7

From
Plays: Maria Irene Fornes
PAJ Publications, 1986

Preface

Susan Sontag

lv!ud, The Danube, The Cond11ct of Life, Sarita-four plays, recent

work by the prolific Maria Irene Fornes. who for many years has been
conducting with exemplary tenacity and scrupulousness a unique career
in the Amedcan theatre.
Born in Havana, Fornes arrived in this country with her family when
she wa~ fifteen: in her twenties she spent se\·eral years in France (she was
painting then). and began writing plays after she returned to New York,
when she was around thirty. Although the language in which she became
a writer was English, not Spanish-and Fornes·s early work is in-
conceivable without the reinfon:ement of the lively local New York milieu
(particularly the Judson Poets Theatre) in ,,'hich she surfaced in the early
1960s-she is unmistakably a writer of bicultural inspiration: one very
American way of being a ·writer. Her imagination seems to me to have,
among othn sourc<.•s.a profoundly Cuban one. I am reminded of the wit-
ty, sensual phantasmagorias of Cuhan writers such as Lydia Cabrera,
Calvert Casey, Virgilio Pinera.
Of course, writers, thesl' or any other, ,vere not the conscious influences
on Fornes or any of the best "downtown" theatre of the 1960s. Art
Nouveau and Hollywood Deco had more to do with, say, The Theatre of
8
the Ridiculous. than any plausible literary antecedents (Tzara, Firbank,
etc.). This is also true of Fornes, an autodidact whose principal influences
were neither theatre nor literature bnt certain styles of painting and the
movies. But unlike similarly influenced New York dramatists, her work
did not eventually become parasitic on literature (or opera. or movies). It
was never a n·volt against theatre. or a theatre recyeling fantasies en-
coded in other genres.
Her two earliest plays prefigure the dual register, one volkisch, the
other placeless-international, of all the subsequent work. The v\lidow, a
poignant chronicle of a simple life. is set in Cuba. while Tango Palace,
with its volleys of sophisticated cxehanges. takes place in a purely
theatrical space: a cave. an altar. Fornes has a complex relation to the
strategy of naivete. She is chary of the folklorbtic. rightly so. But she is
strongly drawn to the pre-literary: to the authority of documents, of
found materials such as letters of her great-grandfather's cousin which in-
spired The \Vidoic. the diary of a domestic servant in turn-of-the-centurv
~cw Hampshire which was transformed into Evelyn Brown, Emma's le;-
turc in Fefu and Iler Friends.
For a while she favored the musical play-in a style reminiscent of the
populist parables in mnsical-commeclia form preserved in films from the
19.30slike Ren() Clair's A Nous la Liberte. It was a genre that proclaimed
its innocence, and specialized in rueful gaiety. Sharing with the main
tradition of modernist drama an aversion to the reductively psychological
and to sociological explanations, Fornes chose a theatre of types (such per-
sonages as the defcetive sage and the woman enslaved bv sexual
dependence reappear in a number of plays) and a theatre of mir~cles: the
talking mirror in The Office, the fatal gun wound at the end of Fefu and
Her Friends. Lately, Fornes seems to be esche,ving this effect: the quoti-
dian a~ something to be violated .......
by lyricism. by disa~ter. Characters can
still break into song, as they did in the dazzling bittersweet plays of the
mid-1960s, like Promenade and i\,folly'.\ Dream and The Successful Life
of ;3. But the plays are less insistingly charming. Reality is less capric~ous.
\fore genuinely lethal-as in Eyes on the Harem. Sarita.
Character is revealed through catechism. People requiring or giving in-
struction is a standard situation in Fornes·s plays. The desire to be in-
itiated, to be taught, is depicted as an essential, and essentially pathetic.
longing. (Fornes's elaborate "-ympathy for the labor of thought is the
endearing observation of someone who is almost entirely self-taught.)
And there are many dispensers of wisdom in Fornes·s plays, apart from
those-Tangu Palace, Doctor Khral----specifically devoted to the comedy
and the pathos of instruction. But Fornes is neither literary nor anti-
literary. These are not cerebral exercises or puzzles but the real questions.
about ... the conduct of life. There is much wit but no nonsense. No
9
banalities. And no non sequiturs.
While some plays are set in never-never land, some have local flavors
--like the American 1930s of Feju and lier Friends. Evoking a specific
setting, especially \Vhen it is Hispanic (this being understood as an under-
privileged reality), or depicting the lives of the ~ppressed and humiliated.
especially when the subject is that emblem of oppression, the woman ser-
vant, such plays as En:lyn Brown and The Conduct of Life mav seem
mor.e ··realistic"-given the condescending assumptions of the ideclogy of
realism. (Oppressed women. particularly domestic servants and
prostitutes. have long been the signature subject of what is sometimes
called realism. sometimes naturalism.) But I am not convinced that
Fornes·s recent \Vork is any less a theatre of fantasy than it was. or more
now a species of dramatic realism. Her work is both a theatre ~bout ut-
terance (i.e., a meta-theatre) and a theatre about the disfavored-both
Handke and Kroetz, as it \.Vere.
It was always a theatre of heartbreak. But at the beginning the mood
was often throwaway, playful. Now ifs darker, more passionate: consider
the twenty-year trajectory that goes from The Successful L(fe of 3 to 1\-fod,
about the unsuccessful life of three. She writes increasinglv from a
woman's point of view. Women are doing women's things-i)~rforming
u~rewarded labor (~n e.velyn Brown), getting raped (in The Condtict of
Ufe)-and also. as m Fefu and Her Friends. incarnating the human con-
dition as s;1c~. Fornes has a near faultless ear for the rus~s of egotism and
cruelty. Unlike most contemporary dramatists. for whom psychological
brutality is the principal, inexhaustible subject, Fornes is never in com-
plici;Y with the brutality she depicts. She has an increasingly expressive
relation to dread. to grief and to passion-in Sarita. for example, which is
about_ sex.ual passion a~d the incompatibilities of desire. Dread is not just
a ;nbiective state but 1s attached to history: the psychology of torturers
(1 he Conduct of Life). nuclear war ( The Danube).
Fornes·s \Vork has always been intelligent. often funny. never vulgar or
~:ynica!; both delicate and visceral. Now it is .fomething more. (The.turn-
ing pomt, I think, was the splendid Fefu and Her Friends-with its much
larger palette of sympathies, for both Julia's incurable despair and
Emma's irrepra,;;sible jubilation.) The plays have alwavs been about
\Visdom: what it means to be wise. They are getting wise~.
_I~ is ~erhaps not appropriate here to do more than allude to her great
d1strnct_1c~n and snhtlety as a director of her own plays. and as an inspiring
and or'.gmal teacher (working mainly with young Hispanic-American
playwrights). But it seems impossible not to connect the truthfulness in
~ornes·s plays_- their alertness nf depicting, their unfacile compas-
s10nateness, with a certain character, a certain virtue. In the v,'ords of a
Northern Sung landscape painter. Kuo Hsi. if the artist "can develop a
natural, sincere. gentle, and honest heart, then he will immediately be
able to comprehend the aspect of tears and smiles and of objects, pointed
or oblique, bent or inclined, and they ,vill be so clear in his mind that he
v.ill be able to put them down s1,ontaneously with his paint brush."
Hers seems to be an admirable temperament, unaffectedly indepen-
dent_ highrninded, ardent. And one of the few agreeable spectacles which
our culture affords b to watch the steady ripening of this beautiful talent.
"-=f~Ot'"'\
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--
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t¾~ i;--A-6 t::_ Ch f\ NC~ ~ ~-./l_..., u I'¼.v. ? n-2. s.i /
_ I""\./¾ ~ A- \, (Le-ivE. -=t="O (l ..A'V\E.:& - l 4 '9 t:,)
by the critic Susan Sontag for 'conducting with exem-
P
RAISED
plary tenacity and scrupulousness a unique career in the
American theatre' ('Preface', Maria Irene Fornes, Plays,p. 7),
the Cuban-American dramatist and director Maria Irene Fornes
remains one of the the few 'first generation' Off-Off Broadway
playwrights to remain a significant force on the alternative scene. An
imaginative and procative dramatist and a director of precision,
Fornes's work has been seen on the mainhouse stages of the major
American cities, in the repertory theatres, in unconventional spaces,
campus theatres, and festivals.
Born in Cuba on 14 May 1930,her family emigrated to North
America in 1945.Originally intending to be a painter, in the mid-
fifties she had studied in New York with Hans Hoffman and then in
Paris, where she saw Blin's original production of Waiting/orGodot,
an event she credits with changing her life. Returning to New York
she worked as a textile designer until, in an effort to encourage her
flatmate Susan Sontag to write, she penned her first play, the absurd-
ist TangoPalace(1963).There followed throughout the sixties a series
of boldly experimental works, including the legendary off-beat
musical Promenade(1965) and the reflexive The SuccessfulLife of 3
directed by Joseph Chaikin in 1965.She began directing her own
work in 1968- fiveyears after the first production of one of her plays
- out of frustration after spending time in the rehearsal room
watching others attempt the task, and has continued to do so since.
Observing the acting and directing classes at the Actors Studio
Playwrights Unit, she came into contact with Lee Strasberg's
Method technique, acknowle.i!gingits influence both on her writing
and directing. Initiating with Julie Bovasso the New York Strategy
in 1972to produce the work of Off-Off Broadway playwrights, she
returned to writing in 1977with Fejuand Her Friends,entrusting the
administrative work of the organisation to others. Much admired
for its freshness, its ingeniously crafted simultaneous scenes and its
playful wit, in Fornes's finely tuned production, Fefuand Her Friends
proved a poignant Chekhovian homage to women's resilience and
intelligence. Since then she has continued to write prolifically, pro-
viding cryptic abstract plays which defy a simple linear logic.
Greatly varied in both form and content, they have proved deli-
cately crafted pieces, often bleakly humorous but always compas-
sionate. Attuned to the nuances of colloquial language, bereft of
,
exposition, these emotive plays invite a questioning, on the audi-
ence's part, of everyday behaviour and practices.
Although her work in the eighties, like Mud (1983),Sarita(1984),
and The Conductof Life (1985)may ostensibly appear to adhere to a
pseudo-realist form, established strategies of dramatic representa-
tion, which carry within them implicit ideological statements, are
skillfully disrupted and destabilised by inventive and delicate 95
recourses to techniques associated with painting, photography and
--◊--
film. Often her plays are developed over years - The Danube,for
example, was staged by Fornes in different drafts in 1982and 1983 MARIA IRENE
FORNES
before its 1984production at the American Place Theatre in what is
its published form. A more recent play, Oscarand Bertha,received a
disconcerting production which never overtly endorsed the humor-
ous nature of the characters' speeches and gestures at San
Francisco's Magic Theatre in March 1992,as a revised version of the
piece presented at the Guthrie Theatre Laboratory in 1987and the
Padua Hills Festival in 1989.Her assured productions are habitually
commended for their clarity, wit and lightness of touch, allowing
time and space for the audience to reflect on the ensuing stage
action.
During the eighties and early nineties she ran playwrighting
workshops at International Arts Relations (INTAR) and was for
several years director of INTAR's Hispanic Playwrights-in-
Residence Laboratory in New York. She has staged produtions of
her INT AR students' work (Exilesby Ana Maria Simo [1982],Going
toNew Englandby Simo [1990], and Caridad Svich's Any PlaceBut Here
[1995]), as well as classical plays by dramatists such as Chekhov and
Ibsen which she has adapted herself. She has also translated numer-
ous· works, including Lorca's Bodasde sangre(BloodWedding)which
she staged in 1980,and Virgilio Pifiera's Airefri.o(ColdAir) staged in
1985at INT AR. She is the recipient of seven Obies including one for
Sustained Achievement (1982),an American Academy Award (1985),
and prominent grants and fellowships from institutions such as the
Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. Sh~ was also a Pulitzer
Prize finalist in 1989.
OTHER MAJOR PRODUCTIONS INCLUDE
Dr Khealby Maria Irene Fornes.Judson Church, New York, 1968.
The Curseof the LangstonHouseby Maria Irene Fornes. Premiere:
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Ohio, 197"2.
EvelynBrown:A Diaryby Maria Irene Fornes. Premiere: New City Theatre,
. New York, 1980.
A Visitby Maria Irene Fornes. Premiere: Padua Hills Festival, California,
1981.
 Loversand Keepers,lyrics by Maria Irene Fornes, music by Tito Puente and
Fernando Rivas. City Theater Company, Pittsburg, 1986.
The Mothersby Maria Irene Fornes. Premiere: Padua Hills Festival,
California, 1986.
UncleVanyaadapted by Maria Irene Fornes from the play by Anton
Chekhov. New York, The Classic Stage Repertory Theatre, 1987-
AbingdonSquareby Maria Irene Fornes. American Place Theatre, New
York, 1987.
Hungerby Maria Irene Fornes. Premiere: New York, 1988.Produced by En
Garde Productions.
lN CONTACT And Whatof the Night? by Maria Irene Fornes. Milwaukee Repertory,
WITH Wisconsin, 1989.
THE GODS?
CRITICS ON HER WORK
One could say that Fefuand Her Friendsand the plays which followed it ...
have paved the way for a new language of dramatic realism and a way of
directing it. What Fornes, as writer and director of her work, has done is to
strip away the self-conscious objectivity, narrative weight, and behaviorism
of ~he genre to concentrate on the unique subjectivity of characters for
whom talking is gestural, a way of being ... Fornes brings a much needed
intimacy to drama, and her economy of approach suggests another vision
of theatricality, more srylized for its lack of exhibitionism.
(Bonnie Marranca, 'The Real Life of Maria Irene Fornes', Performing
Arts Journal,8, No. 1,1984,p. 29).
Fornes's trademark as a director ... is a gestural and intonational formality,
an emphasis on declamatory line-readings in particular, that rejects the
cumulative effect of naturalistic detail in favor of the spontaneous impact
of revelatory image, that rejects emoting, behavioral verisimilitude, and
demonstration of meaning in favor of crystallization, painterly blocking,
and layers of iron.
(Ross Wetzsteon, 'Irene Fornes: The Elements of Style', The VitlageVoice,
29 April 1986,p. 43).
SIGNIFICANT BIBLIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL
Austin, Gayle. 'The Madwoman in the Spotlight: Plays of Maria Irene
Fornes', in Lynda Hart, ed. Making a Spectacle:FeministEssayson
ContemporaryWomen'sTheatre.Ann Arbour: The Universiry of Michigan
Press, 1989.
Cummings, Scott. 'Seeing with Clariry: The Visions of Maria Irene
Fornes'. Theater,7, 1985,pp. 51-6.
Cummings, Scott. 'Maria Irene Fornes', in Phillip Kolin, ed. Amen"can
PlaywnghtsSince1945.Westport: Greenwood Press, 1989.
O'Malley, Lurana Dannels. 'Pressing Clothes/Snapping Beans/ Reading
Books: Maria Irene Fornes's Women's Work'. Studiesin AmericanDrama
1945-Present, 4, 1989,pp. 103-17.
Fornes, Maria Irene. Plays.New York: PAJ Publications, 1986.
Fornes, Maria Irene. Promenadeand OtherPlays.New York: PAJ
Publications, 1987.
Letzler Cole, Susan. Directorsin Rehearsal·A Hidden World.London and
New York: Routledge, 1992.
Savran, David. In Their Own Words:ContemporaryAmericanPlaywrig/Jts.
New
York: Theatre Communications Group, 1988.
Zinman, Toby Silverman. 'Hen in a Foxhouse; The Absurdist Plays of
Maria Irene Fornes', in Enoch Bracer and Ruby Cohn, eds, Aroundthe
Absurd.·Essayson Modern and PostmodernDrama.Ann Arbour: University
of Michigan Press, 1990.
97
--◊--
Maria Irerie Fornes in conversation with Rod Wooden
at the Green Room, Manchester, 20 November 1994 MARIA IRENE
FORNES
WOODEN You didn't start directing your own work for about five
years. You allowed other directors to direct your plays, and then you
suddenly decided to direct them yourself and mainly since then
you've continued to direct your own plays. Why did you decide to
do that?
FORNES It seemed to me natural. The very first time that a play of
mine was worked on was in a workshop reading at the Actors Studio
for a directors' class. It was the first time that I saw a rehearsal of any
play, not just a rehearsal of a play of mine. Very soon afyer they
started, the actor who was playing the leading role stood up as she
read a monologue and began walking towards a chair. As she passed
the chair she stood behind it for an instant and continued walking. I
got up and went to her, and said, 'Oh, how wonderful. Stay there
behind the chair for a moment longer and turn front as you say the
speech.' She looked at me strangely. And I thought, 'What did I say?'
I looked at the other people to see what went wrong and everybody
was looking at me the same way she did, as if I did something wrong.
The director came up to me and very nicely, very politely said,
'Irene, I'm going to give you a little note book and a pencil and you
sit there, and whenever you have a comment to make, you write it
down. Then after the rehearsal we'll go out and have coffee and you
can tell me what you think.' I thought he was crazy. I thought to
myself, 'Why go through all this when I could just tell the actor?' I
looked at the actors and I could tell again that they thought, 'Well,
now she knows.' So I thought, 'Well, okay. This obviously is the way
they do things here.' So I wrote a few notes, not everything I wanted
to comment on, because I had already learned it was futile.
Afterwards, the director and I went and had a cup of coffee and I i
started giving him my comments, and he would say, 'When was that?
What movement? When did that happen?' And I would say, 'You
know she'went over there and she ... ' He didn't remember anything
that had happened. Naturally, it isn't that he was out of it, or stupid
or anything. It's just that ordinarily you don't remember things like
 that if they look right to you - a movement or the delivery of a line.
He did write a couple of things down, because he was well meaning.
He really intended to listen to everything I said and then transmit it
to the actors. And the next day he tried - but everything he said was
turned around, so I stopped writing notes. I just watched.
WOODEN You wanted to direct from then on?
FORNES No. That story was just to make you laugh, but also to tell
you that my impulse was, from day one, to put my hands on it. I
didn't think I wanted to direct then. I didn't know what directing
IN CONTACT
WITH entailed. I just thought it would be good if some things were done
THEGODS1 in a certain way, which is in a way what directing is. After that I had
two wonderful experiences: Herbert Blau directing TangoPalaceand
Larry Kornfield directing Promenade.I was happy. But then I had
several miserable experiences. Writing a play is very hard work and
it is very hard after you do all that work to hand it to someone else
and to set it at a distance and be gagged.You become the child that's
often in movies looking out the window because they're sick and
cannot play with the other children who are jumping and doing all
kinds of things outside. Most directors have manipulative tech-
niques which have a down effect on the work.
WOODEN How do you mean that rehearsal techniques are manipula-
tive?
FORNES Well, there is a lot of secrecy in rehearsal. The director
speaks directly to each actor about the motivation and psychological
manoeuverings. Whispering. This makes the actor feel special,
favoured, and the others feel left out. When I direct, I never talk
secretly to an actor. I feel that whatever I say to one actor has to be
of benefit to the others. When I go to rehearsals, I see that secrecy
is a very general practice. Too often I see the director going and
talking in the ear of an actor. Does this mean that the director is not
saying anythng that would be-0f benefit to the rest? I suspect so. I
suspect the director is not talking about emotions and imagery in a
way that describes the world of the play, the tone of the play, the
spirit of the play. I suspect that the director is just creating emo-
tional tensions and defenses. Draining the play of any texture or
colour, of any life, any fresh air, taking the play's lyricism and
turning it into mush. Taking the audience's good intentions and
turning them into 'get the conflict, get the messag~, and go home
thinking you understood the codes. You decoded the message. But
your heart just wasn't there.' The secrecy is divisive. Not just divi-
sive between one actor and another, but also in relation to the char-
acter. What kind of character is going to come out of secrecy like
that? What you are discussing is the artistic or technical way an actor
develops the person of the character. What I say to one actor, the
other actors will understand even if it doesn't apply to their char-
acters. It is one step, two steps or even fifteen steps into entering the
world that this whole play's going to be in. It's a way of thinking
about the play, a way of thinking about the world. The aim is to do
a good product, to have a good show and if you have to do some
sneaky tricky things then it's actually detrimental. 99
WOODEN You told me once that Lanford Wilson has described the --◊--
playwright as the female of the theatre, and the director as the male.
MARIA IRENE
What did he mean by that? FORNES
FORNES We were riding on a train to New Haven and he said, 'When
I have a play produced I feel that I understand what women mean
in relation to men. As a playwright I am in the same position. The
director behaves like a guy taking a woman out on a date. He's going
to show her a great time. He's going to do wonderful things to your
play. He's going to take her to a great restaurant, and she's going to
love it. If she says "I don't like this", she's been rude. As a playwright
I have to be like a nice woman who says, "Oh, it was wonderful.
Thank you very much, that was very nice.'" Playwrights can be
, banned from rehearsals. That is the law.
About a year or so later, I was on a panel of writers, and one of
them was dressed like a senior executive in a business or a big bank.
He was a playwright. He was very successful. He had had a couple
of plays on Broadway and worked on television and in films. That
man was sitting there, six feet tall with a good solid voice and a clean-
shaven appearance, wearing a very correct suit and nice polished
shoes and suddenly he said, 'The playwright in theatre is like a
woman.' And he went on to say what Lanford said. I'm looking at him
and I think, 'Him? They mess with him? There's no chance then!'
WOODEN Since then, you've not only directed your own plays, but
you've also directed other writers' plays: Chekhov, Ibsen and other
classical plays. What do you think you can bring to those plays as a
writer that perhaps other people don't bring?
FORNES I think I understand the text as emerging from the charac-
ter's head and from the writer's head. When what you practice, your
craft, deals with words as they emerge from the character's mind,
you can reverse it and understand the character's mind. You can
understand the character's state of mind; therefore, the tone and
therefore, the meaning. Because in tone there is more meaning than
in all the emotional conflicts in the world.
wooDEN And as a painter what can you bring to your writing and
directing?
 FORNES I started as a painter and developed a strong visual sense. In
painting you make a drawing and you practice perspective; you
make a drawing of two people and how, because of their position,
they relate to each other. This is something you do when you are
taking pictures also, if you don't just take quick snap shots but take
a little more care. You move the camera, slightly, carefully, and you
100 see how the perspective changes and you see how the picture can
become a lot more interesting, more beautiful, more powerful. That
kind of eye is very important for theatre, to make it a lot more
IN CONTACT beautiful or a lot more mysterious.
WITH
WOODEN Do you think all writers should train themselves as direc-
THE GODS?
tors?
FORNES Completely. And all directors should write, but not neces-
sarily professionally; just to develop their craft further. A playwright
friend of mine is a wonderful director. He did a little film - which
was part of a film course we were on together - and his film was
exquisite. His visual sense - the timing, the photography, the light -
was memorable. I asked him why he didn't direct, and he said, 'I
know I could do it but I don't like to organise people and tell them
what to do.' It's true, that's part of what you have to do, as a director.
AUDIENCE QUESTION 1 You were talking about the playwright as the
female and the director as the male; don't you think that's a sad
indictment of theatre today?
FORNES Oh yes. I don't see any reason for it. I do think that the func-
tion of the director is one of a delicate sensitivity and guidance; and
of taking pleasure in seeing something flourish: the play, the per-
formances, the set, lights. Women are by training or nature quite
equipped to do this. So why suddenly should they be left out of this
profession?
WOODEN In today's Observerthere'sas excellent review of your play
The Danubefor Shared Exper~ence, which is now running at the Gate
in London, directed by Nancy Meckler. She's directed several of
your plays before, including AbingdonSquareat the Royal National
Theatre. The review talks about the play and then it goes on to
discuss Nancy Meckler's direction. It includes as a comment what a
good idea it was of the director to stage the section with the puppets,
and yet that's in the stage directions. The critic has automatically
assumed, because it was something physical realised on stage, that it
was the work of the director.
FORNES It's true that it's assumed the playwright is not a well-
rounded theatre person in terms of normal things and even behav-
iour, and that anything visual should be credited to someone else.
But the puppets are speaking words. So why would this critic assume
that it was not part of the play? However, I don't mind somebody
else getting credit for something I did. That, to me, is all right, as
long as the work is good. I'm not in competition with the director.
When I write a play, I have no idea how I'm going to stage it.
Because my approach to writing is visualising the characters in the
real world not on a stage. When I edit the play, when I structure it, IOI
it's when I start imagining it in a single space. I feel if a playwright
starts writing for the stage (from the very beginning) the dialogue
becomes rigid and the characters stiff. It is good to get to know the MARIA IRENE
FORNES
characters in the real world. Then you can switch to the stage when
you re-write: how are you going to do all this that you want to do in
one set? That's hard to do, but it's worth it for the sake of the liveli-
ness of the characters.
AUDIENCE QUESTION z I'd just like to refer back to your rehearsal tech-
nique where you talk to actors as a whole, rather than taking them
on their own. Have you ever come up against any sort of barriers
with particular actors, and felt they wouldn't like it unless you spoke
to them individually?
FORNES No, never. I work with them individually if I think that what
I want to do with them will take too much out of everybody's time.
I know that in some casts one has to be sensitive to the fact that
another actor is listening, so there are times when I joke about some-
thing. For example, where I want one character not to take too seri-
ously another character who is insulting or offending them. I would
say, 'No, take it lighter.' And the actor might say, 'Well, he's insult-
ing me. Why don't you want me to take it seriously.' And I reply,
'Don't pay too much attention to him. He's dumb, he's stupid, don't
pay attention to him.' I say it in front of the other actor, although I
know that's not good for the other actor. So then I say to the other
actor, 'But it's hewho is dumb!' See? The feelings are out in the open
and they are no less intense. In real life those things· are clear
anyway, if not by word, by tone, by posture, by facial expression, by
breath. fo training, in class, yes. To train the actor to locate, to reach
deep feelings. But in rehearsal? I mean, everyone has read the play!
AUDIENCE QUESTION 3 Can you identify the qualities in other writers
that attract you as a director to their plays?
FORNES It has something to do with something that is subtle, some-
thing that is usually missed.
AUDIENCE ·QUESTION 3 [CONT.] You staged UncleVanya,for example, in
1987.What attracted you to that play? What did you think you could
bring to that play?
 FORNES I don't really think I bring something to it that's what I hear
very often from directing teachers who ask the students, 'What
would you bring to this work? What can you contribute?' I feel that
the director doesn't bring anything to it, he just tries not to miss any-
thing that is in the play. If you're cooking and you say, 'What can I
bring to this?', that means you will be putting in ingredients that may
102 complement the main ingredient but that are something other than
the main ingredient, like a tomato sauce to spaghetti. I feel that the
play, the main ingredient, gives off the solutions to its executions.
IN CONTACT They grow out of it and can be directed on it.
WITH
When I watched Lee Strasberg working at the Actors Studio I
THEGODSI
thought that everything that he said about acting was very inter-
esting, complex and delicate. But when he came to teaching direct-
ing he always asked the student giving a presentation, 'What did you
contribute to this?' And I felt that it was a strange term 'to con-
tribute', for the director should not impose something to the play but
make sure that what is in the play has come out in the production.
The director has a lot of work to do. It isn't like the director should
just sit there and watch it grow. But directing has something to do
with watching it grow. A director should only agree to stage a play
if the play has not started to grow in her or his mind. The director
should not manufacture something around the play. The word 'con-
tribute' seemed dangerous to me.
AUDIENCE QUESTION 4 Despite the precision of your stage directions,
the way in which you write clearly opens out various possible inter-
pretations to directors. You must have seen the same moments in
your plays transform and mutate in the hands of different directors.
Could you give us some examples of the way in which directors re-
interpret your work and whether you are conscious of controlling
the space between your writing and directing?
FORNES The word 'controlling' suggests a kind of uptightness or
doing something you're not entitled to do. Everything I put in my
plays is something I do to enhance its understanding. People seem
to be in love with the idea of team work. It seems democratic, palsy
and fun. But theatre is an art and what is important is not that people
have fun but that the final result is an art Sometimes when I see a
play of mine I find that one or more of the characters have been -
directed in a manner that is detrimental to the play and I think, 'How
could they have even thought that this character should be done like
this?' At one point I realised that although I'm very precise about
some things in my writing, I hardly ever describe the characters, as
a lot of writers do. In the character's description I usually just write
the age and something about their temperament, maybe like 'the
person is wiry' something about the dynamics of the character.
Then I thought, 'My God, most writers do more than that. I should
be more specific.' This is why I am surprised and frequently dis-
pleased by the way my characters are brought to life by other direc-
tors. But I don't mind at all if a play of mine is done in a different
manner as long as I find that I'm interested: that the characters are
moving and that I feel something from them.
I saw a production of Mud where Henry was a kind of old smart
alee, a self-~entred character from the beginning. That diminished
the character and the whole play for me. Why would Mae be so MARIA IRENE
FORNES
attracted to a man like that Henry? To me it isn't just that it's not the
way I saw the character, but it has to do with the whole play being
demeaned. Because if Mae is attracted to him then what does that
make Mae? It has all kinds of repercussions that deal with the total-
ity of the play and I do get upset when I see that. Of course I do.
Basically,what I am concerned about when I write is something that
has to do with humanity; and that has to do with a kind of tender-
ness that I feel for the characters, no matter how cruel or terrible
, they may be. However bad things get, I still want to feel for them. As
a writer I want to feel for them. As a director I want to feel for them.
And as a member of the audience I want to feel for them even when
they're terrible and bitchy and do horrendous things: I think it's
boring unless you feel something for the characters.
AUDIENCE QUESTION 5 You've been closely involved in training
dramatists for many years: do you think it's possible to run similar
workshops or courses for directors? How would they differ?
FORNES It's different. The writer has to concentrate inside himself,
the director outside: on the actors, on the space, dealing with all the
people. I always try to make the writer concentrate on their own
creativity. In that I mean the kind of things that are happening in
the writer: not so much the conscious opinions or statements that
one would make about something, but things that are more intangi-
ble. Like someone you saw on the street that moved you, or some-
thing you remembered that hurt you. The director should do that
too but it is in relation to the play. They should not think, 'What can
I do with this?', because then they are starting to manipulate even
before they have any substance to manipulate. Rather they should
read the play just to receive it, just to see what comes from the play
to them. They should not start by saying, 'I'm the director. I'm the
boss. I'm going to do this. Now, how am I going to do this? What am
I going to do with it? How am I going to make this interesting?' They
need to keep reading the play and if you do that, if the play is any
good, the characters will pop out. They pop out as in pop-up books.
 The characters pop out on their own, and then you continue the
process when rehearsals start with the actors. You select the actors,
you read the play and when an actor reads a part you already begin
to have a different sense of what the part is. It's a different thing that
pops out. You observe what is there. Sometimes it's unacceptable
and sometimes it's wonderful how it's evolving and what's happen-
104
ing. Then you can see what comes up from the actors and you can
see how the lines activate the actor. Then you mould it or you change
it if it's unacceptable. But don't start from the beginning with fixed
IN CONTACT ideas. That is even how I direct my own work. It's not that I have
WITH
actors do improvisations, and I say 'I'm going to use this and that'.
THE GODS?
What I am choosing is something that's more subtle and less con-
scious on the part of the actor than what would come out in an
improvisation, maybe things that are more personal. It could be
something I see in the way the actor walks, or the way the actor sits
and listens, which I find so beautiful that I ask the actor to sit centre
stage listening to the others. I may want the attention to go to the
person on the stage listening rather than to the person who is speak-
ing. All the time I'm taking from what the actors are providing. And
I am also taking from the space. I would direct a play very differently
if the space is different, if the space is deeper, if the space is taller:
something begins to happen that's different.
AUDIENCE QUESTION 6 Do you think directing can be taught?
FORNES Of course you can teach people to listen, and you can teach
people to observe space, and that's how you teach art. You teach
people to become aware of things. For example, how an actor enters
a space, where the entrance is, and whether the person walks in
rapidly or slowly, or whether the person comes and stops and just
takes two steps and stops.
I learned a great deal about space from watching friends of mine
who were choreographers. They pay a great deal of attention to a
movement and whether the person is two feet up or two feet down,
even inches make a difference. You begin to realise how you must
observe this space, and by having that pointed out to you, you learn
to observe. Therefore, you learn to bring to your work the elements
that have to do with space, with movement, with speed, with gesture,
with colours: for example, simply the colour of costumes or the
colour of a wall.
It's like writing. I teach writing by teaching people to learn to
listen to their own creativity. I don't tell them how to write a play.
By providing certain exercises I am pointing them in different direc-
tions so that they can observe different things, and that's how any-
thing is taught. People who teach through the learning of formulas
haven't taught anything. They have actually prevented the person
from learning what they would have learned if they had any
sensibility or sensitivity. People who are given formulas don't learn
by practise, because once they know the formula they are convinced
they know everything there is to know. People who teach the use of
formulas are actually preventing and impeding learning.
Because I am a playwright, when I say that the director should 105
read the_play,listen to the play and let the play tell them what it's all
about, people may think I am inflexible and I don't like things done
differently from the way I imagined them. I love it when things are MARIA IRENE
FORNES
done differently. I love being surprised as long as what they are
doing is good. When I have a new cast, I may change the personal-
ity of a character. What I first imagined is not necessarily the best
way, the only way it should be.
AUDIENCE QUESTION 7 Why did you describe your plays in terms of
beinfphow business?
FORNES There is a trickery which is part of what I adore in theatre.
You see, if there's a point to writing, it really has to be the purity of
creativity and getting in touch with the reality of those human
beings, their flesh and their sweat, their nightmares and their
hatreds. You have to get in touch with all those things. It's hard work
to get in touch with all of that. But then once you're putting it
together, the trickery of theatre is just delicious. Showbiz musicals
and vaudeville have a kind of presentational thing. Theatre doesn't
have t,o.You could do a wonderful play and a wonderful production
without any of it. But it's something that's available to you. It's part
of what you have to play with and the trickery to me is fun.
AUDIENCE QUESTION 7 [CONT.] So you don't make a distinction
between avant-garde and show business?
FORNES Right now, why is there a special light on us? I can hardly see
you. Why can you see me? That's trickery. That's so you don't start
talking to each other, and you think that what I'm saying is very
interesting. That?s showbiz trickery.
 ®JCARYL CHURCHILL ~ DONALD EASTMAN
playwright Set Designer

A POEM FOR IRENE FORNES

EVERY SET I DESIGN WITH IRENE IS AN

opportunity to design a heaven room. They are always interiors. No
When I feel sick of
matter what the theater, we design and build our own walls to cover
plays, writing, theatre,
the existing walls. When I say heaven, I'm speaking of a purity. It's all
the whole business, I
based on reality and research, but captured in a golden moment. There
sometimes think of yours
is a purity and honesty of materials. The woodwork is well oiled like
and get a flicker
a church pew or left alone like vermeer stripped of color or stained a
of what it is I
pure red.
like about it all.
A warehouse space will have a fresh coat of whitewash. An unpainted
plaster wall can have the texture of a Monet. If we think of marble, it's
alabaster.
And I liked meeting
In everything there is a spirit of housekeeping. I will always remem-
you and your mother
ber Irene's big note when I was designing AbingdonSquare."In this house
in that hotel room.
there is always fresh cream to feed the cat."
She was a hundred
When we're in the theater together it's all about work. We're so seri-
asleep on the bed
ous and so butch and we laugh a lot. At any moment Irene will lean
in her black hat and
over and say sotto vocce "I tell you, we are gorgeous."
woke to say good-bye.
If you're being as "artistic" as we are, the idea of recognizing it is
a secret pleasure. Because, before all, Irene has taught me that hard work
" is our duty and our first pleasure.
Thank you for both those.

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COMMENTARIES 105
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 that important until they see and feel the difference. Her results ate
~ANNE MILITELLO breathtaking.
Lighting Designer My work with her has influenced all of my subsequent designs. I
feel extremely lucky to know her.

TO ME, IRENE FORNES IS ONE OF THE

greatest visual artists in the theater today, as well as being one of the
greatest playwrights. She is an expert on visual language. She knows
exactly how to integrate all the design elements so that her plays can
exist in a perfect space.
My work with Irene began soon after I moved to New York in 1980.
I designed thirteen productions for her and I consider that work to be
the most inspired of my theater career. From her, I learned how to extract
and express emotion with lighting. She always encouraged me to go
further, darker, dimmer using focus and respecting every visible detail.
She taught me that simple images, such as a figure as a black silhouette
speaking against a dim background, or a half-lit face in the distance can
add serious emotional depth. The subtle shift of a single shadow in con-
junction with precise timing by an actor could create intense beauty. Her
timing is exquisite. My ideas expand greatly every time I work with her.
"When she directs, she choreographs every movement of the actors
and the light together with focused precision. Sqmehow, she gets the
actors to respond to the movement of light, and every night, they remem-
ber and use it for great effect. I've never seen any other director be able
to achieve such support frbm a cast. I am constantly in awe of her gen-
erosity and wisdom as a teacher.
We have had to defend ourselves to several production managers,
to convince them why we need another day of tech time in the begin-
ning of rehearsals. There have been arguments, but she has always made
converts after a brief drop-in to our rehearsals by those same people.
Sometimes, at the beginning of tech rehearsals, the uninitiated actor
is puzzled why an inch of movement or scenery placement could be

106 CONDUCTING A LIFE COMMENTARIES 107

A PREFACE TO TANGO PALACE
& THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE OF 3

TO SAY THAT a work of art is meaningful is to imply that the work is endowed
with intelligence. That it is illuminating. But if we must inquire what the mean-
ing of a work of art is, it becomes evident that the work has failed us; that we
have not been inspired by it; that the work has not succeeded in breathing its
life for us.
To approach a work of art with the wish to decipher its symbolism, and to
extract the author's intentions from it, is to imply that the work can be some-
thing other than what it demonstrates, that the work can be treated as a code
system which, when deciphered, reveals the true content of the work. A work
of art should not be other than what it demonstrates. It should not be an intel-
lectual puzzle, or atJeast not primarily. A true work of art is a magic thing. To
comprehend magic we must be in a state of innocence, of credulity. If there is
wisdom in the work it will come to us. But if we go after it, we become wary,
watchful. We lose our ability to taste.
A work of art must have its function, like a car, a window, or a bridge. We

Originally published as "Playwright's Preface" in Playwrightsfor Tomorrow:A Collectionof Plays, vol. 2,

ed. Arthur H. Ballet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966).

208 \\ Fornes on Fornes
all know how a car, or a window, or a bridge must function. We know whether
the designer or engineer has succeeded. However, we are not too sure how art
must function. Art must inspire us. That is its function.
If art is to inspire us, we must not be too eager to understand. If we under-
stand too readily, our understanding will, most likely, be meaningless. It will
have no consequences. We must be patient with ourselves.
We have learned to think of inspiration as the property of artists. lt is not. In-
spiration belongs to all of us. What the artist does with his inspiration is quite
clear. He creates his work of art. The product of his inspiration becomes public.
The inspiration of the layman generates itself in his personal life. It enriches it,
a
and ennobles it. Inspiration is precious gift that we have relinquished with-
out any struggle. We do not believe that it belongs to us. WRITE THESE
Art is created by the artist for the layman. The layman must take possession
of it. He must beco~e familiar with it. He must make himself worthy of being MESSAGES THAT COME
its judge. He must love it.

THOUGHTS COME to my mind at any point, anywhere- I could be on the sub-

way-and if I am alert enough and I have a pencil and paper, I write these
messagesthat come. It might be just a thought, like a statement about some-
thing, an insight, or it could be a line of dialogue. It could be something that
someone says in my head.
I have a box filled with these scribbles. Some of them are on paper napkins
or the backs of envelopes. These things are often the beginning of a play. Most
of the lyrics of the songs that I writ,e are based on these notes-as opposed to
a play, which, once it starts, I make. I usually gather a number of those things
that have some relation-again, I do not even know why I consider that they
are related-and I put them together. I compose something around those mes-
sages using a number of lines that have come into my head.
Now sometimes I am trying to get myself organized, and I am sharpening
pencils and doing all those things. So I go to that pile of notes-it's a mess be-
cause it is scribblings. Sometimes I cannot read what I wrote because often I

Originally published, in slightly longer form, in The Drama Review,vol. 21 (December 1977). From an
interview conducted and edited by Robb Creese.

213
214 \\ Fornes on Fornes
make notes in dark theaters when I am sitting through a play. (A lot of thoughts
come into my mind when I am watching a play, especially a play that I am not
at all absorbed by.) I start typing through some of these things and very often
1 find things I cannot imagine why in the world I thought they were anything
special. They are the most mundane thoughts or phrases. Sometimes I think,
"There is some value here that I do not recognize now, but at some point I
thought, 'This is a message.' It must be that it is, but I have lost the thought."
When that happens I often type it out and leave it, even though it is without
any faith at all. I leave it because at some point I did have this faith.
The feeling I have about these messages is very different from what I have
about what I am writing when it is I writing. I might write something that I
like, and it feels good. But the feeling I have about those other things is really
as if it is a message that comes in an indivisible unit. I feel if a word is changed,
then it is lost. A thought comes-sometimes I do not have a pencil with me-I
try to repeat it in my head until I get to a pencil. I know I must remember the
exact construction of the sentence. I might be wrong, you see. It could be that
it does not matter more or less how it is said. But still I feel that it is a block
and that is how it should look, whether it is a page of dialogue that comes in
the message or three pages or one line.
That dialogue then could become a play. When I am to write a work, I never
start from a blank page. I only start from one of these things that I do, that I re-
ceive. Sometimes I start a play from one line of dialogue. It has to be something
that has the makings of a play.
The only play that I started from an idea-and it was an idea that was very
clear in my head-and that I sat down and wrote was TangoPalace.I think it
is quite clear that that is how it is written because the play has a very strong,
central idea. None of my other plays does. They are not Idea Plays. My plays
do not present a thesis, or at least, let us say, they do not present a formulated
thesis. One can make a thesis about anything (I could or anyone could formu-
late one), but I do not present ideas except in Tango Palace. I lost-interest in
that way of working.
The play writes itself. The first draft writes itself anyway. Then I look at it
and I find out what is in it. I find out where I have overextended it and what
things need to be cut. I see where I have not found the scene. I see what I have
to do for the character to exist fully. Then I rewrite. And of course in the re-.
write there is a great deal of thought and sober analysis.
One day I was talking to Rochelle Owens, and I was telling her how when
I start working on a play the words are just on paper. Perhaps I will see some
I Write These Messages That Come // 215
things or I hear something. I feel the presence of a character.or person. But then
there is a point when the characters become crystallized. When that happens, I
have an image in full color, technicolor. And that happens! I do not remember
it happening, but I get it like click! At some point I see a picture of the set with
the characters in it-let us say a picture related to the set, not necessarily the
exact set.
The colors for me are very, very important. And the colors of the clothes
the people wear. When it finally happens, the play exists; it has taken its own
life. And then I just listen to it. I move along with it. I let it write itself. I have
reached that point in plays at times. I have put scripts away then and picked
them up three years later, and, reading them, suddenly I see that same picture
with the same colors.The color never goes away. It could be ten years later. The ·
play exists even if I have not finished writing it. Even if it is only fifteen pages.
It is like an embryo that is already alive and it is there waiting.
I am always amazed how an audience knows when a play is finished. That
is something that I have always found very beautiful. Sometimes when I go to
the theater when it is not written in the program that there is going to be an
intermission, and when it is quite clear that something has ended, people say,
"Is it over?'' But they say it with surprise. The actors have left the stage, but it
does not look over. People know. And then when it is really over, there is that
immediate knowledge that it has ended, and people applaud. In that same way,
I know when a script has completed itself. I sense the last note of the play.
One play of mine has about three endings. It looks like it has ended, but then
there is another ending, and then there is another ending. These are almost-
endings, and they do not have that total satisfaction of a real ending. It could
have been that I could have left it. But probably people would have been ask-
ing, "Is it over?" "Oh, it's over."
The characters: They talk. Ahd when it talks, a character starts developing
itself. I never try to reproduce a real character. I did, in fact, try to reproduce real
people that I knew in one play, The Office.I got into trouble because the charac-
ters in the situation were from real life, and I changed a lot of things in the play.
I felt that I lacked the objectivity to make the play really sharp and for me to be
sure exactly what I was doing. Since I started with a reality of what happened, it
was the event that was important. And that event would not work for the play.
I know a lot of people write either about a real person or else they put a
familiar character into an invented situation. I find that it just confuses me,
that I do not see that as useful for me in any way.
In that same conversation with Rochelle Owens, I told her about my colors.
216 \ \ Fornes on Fornes
She found it very interesting. And I said, "You mean you don't see color when
you write? I thought everybody saw color!" But she does not. I asked what hap-
pens to her, and she said she hears voices. She hears the sound of what the play
is saying. Sometimes she is writing and she knows that a sentence should be
bah-bah-bah-bah, but the words do not come immediately. Rather than stop-
ping, she goes on and she leaves that blank space. She goes on because the
other words are coming. She knows how it has to sound, and she goes back to
it. It comes in exactly that form. That is very different from my own work.
Everything that I have written has had a different start. Successful Life of 3
started when I heard two men speaking to each other. One of them was an
actor I knew. That conversation was actually in my head. Not that I wanted to
write the play for that actor, it is just that he was there and this other guy was
there, and he did not have a very definite face. That caught my imagination
completely. I wrote the play in two weeks.
At the same time, I was writing Promenade,which I wrote as an exercise I
gave myself. I wrote down the characters on one set of index cards. On another
set of cards, I wrote different places. I shuffled them together. I picked a card
that said, "The Aristocrats." And I picked the card that said, "The Prison." So
the play started in prison for that reason. But I found it very difficult to write a
scene with aristocrats in prison, so the first thing that happened was that they
were digging a hole to escape. I wanted to get them out of there.
For some reason it worked for me that the prisoners remained prisoners. And
in the next scene, they were at a banquet where there were aristocrats. After
that, I found using the cards for the characters was not helping me at all. But
I kept using the place cards. That is why the play has six different locations. I
would write a scene and when I was finished writing that scene I would turn
to the next card. That was the order the scenes came in.
By the way, I find doing exercises very valuable. It is good for me not to do
things too deliberately: to have half my mind on something else and let some-
thing start happening. I am really very analytical. I like analyzing things, but
it is better for me not to think very much. Only after I have started creating
can I put all my analytical mind into it. Most of my plays start with a kind of a
fantasy game-just to see what happens. Fefu and Her Friends started that way.
There was this woman I fantasized who was talking to some friends. She took
her rifle and shot her husband ....
A playwright has a different distance from each script. Some are two feet
away, and some are two hundred feet away. Fefu was not even two inches away.
I Write These Messages That Come // 217
It is right where I am. That is difficult to do when one feels close. A different
kind of delicacy enters into the writing. Each day I had to put myself into the
mood to write the play. I wrote it in a very short period of time, in a very in-
tense period of writing, where I did nothing but write, write, write. Every day
I would start the day by reading my old folder (a different folder from the one
where I keep my "messages"), where I have all my sufferings, personal suffer-
ings: the times when I was in love and not, the times I did badly, all those
anguishes which were really very profound. There were times that I just had to
sit down and write about it because I felt anguish about it. It was not writing
for the sake of writing; it was writing for the sake of exorcism. A lot of those
things had been in this folder for many years. I had never looked at them. That
was where the cockroaches were, so to speak.
I would start the day by reading something from that folder. Actually, there
were even a couple times when I used things I found there, but most of it is
garbage, really garbage, a collection of dirt: the whining, the complaining. But
it would put me into that very, very personal, intimate mood to write.
I never before set up any kind of environment to write a play! This was the
first time that I did that because the play was different. I had to reinforce the
intimacy of the play.
Then I would put on the records of a Cuban singer, Olga Guillot. She is
very passionate and sensuous. She is shameless in her passion. And I wrote the
whole play listening to Olga Guillot. (My neighbors must have thought I was
out of my mind.) There was one record, Anorando el Caribe, that particularly
seemed to make my juices run. I just left it on the turntable and let it go on and
on and on. The play had nothing to do with Olga Guillot. Her spirit is very dif-
ferent. She is very dramatic. And Fefu is very subtle and very delicate. But her
voice kept me oiled.
I started the final writing of Fefu in February 1977. At that time I had about
a third of the play written. It opened May 5, 1977. In those three months, I fin-
ished writing, I cast it, and I rehearsed it. I finished the play four days before
it opened. I do not mean the very last scene. There were scenes in the middle I
had to do. I made no revisions during rehearsals. I have to do some rewriting of
the play now. I believe I must approach the rewrite in the same way as before:
with the pile of writing and Olga Guillot.
Space affected Fefu and Her Friends. In late February, I decided to look for a
. place to perform the work. I had finished the first scene, and I had loose sepa-
rate scenes that belonged somewhere in the second part of the play. I did not
218 \\ Fornes on Fornes
like the space I found because it had large columns. But then I was taken back-
stage to the rooms the audience could not see. I saw the dressing room, and I
thought, "How nice. This could be a room in Fefu's house." Then I was taken to
the greenroom. I thought that this also could be a room in Fefu's house. Then
we went to the business office to discuss terms. That office was the study of
Fefu's house. (For the performance we took some of the stuff out, but we used
the books, the rugs, everything that was there.) I asked if we could use all of
their rooms for the performances, and they agreed.
I had written Julia's speech in the bedroom already. I had intended to put
it onstage, and I had not yet arrived at how it would come about. Part of the
kitchen scene was written, but I had thought it would be happening in the
living room. So I had parts of it already. It was the rooms themselves that modi-
fied the scenes which originally I planned to put in the living room.
People asked me, when the play opened, if I had written those scenes to be
done in different rooms and then found the space. No. They were written that
way because the space was there. I had to figure out the exact coordination for
the movements between one scene and the other so the timing would be right.
I had rehearsed each scene separately. Now I was going to rehearse them simul-
taneously. Then I realized that my play, Aurora, had exactly the same concept.
There was the similarity of two different rooms with simultaneous life. I did
not consciously realize until then that it had some connection with Aurora.
I mention this because people put so much emphasis on the deliberateness of
a work. I am delighted when something is not deliberate. I do not trust deliber-
ateness. When something happens by accident, I trust that the play is making
its own point. I feel something is happening that fs very profound and very
important. People go far in this thing of awareness and deliberateness; they go
further and further. They go to see a p1ay and they do not like it. So someone
explains it to them, and they like it better. How can they possibly understand it
better, like it better, or see more of it because someone has explained it?
I am very good at explaining things. And whatever I do not understand, I can
even invent. There are people who do beautiful work and do not know why,
and they think it is invalid. Those who are not good at explanation are at a dis-
advantage, but their work is as valid.
I think it is impossible to aim at an audience when writing a play. I never do.
I think that is why some commercial productions fail. They are trying to -cre-
ate a product that is going to create a reaction, and they cannot. If they could,
every play on Broadway that is done for that purpose would be a great success.
I Write These Messages That Come II 219
They think they know. They try and they fail. I know I do not know, but even
if I did, I do not think I would write for the audience.
As a matter of fact, when the audience first comes to one of my plays, my
feeling is that they are intruders. Especially when I have directed the play, I
feel that I love my play so much, and I enjoy it so and feel so intimate with the
actors, that when opening night arrives I ask, "What are all those people doing
in my house?" Then it changes, of course, especially if they like it. I might even
think I wrote it for them if they like it. I love to have an audience like a play.
But during the work period, they are never present. Basically I feel that if I like
something, other people will like it, too.
I think there is always a person I am writing for. Sometimes it is a specific
person that I feel is there with me enjoying it in my mind. In my mind, that per-
son is saying, "Oh, yes, I love it!" Or if it is not a specific person, it is a kind of
person. It might be so~eone who does not really have a face, but it is a friend,
someone who likes the same things. If we saw a play, we both would like it or
we both would dislike it. So in a way I am writing for an "audience." But it is
not for the public, not for the critics, not the business of theater.
I feel that the state of creativity is a very special state. And most people who
write or who want to write are not very aware that it is a state of mind. Most
people when they cannot write say, "I can't write. I'm blocked." And then at
another point the,y are writing a lot and they cannot stop; it appears to be a very
mysterious thing, writing. Sometimes the Muse is speaking and other times it
is not. But I think it is possible to put oneself in the right state of mind in the
same manner that some people do meditation. There are techniques to arrive at
particular states of consciousness. But we artists do not know the techniques. I
do not know, either. I learned to do it with Fefu and Her Friends with my notes
and record. But who knows? Maybe I could have done the play anyway.
I find that when I am not writing, starting to write is not just difficult-
it is impossible. It is just excruciating. I do not know the reason, for once I
get started it is very pleasurable. I can think of nothing more pleasurable than
being in the state of creativity. When I am in that state, people call me, say, to
go to a party, to do things that are fun, to do the things where usually I would
say, "Oh yes! Of course!" And nothing seems as pleasurable as writing.
But then I finish writing, and that state ends. It just seems that I do not want
to go back to it. I feel about it the same way I feel about jumping off a bridge.
And to keep from writing, I do everything. I sharpen pencils. In the past few
days, it has been a constant thing of sitting at a typewriter and saying, "Oh! Let
220 \\ Fornes on Fornes
me get my silverware in order!" It seems very important because, when I might
need a cup of coffee, the spoons will be all lined up. Incredible. It is incredible.
So I go back to the typewriter. I say, "Oh! I need a cup of coffee." And then,
"I better go get a pack of cigarettes so I'll have them here." And then there is
starching my clothes. That is something I started this summer. It is a very lovely
thing. I make my own starch. I have to wash my clothes. I have to let them dry,
then starch them. They are hard to iron. I usually do not press my clothes. I just
wear them. But now that I am writing, all my jeans are starched and pressed
and all my shirts are starched and pressed. Anything is better than writing.

FROM AN INTERVIEW
WITH ALLEN FRAME
FRAME: I thought your staging, when I saw it a·few years ago at the American
Place Theatre, of Fefu and Her Friends was ingenious ....
FORNES: When I worked with the actresses in those [four different] spaces it was
one of the most beautiful directing experiences for me because I was sitting
with them right in the room. And it would be only us-:whoever was in the
scene and me sitting there. And it was more real to me than anything. Because
when there's a set and you're on a st;ge, you're further away. I would be sit-
ting at the table with them. There was a table in this kitchen. Or in the study,
I would be sitting in a chair, and it was completely quiet. There was total
silence. To me that silence was necessary. If I had at that point written down
stage directions that would have been forever binding, I would have said, "It's
important that the rooms be totally isolated so that there's no sound at all."
Now when I was trying to synchronize the scenes, the sound of the other
scenes was too loud, so we started putting curtains and blankets on -the
Originally entitled "Maria Irene Fornes" and published, in longer form, in Bomb magazine, no. 10
(Fall 1984).
224
Interview with Allen Frame // 225
windows and on the doors. My aim would have been to isolate the sound
completely. Since we were not successful, there was a little bit of sound that
drifted through it. It was actually the audience then that said, "What a won-
derful thing that you hear the other conversations faintly. And sometimes
· you recognize lines, and sometimes they're lines you've heard, and some-
times they're lines you know you're going to hear." So you think, "Oh, my
God! Of course!" But I didn't know that. And I think when you deal with
a play that's completely a new form you know a little about it, and you say,
"Yes, this is how it should be done," because from what you see it's exciting,
but then you don't anticipate many, many other things.
FRAME: There's a heightened reality in your work that's almost superreal. In Mud
the writing was so compressed, so spare, that the play achieved an intensity
that seemed superreal. One critic interpreted the story as a post-apocalyptic
situation. The setting actually looked like something from the Depression
era, but the terms of the play were so bleak and unpromising that the situa-
tion almost appeared to be a futuristic nightmare.
FORNES: I understand seeing that, but I didn't intend it. My plays are clean.
Most plays have four, five vital moments in the play and the rest of the play
is just getting to it. It's just fill. I don't know why, whether it's just to create
the sense that it's real or that you have to spend two hours to experience the
power (you have to see not just snapshots). But I find it very boring. I go
to sleep when I see plays like that, and I go to sleep writing it. I would just
actually fall asleep at the typewriter and would not be able to finish a scene
written like that. What's different now is that my work is much more emo-
tional and connected to story. Because of that and the fact that the air around
it is clean, it's very strange. It reminds me a little bit of Edward Hopper's
paintings-where there's something very real about the situation, it's very
mundane, but the air is always so clean you feel there's something wrong.
FRAME:It's different from the "magic reality" of a lot of Latin American writers
whose structure is also looser.
FORNES: You mean the novelists?
FRAME: Yes.
226 \\ Fornes on Fornes
FORNES: The Latin American artist is almost always a surrealist, whether it be
painters, artists, or poets. I don't know that they ever see themselves as being
surrealists. That's just how they conceive art. Art-is something you don't just
reproduce-what you see every day doesn't seem to be inspiring to them.
But you do something with it so that it's not bound by the law of reality. My
work has always had that influence. I've never felt that it was necessary at all
to write realistic plays .... I think my theater is the way it is because I spent
a few years painting.
FRAME: I thought maybe sculpture because there's such a strong sense of struc-
ture in your work.
FORNES: I have to structure it. I have to make sure that the staging is something
important, in the same way that if somebody comes in in the wrong scene I
would say, "No, this is not your scene, you come in in the next." When I was
working in Seattle there was a scene where I wanted the actor's hand to be in
a particular place on the chair, and I said, "Try it further back," and he kidded
a little. And I said, "Don't laugh. Wait till I get to the fingers." Sometimes I'm
not even hearing the words, what they're saying, but I always know where
people are and the distance between them and the wall and the furniture. It's
very important. Just yesterday I went to see a play that is directed exception-
ally carefully and yet I would say it's two weeks behind where it should be
for opening in terms of the experience of people in relation to things, a little
further this way, a little further that way.
FRAME: You give a workshop for Hispanic playwrights through INTAR in which
the participants receive a sizable stip~nd while they take the workshop. Do
you think that Hispanic immigrants to this country have more urgency about
writing because they've been displaced from their cultures?
FORNES: Well, I don't know if they have the urgency. I have, and I think every-
body should feel, in general, very concerned about a whole generation of
people who come to this country from Latin America and because of their
lack of connection with the arts don't document their existence. They don't
document how they think, how they see. There is a spirit that is very special,
like the spirits of any immigrant group, but other immigrant groups, perhaps
because of their background, have had a need to document their spirit, their
way of doing things, their way of reacting to things.
Interview with Allen Frame // 227
FRAME: I find it bold of you to express your own sense of despair through a
situation of poverty in Appalachia, as you did in Mud. My guess is your ex-
perience is nothing like the dire deprivation of those three characters. Were
you criticized for this?
FORNES: No. I grew up during the Depression in poverty. But when I did a
shorter version of it at the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival last year there was
a critic who said I treated men like pigs. And I was shocked by that because
first of all I think these three people are wonderful. I think if you're going to
call the men pigs then call them all pigs because they're all quite brutal in
some way and quite tender in another sense. But the men are not any more
piggish than she is. They have a bigger heart than she has. She's more self-
centered, more ambitious, in a way harder than they are. The three of them
are trying to survive as best they can. And they're not bad people. That critic
is anticipating that I'm going to write a play that has a feminist point of view,
maybe because I wrote Fefuwhich is a pro-feminine play rather than a femi-
nist play....
I think Mud is a feminist play but for a different reason. I think it is a femi-
nist play because the central character is a woman, and the theme is one that
writers usually deal with through a male character. The subject matter is-
a person who has a mind, a little mind, she's not a brilliant person, but the
mind is opening, and she begins to feel obsessed with it, and she would do
anything in the world to find the light. And some people can understand that
as a subject matter only if it were a male character wanting to find that. It has
nothing to do with men and women. It has to do with poverty and isolation
and a mind. This mind is in the body of a female.
FRAME: How do you start a play?
FORNES: My plays usually start in manners that are very arbitrary. I try for my
head not to interfere, and I try to see what's coming out. When I wrote the
first scenes of Mud in a writing workshop I was doing at Theater for the New
City, I didn't envision the characters in the country. In my mind they were in
some European city. It was very general and vague. They were in some kind
of basement, and they were very poor. When I arrived in California ready to
start rehearsal all I had was that one scene. In fact, I was already a week late.
They had already set up auditions for me. I thought, "I'll work on that scene
228 \\ Fornes on Fornes
because it wasn't even finished so I have a good scene for auditions and the
actors think there is a play behind it."
The next day some people were going to a flea market near where we were,
and I went with them because I often need objects or furniture to get a hold on
a play. I need the props. We were at the flea market and I was looking for my
set. (Also, you know, we had to put on these plays for hardly any money at all
so when you find something cheap, then you write a play about that.) There
were two little country chairs that were, for the two of them, only $5. They
were very nice. They had been stripped down to the wood, and they were
wonderful, and I said, "That's very good." Then we went a little further, and
there were a hoe, an axe, and a pitchfork, also very cheap. The axe was $10.
The hoe and pitchfork were 2 for $5. And I thought, "This is a sign. I think it's
going to be a play in the country." Then I went a little further and then: was
the prettiest little wooden ironing board for $ 3. Those things are antiques. You
know, they cost $30, $50, $70 anywhere. So I said, "That's it, that's my play.
Now I know where they live, they live in the country. The play takes place in
their living room or wherever they have two chairs, and I know what he does,
he works the land, and I know what she does, she irons." The reason why she's
ironing all the time is because that ironing board was so pretty and so cheap.
A couple of days later they asked me for the title of the play. They needed
it for the program and the press releases. So I said, "I'll tell you in a couple of
hours." As we worked on the speech where Mae keeps saying, "You're going
to die in the mud," etc., I thought, "Oh," and so that was the title.
FRAME: One thing I liked about The Danube was the use of the frequently
changing backdrops. It seemed as though you were making a reference to
the passing pageantry of theater. The; rolled up and they rolled down, and
they were in direct contrast to the style of the play, which made them almost
satirize proscenium theater with curtains and lavish backdrops. It was like
an intellectual comment on ...
FORNES: What is the comment?
FRAME: A reference to theatrical convention.
FORNES: What is the reference, though?
Interview with Allen Frame // 229
FRAME: Theater's use of illusion. You used the painted backdrops to express an
obvious illusion while you used the foreign language tapes to break down
the illusion of their speech, interrupting it between lines with the tapes.
FORNES: But the idea of illusion. Is that something that is presented as a mis-
take, as false?
FRAME: No, when I say satire, that's not right. It was humorous to see the incon-
gruousness of an experimental play about the end of the world using these
backdrops, which were a throwback to an old kind of theater. You could say
you were celebrating a tradition rather than satirizing it.
FORNES: Yes, that is it. To me the quality of those language tapes has the same
quality as those backdrops, which is a kind of innocence. I just loved those
tapes, the little skit they make for a language lesson. And I long for that inno-
cence. To me the loss of that innocence and oversophistication is a crime
against humanity. It's like a violation of the personality or the environment
with pollution.
FRAME: In your work you often juxtapose beauty and horror.
FORNES: Right. And innocence ... A lot of people have said to me about Mud
and Sarita, that they like it, they feel very much, but they feel at the very end
there is a hole. "What are you saying?" they ask. "That there's no hope?" ...
I wasn't saying any such thing. Even though Sarita has a tragic ending-she
kills her lover and then goes crazy and to a mental institution-I'm not saying
any such thing! I'm showing what could happen. Precisely.I'm giving them an
example of what is possible. There are works, though, in which you feel the
writer is relishing in the despair, in the pain. And now, how can you tell the
difference between one and the other? It's something you feel in your heart.
You know the writer doesn't have to show the good side. 1t doesn't have to be
there. It's in the spirit of the work and you know in the spirit of the work im-
mediately whether the writer is just relishing in pain. Maybe it is that these
people who want the uplifting message right in the characters' lives rather
than in the spirit of the play-maybe it is that they can't tell the difference in
those that are relishing in pain and those that are talking about goodness.