About The Playwright
“It is unavoidable that every choice I make comes exactly from who I am - including the fact that I love to iron. I think it’s magic! Every single thing I have lived through in my life, everything I have witnessed, in some way gets into my work.” - Maria Irene Fornes, Creative Danger
MOTHER OF THE AVANT-GARDE.
THE GREATEST AND LEAST KNOWN
DRAMATIST OF OUR TIME.
THE LAST OF THE RED HOT BOHEMIANS.
Maria Irene Fornes (1930-2018) shares a common trait with many legendary artists: it is only in the wake of her passing, that her work and art have begun to be more widely celebrated and well-known as they ought to have been during her lifetime. Born during the Great Depression in 1930 in Havana, Cuba, Maria Irene Fornes emigrated to the United States to New York City in 1945 at age 15. After her arrival, she pursued her interests as a painter, studying in Provincetown and New York with famed German abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman. In 1954, she moved to Paris to continue her studies as an artist. There, her life changed when she attended a performance of the original production of En Attendant Godot/Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, directed by Roger Blin. Although the play was in French, a language she did not understand, the experience was transformative and convinced her to write her own play. Of the experience, she would later recall “He was very gloomy but he had a great sense of humor. He had the whole audience laughing. When I saw Beckett, I thought, ‘why did I have to see this to think I could do it?’”(Brooklyn Rail, 2002)
In 1957, she returned to New York to work as a textile designer. She also began to read, study, and see plays on a frequent basis. In 1960, at the age of 30, she dared her then-roommate (and future lover) Susan Sontag, “How silly! If we want to write, why not sit and write?” Fornes began to focus on the craft of theatre, and finished her first play, The Widow. She became an active member of both the Method-based Actors’ Studio and boldly experimental Judson Poets Theatre. In 1963, Fornes made her playwriting debut with Tango Palace, which premiered at the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop and catapulted her into the vibrant Off-Off Broadway theatre movement and New York’s downtown scene of the 1960s. Fornes bristled with the popularity of the Method-driven techniques of the time, driven by her instinct and aim to forge her own path. She continued to write, lead workshops, and teach, and in 1972 formed New York Theatre Strategy. While managing New York Theatre Strategy, Fornes experimented with form and writing process, the evidence of which would present itself in her 1977 masterpiece, Fefu and her Friends.
The debut of Fefu and her Friends marked a turning point in her career, and moved Fornes into an association with deeply complex, immersive, imaginative and intelligent dramatic work. Her reputation as a playwright exploded, and the following two decades would be a time period of tremendous creative output by Fornes, who continued to write, produce, and direct not only her own work, but also the work of Chekhov, Ibsen, and Pedro Calderón de la Barca. As an educator, she continued to develop her pedagogy, and was a meaningful mentor to all of her students, but especially those who belonged to the Latinx community. From 1981-1992, she served as Director of the International Arts Relations (INTAR) Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Laboratory. She was lovingly referred to as “La Maestra” and led physically and visually stimulating classes, including yoga as part of her warmups. Despite her influence and level of respect within her own industry, she moved through her career referred to as “the most important playwright you’ve never heard of.”
In her lifetime, Fornes wrote over forty plays and won nine Obies, one of which was for Sustained Achievement in Theatre. As an educator, she mentored and influenced countless playwrights around the world, including Cherrie Moraga, Migdalia Cruz, Nilo Cruz, Caridad Svich and Eduardo Machado. She is revered and respected by her peers. Theatrical giants such as Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, Paula Vogel, Lanford Wilson and Edward Albee all have credited her work as influence and inspiration. Fornes’s many accolades include a Distinguished Artists Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation Grants, a Guggenheim fellowship in 1972, and a Playwrights U.S.A. award in 1986. In 1990, her play What of the Night was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. In addition to her own awards, her students have gone on to receive Obie Awards, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Pulitzer Prize.
Fornes wrote her final play, Letters from Cuba, in 2000. It was produced alongside an entire season dedicated to her work at the Signature Theatre. Not long after, Fornes was diagnosed with dementia. The final decade of her life is beautifully chronicled in the documentary The Rest I Make Up, directed by Michelle Memran, which displays her ability to hold on to her spirit and joy in the experience of the loss of her memories. She died in Manhattan at the age of 88 on October 30, 2018.