Fefu and Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes

First published: 1980

First produced: 1977, at the Relativity Media Lab, New York City

Type of plot: Absurdist

Time of work: Spring, 1935

Locale: A country house in New England

Principal Characters:

• Stepanie “Fefu” Beckman, a woman who holds parties at her country house
• Cindy,
• Christina,
• Emma,
• Paula,
• Sue, and
• Cecilia, friends
• Julia, her friend in a wheelchair following a shooting accident

The Play

A three-act play (noted in the script as “parts,” not “acts”), Fefu and Her Friends is set in a country house in New England, with all the action taking place in one day. Parts 1 and 3 take place in the living room, the first in the morning and the third in the evening. Part 2, which covers the afternoon hours, has four sets: the lawn, the study, the bedroom, and the kitchen.

Fefu’s friends Cindy and Christina are already in the living room when the play opens, and the other women arrive at the house by lunchtime, invited there to prepare a presentation for an education group of which they are members. Most of them have been friends for some time, and during the day and evening they collect in pairs or in groups of varying size, talking about themselves, their lives, each other, and especially about Fefu, the central figure who knows them all. Fefu says whatever is on her mind, whether or not it appears appropriate or relevant, often with the apparent intent of shocking the others. It is her house party, and she flamboyantly attracts, and apparently wants to attract, most of the attention.

Another major topic for all the women, again talking in small groups rather than in one big group discussion, concerns Julia. She has been injured in a shooting accident and is confined to a wheelchair, and throughout the day she needs assistance. Exactly what happened to her is unclear. It is a matter of considerable speculation, since even Cindy, who was there when it happened, can only give an account that is illogical. A hunter shot and killed a deer, but at the same time Julia fell, had convulsions, was delirious, and apparently suffered a spinal nerve injury. She still blanks out from time to time and she hallucinates.

The circumstances of the accident are even less clear because Christina suspects Fefu was involved, although Cindy maintains the hunter was a man. Fefu used to hunt, and she and her husband, Philip (talked about but never seen), play a bizarre private game in which they shoot at each other with the shotgun that is prominently displayed on stage when the play opens. It is no surprise that the shotgun will lead to trouble: At the end of the play a shot is heard offstage, Fefu enters with a dead rabbit she has shot, and Julia slumps in her wheelchair, blood gushing from her head.

The play is one of talk more than action, however, and the majority of the talk is bits and pieces about various aspects of the women’s lives and relationships, rather than a coherent discussion of any single topic. Often they do not respond directly to what another speaker has just said, but start on some other point. Most of all, they like to talk about one another, especially when the other person is not present.

Dramatic Devices

The most striking device is the innovative staging of part 2, which confounds the usual expectations and blurs the boundaries of performance space. During the first act, the audience is seated together in a theater auditorium to view the action on stage. However, part 2 is presented outside the main theater area on four sets to represent a lawn, study, bedroom, and kitchen. For this act the audience is divided into four groups and each group is led to one of the spaces. The four scenes are performed simultaneously. When the scenes are finished (as close to the same time as possible), each audience group moves on to the next set to watch the actors there, who repeat the scene they presented to the previous group. This moving is repeated until each group has seen all four scenes. Then the audience is led back into the main auditorium to watch part 3 together, as they did part 1. The audience literally does not see the same play, since they do not see the scenes in part 2 in the same order and since there are inevitable minor differences in the performances that the cast repeats four times.

Another dramatic device is the use of frequent entrances and exits that create different groups on stage from one moment to another. The women come and go and regroup in different combinations in all three acts. Those on stage do not necessarily participate in the scene; sometimes they do not pay attention to each other when there are only two present. During part 2, for example, Christina is in the study practicing French, reading a French textbook aloud but nearly inaudibly. Cindy is reading a magazine. She eventually interrupts Christina by reading aloud herself, but they immediately go back to their individual reading. Then Cindy asks Christina if she likes Fefu. Cindy starts relating a dream she had, which has nothing to do with Fefu. The stage directions say that Fefu’s entrance may interrupt Cindy’s speech at any point, depending upon how long it takes Fefu to reach the kitchen, where she will be next. Thus the actual content of the play varies according to the timing needs. This is convenient or necessary for part 2, because Fefu appears for a short time in three of the four scenes that are being performed simultaneously, and she must move from one stage set to another. However, this movement and recombining of groups is so prevalent throughout the play that it is a notable contrast when it is not happening, such as during the bedroom scene in part 2, where Julia is alone. Her long monologue as she hallucinates is interrupted only at the very end of the scene, when Sue enters to bring her a bowl of soup and then quickly leaves.

The stage sets are realistic, with a couch, coffee table, chairs, and piano in the living room, for example. The script lists spring, 1935, as the time of the play, but nothing in the stage sets, costuming directions, or props is specific to that historical period. Nothing in the rest of the script indicates that era, and in fact the word choices in many of the speeches and the topics being discussed suggest the 1970’s, when the play was written.

Critical Context

Fefu and Her Friends is Maria Irene Fornes’s best-known play. Fornes received an Obie Award for playwriting for the script, and numerous productions have been staged since the first performance in 1977. During the 1970’s, a period of overt feminist discussion and action, producing an Off-Broadway play by a woman writer and director and having an all-female cast were seen as noteworthy accomplishments. Although the play does not include any Latino roles or issues, Fornes was early hailed as one of the emerging Chicana playwrights. She is often cited as the “godmother” of Chicano drama, especially for her years of conducting a theater workshop that developed and encouraged many Chicana writers.

As writer, director, and teacher, Fornes is a leading figure in contemporary theater. She has written more than two dozen stage plays since her first, Tango Palace (pr. 1963, pb. 1971), opened in 1963 (under the title There! You Died at the Encore Theatre, San Francisco). The 1999-2000 season at Signature Theatre Company in New York was devoted to plays from her oeuvre, culminating with the premiere of Letters from Cuba (pr. 2000), the first play in which Fornes deals with her Cuban American heritage. For that play Fornes received her tenth Obie Award, one of which is for Sustained Achievement in Theater.

Fefu and Her Friends is designed to provoke its audience with an experience that is emotionally challenging and intellectually stimulating. The play first appeared toward the end of an era of “theater of the absurd” by such noted male writers as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet, whose works had accustomed audiences to experimental plays that lacked conventional plots. Fornes’s plays were embraced as work coming from previously unheard voices. Absurdist drama typically reflects the writer’s thoughts about the irrational and stifling aspects of society and the pressures on the individual. In that tradition, Fefu and Her Friends shows women trapped in their lives and their roles, with the unspoken message that those in the audience must be the ones to find solutions.

Sources for Further Study

Austin, Gayle. “The Madwoman in the Spotlight.” In Making a Spectacle, edited by Lynda Hart. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989.

Chaudhuri, Una. “Maria Irene Fornes.” In Speaking on Stage, edited by Philip Kolin and Colby Kullman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996.

Delgado, Maria M., and Caridad Svich, eds. Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes. North Stratford, N.H.: Smith and Kraus, 1999.

Kent, Assunta Bartolomucci. Maria Irene Fornes and Her Critics. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996.

Robinson, Mark, ed. The Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.