“Creativity can’t have any restriction or instruction…It’s like dreams. If you say you want to dream about this or that, it won’t come out” (Solomon).
- María Irene Fornés in an interview
“An artist…is made up of two: one who goes in, and another who goes out. The one who goes in, goes in through observation. And in some mysterious way then transforms it to produce a breeze…a thought…a poem” (Pearl).
- María Irene Fornés’ response when asked what her definition of “artist” is.
The quote is featured in Michelle Memran’s documentary, The Rest I Make Up.
María Irene Fornés, who preferred to be called Irene, is often referred to as “the greatest and least known dramatist of our time” (Memran). She is known to the theater as the “Mother Avant-Garde,” having changed the rules of playwriting. She “…refused to adhere to any rules or formulas in playwriting, choosing instead to follow her characters’ lead in order to better get at her core question: What does it mean to be a human being?” (Memran). By the end of this post, you will have learned (or learned more) about a seminal playwright who influenced many other writers and changed the landscape of theater.
Fornés was born in Havana, Cuba in 1930 (McNulty). Her mother was a lover of American movies and her father loved to read to Fornés. Fornés is quoted as saying that she would not have been “much of a writer had he [her father] not been much of a talker,” for Fornés did not read often because she was dyslexic (Film Catalog). Fornés’ brother was also a cartoonist in Havana (Film Catalog).
After her father died, Fornés (age 15), her mother, and her sister, immigrated to America in 1945. They settled in New York, where Fornés would become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1951 (McNulty). Fornés never finished high school (Butler), instead working in textiles after she arrived in New York City (Memran).
In the 1950s, she traveled to Paris to paint (Memran). She then returned to New York where she began writing after helping her lover, Susan Sontag, with her novel (McNulty). Fornés said: “I had all this creative energy that I had to use…I never really loved painting. Still, I might never have even thought of writing if I hadn’t pretended I was going to show Susan how easy it was” (McNulty). It was therefore not until the 1960s that Fornés became a playwright (Memran), completing her first play when she was in her early-30s (Butler).
Unlike most of her peers at the time, such as Sam Shepard and Lanford Wilson, Fornés did not have a “signature style” (Solomon). She instead pushed the boundaries of theater, with each of her works differing in style. In a 1985 interview with New York magazine, Fornés said:
“Most critics and theatergoers…are so used to seeing plays in only one way — What is the dramatic conflict? What are the symbols? — that they go through their entire lives looking for the same things. If they don’t find what they expect, they’re disconcerted. But I can’t ‘plant’ things that way, like a treasure hunt where you need a map. To me a play is more like a path I just follow, never knowing where it’s going to end up, letting the material guide me step by step” (McNulty).
In regards to the language she used in her plays, Fornés credited her bilingualism, saying the “off-center quality” in the language she used was not necessarily deliberate but was because she did not try to change it, recognizing that “…its origin lies in the temperament and language of [her] birth” (Solomon).
Fornés was also a director, having directed the premieres of her plays (Solomon). Her staging, as well as the acting, also strayed from the norm and “was arranged to strip the habits of conventional perception so that life, both theatrical and societal, could be seen anew” (McNulty). Though each of her plays were unique, Fornés’ “…trademark naivety of [her] characters was matched by a production style that understood just how profound stillness, sparseness and playful humor could be” (McNulty).
Fornés was not only a writer and director, but she was also an influential teacher. She stopped writing for approximately six years to run a group for avant-garde playwrights called, New York Theatre Strategy (Butler). Beginning in the 1980s, she “mentored a generation of Latino/a playwrights” as a teacher and director at INTAR Hispanic Playwrights in Residence Lab (Memran). As a teacher, she wanted her students to “access their subconscious,” wanting them to “…understand that they can and should concentrate on simple things, as well as important, dramatic, extraordinary things” (Reagan). One of her students said:
“She told us that we were going to change the theater, that we were going to create a world where Latino writers in America had a voice, and she willed it into all of us” (Memran).
Fornés was sadly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, where she spent the rest of her life in living facilities and nursing homes (Butler). Since she did not have a partner or any children, theater members and her friends really took care of her, making sure she was getting the care she needed (Solomon). She remained in New York throughout the rest of her life, passing on October 30, 2018, at the age of 88 (Memran).
During her incredible career, Fornés wrote over 40 plays (including a musical), won nine OBIE awards, and was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize (Memran). In 2018 she was inducted into the Annual Theater Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater (Gans).
March 14, 2019
Works Cited
Butler, Isaac. “Fornés and Her Friends.” AMERICAN THEATRE, 5 Jan. 2017, www.americantheatre.org/2016/03/23/maria-irene-fornes-with-a-little-help-from-her-friends/.
Film Catalog, www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/press/TRIMU_PK.pdf.
Gans, Andrew. “Nathan Lane, Frank Langella, Vanessa Williams Will Be Part of 2018 Theater Hall of Fame Ceremony.” Playbill, PLAYBILL INC., 26 Oct. 2018, www.playbill.com/article/nathan-lane-frank-langella-vanessa-williams-will-be-part-of-2018-theater-hall-of-fame-ceremony.
McNulty, Charles. “Obie-Winning Playwright María Irene Fornés, a Transformative off-Broadway Figure, Dies at 88.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 31 Oct. 2018, www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/theater/reviews/la-me-maria-irene-fornes-obituary-20180703-story.html.
Memran, Michelle. “How It Began.” The Rest I Make Up, therestimakeup.com/the-film/.
Pearl, Katie. “Creativity, Aging, and Alzheimer's.” HowlRound Theatre Commons, 23 Oct. 2016, howlround.com/creativity-aging-and-alzheimers.
Reagan, Alice. “Maria Irene Fornes, World Builder.” AMERICAN THEATRE, 10 Aug. 2018, www.americantheatre.org/2017/07/05/maria-irene-fornes-world-builder/.
Solomon, Alisa. “Passion and Presence: Maria Irene Fornes, 1930–2018.” Solomon, 31 Dec. 2018, www.publicbooks.org/passion-and-presence-maria-irene-fornes-1930-2018/.
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