María Irene Fornés
María Irene Fornés (1930-2018) was a Cuban-American playwright, director, and teacher known for her significant contributions to American experimental theater. Born in Havana, Cuba, she emigrated to the United States with her family in 1945 following her father's death. Fornés became a naturalized citizen in 1951 and initially worked as a costume designer before turning to playwriting, inspired by her experiences in Europe and the influence of Samuel Beckett. She gained recognition in the 1960s with plays such as "Tango Palace" and "The Successful Life of Three," earning multiple Obie Awards.
Fornés co-founded New York Theatre Strategy, an organization dedicated to supporting new playwrights, and her works often explored feminist themes. Notable plays include "Fefu and Her Friends," "Mud," and "The Conduct of Life." Despite her acclaim, much of her work remained relatively obscure outside the avant-garde theater scene. She received numerous prestigious awards throughout her career and continued to influence writers and artists until her later years, when she developed Alzheimer's disease. Fornés passed away in 2018, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire new generations of theater artists. In 2023, one of her previously lost works was revived, highlighting her enduring impact on the theatrical landscape.
María Irene Fornés
- Born: May 14, 1930
- Birthplace: Havana, Cuba
- Died: October 30, 2018
- Death place:New York, New York
Cuban-born playwright
One of the most important voices in both Off-Off-Broadway theater and Cuban American literature, Fornés chronicled politics, personal and ethnic identity, feminism, and other social currents since the 1960s. She also was a major influence on a generation of playwrights.
Early Life
On May 14, 1930, María Irene Fornés was born in Havana, Cuba. Upon the death of her father, the family was left without financial support, so she, her mother, and a sister emigrated to the United States in 1945, leaving behind one of Fornés’s brothers.
Fornés worked for several years in New York City, where she learned English. In 1951, she became a naturalized American citizen. From 1954 to 1957, she lived in Europe, where she studied painting and became interested in the theater after seeing actor-director Roger Blin’s original production of Samuel Beckett’s En attendant Godot (1952; Waiting for Godot, 1954). Although she did not speak French, she was deeply influenced by Beckett’s style.
Upon returning to New York, Fornés found work as a costume designer for several local theaters. By 1960, she was living with critic and philosopher Susan Sontag, who inspired Fornés to write. Fornés’s first play, The Widow, was produced in 1961 by the New York Actors’ Studio and led to several fellowships. These enabled her to launch her dramatic career in the 1960s.
Theatrical Career
Fornés’s first major stage production and critical notice came with 1963’s Tango Palace (also known as There, You Died!). In the ensuing years, she built a reputation as an Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway playwright. The Successful Life of Three (1965) and the musical Promenade (1965) won the writer her first two Obie Awards. She received several fellowships in 1967 and 1968, which she used to work on A Vietnamese Wedding (1967) about the war in Vietnam. Her first London production came in 1968 with her one-woman show Dr. Kheal, and one of her best-known plays, Molly’s Dream, debuted that same year. With these successes to her name, in 1972, Fornés cofounded New York Theatre Strategy, a company that nurtured new experimental playwrights. She served as its managing director until 1979.
New York Theatre Strategy first produced Fornés’s Fefu and Her Friends (1977), which won another Obie and quickly became a feminist classic. Other important plays followed, including The Danube (1982), Mud (1983), and Obie winner The Conduct of Life (1985). In addition to New York Theatre Strategy, many of Fornés’s plays during this period were staged at International Arts Relations (INTAR)—a New York–based theater group for which Fornés served as the director of the Hispanic Playwrights in Residence Lab—and at the Padua Hills Festival in California.
Through the years, Fornés continued to write prolifically and gain critical acclaim, and also directed both her own works and plays by Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and Spanish Golden Age playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Her oeuvre moved from strength to strength, including acclaimed works such as the Obie-winning Abingdon Square (1984), the Pulitzer Prize finalist And What of the Night? (1989), and Summer in Gossensass (1998).
Despite this recognition, much of Fornés’s work remained all but unknown outside of the New York avant-garde theater scene. However, New York’s Signature Theater Company dedicated its 1999–2000 season to her work, including a revival of Mud and the premiere of her final play, Letters from Cuba (2000), based on Fornés’s correspondence with her brother, who had remained in Cuba. In 2010, New York University’s English department and INTAR presented the New York Fornés Festival, which mounted a production of Fefu and Her Friends; staged dramatic readings of five other plays; and screened the documentary “The Rest I Make Up”: Documenting Irene (2010).
Over the course of her career, Fornés wrote more than forty plays, several musicals, and an opera, in addition to translating and adapting the work of various other writers. She also served as a teacher of drama both nationally and internationally. Her awards included grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts; the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature; a Playwrights U.S.A. Award; the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award; a New York State Governor’s Arts Award; nine Obie Awards for writing, directing, and sustained achievement in theater; a Guggenheim Fellowship; and an honorary doctorate of letters from Bates College. She was also inducted into the Lucille Lortel Theatre Playwrights' Sidewalk in 1998.
Fornés developed Alzheimer's disease in her final years and stopped writing. She died on October 30, 2018, in Manhattan, New York, at the age of eighty-eight. In 2023, one of Fornés’s lost works, Evelyn Brown (A Diary), experienced a revival in an off-Broadway production. The play was reconstructed based on remnants of the original script and interviews with former cast and crew members.
Significance
Fornés had a far-reaching influence on American experimental theater in her various roles as a playwright, director, and teacher. This was reflected in her reception by other writers, including three Pulitzer Prize winners: Paula Vogel and Tony Kushner both praised her work, while fellow Off-Off-Broadway dramatist Lanford Wilson called Fornés “the most original of us all.” Fornés also was a tireless supporter of new artists, particularly Latinos such as the Cuban American playwright Nilo Cruz, and helped many to find audiences through New York Theatre Strategy and INTAR.
Bibliography
Delgado, Maria M., and Caridad Svich, editors. Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes. Smith and Kraus, 1999.
Fornés, Maria Irene. Letters from Cuba, and Other Plays. PAJ, 2001.
Putnam, Leah. “La MaMa to Present Lost Work by María Irene Fornés.” Playbill, 3 Apr. 2023, playbill.com/article/la-mama-to-present-lost-work-by-maria-irene-fornes. Accessed 22 Apr. 2023.
Robinson, Marc, ed. The Theater of Maria Irene Fornes. PAJ, 2005.
Weber, Bruce. “María Irene Fornés, Writer of Spare, Poetic Plays, Dies at 88.” The New York Times, 31 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/obituaries/maria-irene-fornes-dead.html. Accessed 12 Oct. 2020.