp. 1231–34.
- ^ Als, Hilton. "Feminist Fatale", New Yorker, March 22, 2010, Vol. 86, Issue 5, p. 8
- ^ a b Anne, Fliotsos, and Vierow Wendy. "Fornes, Maria Irene", American Women Stage Directors of the Twentieth Century, Univeristy of Illinois Press, 2008, pp. 179–89
- ^ a b c Diane, Moroff Lynn. Fornes Theater in the Present Tense, The University of Michigan Press, 1996.
- ^ a b William, Gruber E. "The Characters of Maria Irene Fornes: Public and Private Identities", Missing Persons Character and Characterization in Modern Drama, The University of Georgia Press, 1994, pp. 155–81
[edit] Further reading
- Als, Hilton (22 March 2010). "Critic's Notebook: Feminist Fatale". The New Yorker 86 (5): 8. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2010/03/22/100322gonb_GOAT_notebook_als. Retrieved April 1, 2011.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- María Fornés website
- María Irene Fornés at Broadway Play Publishing Inc.
- Her championship season - playwright María Irene Fornés
- Profile of Fornés at Brown University
