María Irene Fornés: March Portrait of the Month

María Irene Fornés and Her Mother, New York, NY, 1990

Dramatist María Irene Fornés was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1930 and immigrated with her family to the United States in 1945. She started her artistic career as a painter before turning to playwriting in the early 1960s. Fornés’s first play to be performed on stage was Tango Palace (originally produced as There! You Died! in 1963). Her best-known play, Fefu and Her Friends (1977), looks at a group of women,their relationships, and their efforts to find greater meaning in their lives. Over her extensive career, Fornés has written more than forty plays and received nine Obie Awards. The first was given for her two “Distinguished Plays” The Successful Life of 3 and Promenade (both 1965). In 1972, Fornés formed the New York Theatre Strategy with Ed Bullins, Rosalyn Drexler, Adrienne Kennedy, Rochelle Owens, Sam Shepard, and Megan Terry, to establish a space for playwrights to test their ideas while retaining control over their work. She also started what would become a continuing collaboration with INTAR, a Hispanic American theater in New York. Fornés has taught and led workshops with many aspiring playwrights.

Her plays in the 1980s and 90s include Evelyn Brown (1980), The Danube (1981), Mud (1983), Sarita (1984), The Conduct of Life (1985), Abingdon Square (1987), and Enter the Night (1993). Fornés, who has had Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade, completed her last play, Letters from Cuba, in 2000. It premiered at Signature Theatre Company as part of a season-long festival of her work.