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 Order Number 9433869

Maria Irene Fornes and her critics: A pragmatic feminist

perspective

Kent, Assunta Bartolomncci, Ph.D.

Northwestern University, 1994

Copyright ©1994 by K ent, A ssun ta Bartolomucci. A ll rights reserved.

UMI
300 N.ZeebRd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

MARIA IRENE FORNES AND HER CRITICS:

A PRAGMATIC FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Theatre and Drama

By

Assunta Bartolomucci I
//

a
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

June 1994
# Copyright by Assunta Bartolomucci Kent 1994

All Rights Reserved

ii
If you see something happen, say you didn’t
see it. And if you didn't see it, you say
you saw it. It ’s better to always say the
opposite. . . . People d on’t like it when
you tell the truth. You can't go inside any
place if you tell the truth. If you tell the
truth they w o n ’t let you in through the door.

Reba - Hunger
 ABSTRACT

Maria Irene Fornes and Her Critics:

A Pragmatic Feminist Perspective

Assunta Bartolomucci Kent

From her first plays, Fornes’ irreverent, charming,

visceral, and often enigmatic productions have intrigued

audiences and critics--particularly those interested in

avant-garde and feminist theatre. But Fornes precludes

simple critical evaluation by consciously blurring the

aesthetic/political dichotomy so prevalent in drama

criticism. In addition, attempts to place Fornes within

conventional theatrical categories have been thwarted by her

conscious questioning of such categories and her paradoxical

positions on aesthetics, politics, feminism, ethnicity, and

theory. Thus far, contemporary feminist theatre theory has

proved inadequate for fully analyzing Fornes’ contribution

to feminist theatre for social change.

In this dissertation, I examine the complex

relationships between Fornes’ aesthetic innovations and her

unconventional social politics as developed throughout her

oeuvre from the 1960s through the 1980s. In order to better

illuminate Fornes’ dramatization of the intersections of

class and gender, I developed a 'pragmatic feminist’

critical approach. This approach aims to re-energize US

feminism’s focus on lived experience, practical politics,

and historical specificity, to maintain a dialogue between

feminist theatre theory and practice, and to adapt selected

tenets of philosophical pragmatism. Using this approach, I

have sought to make a comprehensive, contextualized study of

Fornes’ published works and previous criticism and to

explicate the socio-political aspects (both textual and

imagistic) of her plays, teasing out her implicit and

explicit theories of gender and class relations.

Like other critics, I divide Fornes’ work into periods;

however, more than other analysts, I note the continuities

in Fornes’ critique of social relations and in her themes,

techniques, and characterizations. Earlier critics failed

to notice this continuity, primarily because of Fornes’

jestic method of overturning taken-for-granted assumptions

about societies and individual's 'places’ within them. By

dramatizing the social functioning of (especially low power)

individuals, Fornes re-presents society without

oversimplifying the multiple subject positions and disparate

forces that shape lived reality.

v
 PREFACE

In an emotional acceptance, Fornes declared

that the [ATHE Career Service] award was "the
most important thing that has happened to me
in my life, because you are the teachers!"

ATHE News - September 1992

For me, literary criticism is promotion as

well as understanding . . . Writing
disappears unless there is a response to it.

Barbara Christian
"The Race for Theory"

In the early 1960s, Cuban eraigr e Maria Irene Fornes, a

novice playwright, burst onto the off-off-Broadway scene

with a series of successful experimental plays. Since that

time, Fornes has devoted her life to writing plays, teaching

playwriting, and directing, designing, and producing her own

and others’ new works. By the early 1990s, Fornes was

acclaimed as a major voice in American theatre for her

foundational contributions to growing US traditions in

experimental, women’s, and Latina/o theatre. She has won

eight Obiesincluding, in 1982, a "sustained achievement"

award "for the wit, imagination, and social outrage she has

brought to off-Broadway for twenty years." However, despite

vi
having more than 15 plays and adaptations currently in

print, no book length study of Fornes’ work has yet

appeared.

From her first plays, Fornes’ irreverent, charming,

visceral, and often enigmatic productions have intrigued

audiences and critics— particularly those interested in

avant-garde and feminist theatre. But Fornes precludes

simple critical evaluation by consciously blurring the

aesthetic/political dichotomy so prevalent in drama

criticism. As I demonstrate in chapter one, previous

critics have been unable to adequately characterize the rich

ambiguity of Fornes’ body of work. This is the first study

to examine the complex relationships between Fornes’

aesthetic innovations and her unconventional social politics

as developed throughout her oeuvre from the 1960s into the

1990s.

As a rural working-class child of the 60s engaged in

theatre for social change, I am most interested in theatre’s

contribution to the liberation of women and other oppressed

groups. Thus, it is not surprising that Fornes’ powerful,

sometimes mysterious plays, along with her paradoxical

theories of art and politics, attracted my attention. I

found that Fornes’ evasion of critical categorization and

the perspicacity of her dramatized social visions

invigorated my search for more practicable and practice-

based methods for evaluating feminist theatre. During my

examination of Fornes’ work and its critical literature, I

experienced growing empathy for her ornery responses to most

theorists.

When I began my doctoral studies in 1987, academic

theatre feminists were just beginning to engage "Theory."

In a number of theatre, film, and performance studies

courses, I pondered feminist and post-feminist attempts to

explicate the politics of theatrical performance by adapting

Lacanian psycholinguistics, Derridean deconstruction, gaze

theory, and l’ecriture feminine. My uneasiness about the socio­

political implications of these theories was intensified by

attending the 1988 Women in Theatre Pre-Conference in San

Diego.

For the previous two years, the organization had been

shifting away from a general interest in women’s involvement

with theatre--no matter how commercial or avant-garde, how

liberatory or regressively 'feminizing’--toward a clearly

feminist stance. But there was also a shift away from

analyzing and historicizing women’s contributions to US

theatre and toward poststructuralist theories of

subjectivity. Applied to theatre, these new theories left

members arguing the relative merits of deconstructive

attacks on an overwhelmingly dominant order and/or retreat

into a new "jouissance-based" feminine essentialism.

'Materialist' feminist theatre critics argued for the

superiority of theory over theatre history and dramatic

practice, for writing over teaching, and for postmodern

"performance" over "theatre." More damaging, however, was

the divisive and disrespectful handling of disagreement by

the new leadership which fell far short of Sue Ellen Case’s

vision of "a dialogue of differences" between "alternative

theoretical strategies . . . [that] need not operate as

competing theories for a controlling position that subsumes

practice and organises positions" (Case 84, 130). The

disparity between stated political objectives and practice

and the manipulation of theoretical jargon to silence

legitimate questions exemplified the sort of 'artistic

politics’ that Fornes has sought to avoid throughout her

career.^

Given this academic climate, I spent the next year

studying French feminist, Marxist, poststructuralist, and

pragmatic theories of subjectivity, social relations, and

linguistic signification guided by philosopher Nancy Fraser.

After plumbing the depths of determinism, essentialism, and

nominalism, I began to combine and adapt concepts from

Fraser, de Certeau, Bourdieu, Laclau and Mouffe, and later

JAs detailed in chapter one, Fornes has had a number of

clashes with feminists of various tendencies; she was a
guest speaker at the 1986 WTP conference in New York, during
which the current shift toward feminist theory began.

ix
from Ruddick and Gardiner in order to develop my 'pragmatic

feminist’ critical perspective explained in chapter two.

Supplied with new, more enabling critical tools, I then

returned to the production, observation, and analysis of

Fornes’ (and other feminist) works.

As a dramaturg/director/scriptor/teacher studying a

playwright/director/producer/teacher, I needed a critical

perspective broad and flexible enough to encompass my

composite point of view as well as Fornes’. Rather than

using Fornes’ plays to illustrate speculative theories about

'the social" or analyzing only her representational

strategies (postmodern 'New Criticism’?), I wanted to study

Fornes’ presentations of the conditions and survival tactics

of oppressed characters and to consider how various

performance strategies work onstage. Thus, I extended my

scholarly research of her playscripts, criticism, and

interviews by observing and participating in productions of

Fornes’ works. I also observed the full rehearsal process

for her second production of And What of the Night? , during

which time, I interviewed Fornes and members of her cast,

crew, and audiences. Like other critics who have talked

personally with Fornes, I came away with renewed respect for

the power of her personal vision and for the difficult

necessity of honoring her embodied theory while continuing

x
to evaluate her contribution to a broadly progressive,

pragmatic feminism.

My primary audience for this study is 'theatre people’:

directors, designers, and actors, teachers and students,

dramaturgs and artistic directors, theatre critics and

historians interested in Fornes and feminist theatre for

social change. In particular, I address those colleagues

who, in reaction to the vehemence and (sometimes) obscurity

of the feminist theory debates, now avoid the discussion and

overt practice of feminism(s) or who have reverted to pre-

"theory" versions of gynocentrism in their teaching and

production work. My secondary audience includes social

change theorists and activists (especially feminists)

outside of theatre as well as cultural theorists, critics,

and historians who may be interested in my comparison of

competing critical perspectives on Fornes’ work.

This is not an exhaustive study of critical theory,

feminism, or Fornes’ work. In particular, I have not

treated some of her highly presentational works produced

from fragmentary scripts or her occasional Spanish-language

plays. Although Fornes has written a few Spanish plays for

INTAR audiences, she usually reserves INTAR’s production

slots for directing plays by her writing students, who

address a primarily Latino/a audience and who need the

xi
 4
production opportunity more than she does. Thus, Fornes

does not provide an obvious model for identity-based

criticism or anti-racist activism. Instead, Fornes

addresses her social expos s to her primary audience— the

predominantly white, educated, middle-income or "privileged

poor" patrons of US avant-garde theatre, who she believes

"have the knowledge, the intelligence, the perspective" to

bring about social change (in Savran 69).

* * *

I have sought to make a comprehensive and thoroughly

contextualized study of Fornes’ published works, including

previous criticism. I gathered information through field

experiences as well as traditional scholarly methods and

then worked through Fornes* oeuvre, explicating the socio­

political aspects (both textual and imagistic) of her plays,

teasing out her implicit and explicit theories of gender and

class relations. Like other critics, I divide Fornes’ work

into periods: early experimental plays during the 60s, Fefu

and Her Friends as a turning point in writing method and

style, her later plays, and And What of the Night?, an epic

repository of Fornes’ social concerns and her strategies for

dramatizing them. However, more than other analysts, I note

4
‘Fornes directs the Hispanic Writers-in-Residence for
INTAR (International Arts Relations) at the Hispanic
Cultural Center of New York City.

xii
the continuities in Fornes’ critique of social relations and

the conduct of everyday life as well as in her themes,

techniques, and characterizations from the 60s through the

90s. In fact, I consciously note the 'curve of her oeuvre,’

her abiding interest in the struggles of characters

constrained by various social circumstances and pulled by

contradictory interests and identifications. Thus, I give

special attention to how Fornes’ aesthetics/politics work in

both her early 'romps’ and later 'Mud' plays.

In chapter one, I survey previous critics’ evaluations

of Fornes’ plays and statements within the context of US

feminist theatre history and of changes in theatrical and

social theory. I also chronicle Fornes’ encounters with

various feminists and her ambivalent response to "identity

politics."

In chapter two, I introduce concepts gleaned from

feminism, from theatre theory and practice, and from

progressive philosophy that underlie my 'pragmatic feminist’

approach to evaluating Fornes’ contribution to contemporary

theatre for social change.

In chapter three, I first place Fornes and her work

within the context of her familial, cultural, and political

milieux in order to show that her uncanny social

observations and disruptive/disturbing theatrical images are

conditioned by a rich family heritage, a bohemian

upbringing, a less-than-assimilated view of US society, a

wariness of political groups and slogans, her 'feminist/

womanist’ adaptations of the Eurocentric avant-garde, and

both European and Afro-Caribbean cultural traditions. I

then propose that Fornes may be seen as both a bard/jester/

trickster figure and as an artistic pragmatist.

In the remainder of the study, I chronicle Fornes’

works and creative process, moving from her earlier social

satires to her later, more realistic re-presentations of

social relations. In chapter four, I chronicle Fornes’

genesis as a playwright and analyze her published plays from

the 60s by re-placing them into the context of her

development as a playwright and of the venues in which they

were created and/or produced. This chapter also covers

Fornes’s early writing process, her participation in

creating the short-lived Women’s Theatre Council, and her

management of the playwrights’ producing organization, the

New York Theatre Strategy.

In chapter five, I interrogate the continuing critical

reception of Fefu and Her Friends, which has received a

wider range of critical responses than most of Fornes’ other

plays. Fefu appeared in 1977 and dramatized many of the

issues engrossing feminist and other social theorists—

issues such as differences among women and the misogyny of

many linguistic and psychological practices and systems.

xiv
Fefu also bridges the gap between Fornes’ early satires and

her later more realistic plays and thus provides a meeting

place for early and later critics. I believe that the

number and diversity of these analyses makes a case for

thorough (textual and performative) reconsideration of

Fornes’ entire career and works. After discussing Fefu from

my perspective as a dramaturg, I conclude the chapter with

my interpretation of Fefu’s disturbing images and ambiguous

actions.

In chapter six, I follow Fornes’ development of themes

introduced in Fefu throughout her later 'Mud' plays. I also

describe Fornes’ writing/directing processes and venues

during the 80s.

In chapter seven, I offer a detailed reading of Fornes’

play cycle, And What of the Night? (1990), which traces the

increasingly deleterious effects of poverty and greed in the

US, from the Great Depression to 1998, a time after

nationwide economic collapse. I set Night within the context

of Fornes’ oeuvre and working process, analyzing each play

and concluding with a brief discussion of audience response

to the cycle.

In summary, I found that from her earliest work,

Fornes’ plays have examined and criticized the inegalitarian

relations more clearly depicted in the later plays. Critics

have failed to notice Fornes’ political and aesthetic

xv
continuity, primarily because she approaches complex social

issues obliquely, jestically, so as to overturn taken-for-

granted assumptions about societies and individual’s

'places’ within them. Not surprisingly, Fornes does not

exempt theoretical and critical assumptions from this

treatment, and therefore she has often frustrated critical

categorization. From my pragmatic perspective, Fornes’

contrariness is fundamental to her peculiar blend of

aesthetics and politics, and to her unique contribution to

feminist theatre in the late 20th century.

The current study lays the groundwork for further

investigations of Fornes and her work. In particular, I

hope to follow more explicitly her development of issues,

such as class relations and women's coming to consciousness,

from the 60s through the 90s, and to compare her social

theories to those of other contemporary feminist

playwrights, such as Megan Terry and Ntozake Shange. There

is also more work to be done on audience response to Fornes’

plays and on her contribution to Latina/o theatre. For

example, one might compare Fornes’ treatment of fascism and

gender in Latin American military states with Diane Sa n z ' A

Dream of Canaries and Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden.

In closing, I hope that this first study encourages

others to study, teach, and produce Fornes’ work.

 NOTES TO THE READER

Throughout this study, double quotation marks (" ")

indicate material quoted from other texts. I use single

quotation marks (' ’) to indicate coined or ironic terms.

I use 'US-Cuban* to avoid the chauvinism and redundancy

inherent in the term 'Cuban-American.*

To help readers cross-reference critical terminology,

particular critics, and the analyses of specific plays, I

provide an outline-style table of contents as well as a

'Fornes timeline’ (see appendix).

xvii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to express my gratitude to:

Linda Walsh Jenkins, my first mentor at Northwestern—

for admitting our disparate cohort of doctoral students all

dedicated to the study and practice of performance on and

off stage, for expanding the parameters of 'research*

products and processes, and for encouraging me to follow my

interests in US feminist theatre despite its devaluation in

the late 1980s.

Susan Manning, my advisor during the actual drafting of

my first book-length study— for her confidence in my

research and writing skills, for her provocative questions

throughout the draft, and for sharing her insights on

scholarly writing. I could not have asked for a more

responsive 'editor.’

Rives Collins, for his unbridled enthusiasm for

theatre, teaching, and mentoring students, for encouraging

me to stay at Northwestern during my first quarter, and now

for helping me to leave--with an artist/scholar’s

credentials.
 Sandra Richards, for professing in a tolerant,

politically-inflected manner, and for posing well-timed,

deceptively simple questions that led to the exciting

explorations of Cuban cultural history and of Santeriathat

enriched this study as well as my understanding of art and

spirituality. Hekua, Eleggua!

Maria Irene Fornes, my wonderfully provocative

"subject''--for her generosity in answering a phone message

from an unknown graduate student, for inviting me to attend

rehearsals, and for explaining her complex perceptions of

social and theatrical reality. All my contacts with Fornes

have been a joyful learning experience.

Tobin Nellhaus, my comrade-in-arms and tough,

supportive first reader--for providing a spacious study and

endless scholarly resources, for cooking meals and washing

dishes for years, for strenuously arguing the merits of

theory, for re-invigorating philosophical realism, and for

being a wonderfully resonant sounding board.

Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research in

the Arts for the fellowship that made my fieldwork possible,

performance ethnographer Dwight Conquergood for stressing

the moral responsibilities of participants/observers, the

Eleanor Women’s Foundation for their financial support of

women’s social and economic development including

fellowships based on community involvement as well as

xix
scholastic aptitude, the Northwestern University Alumnae for

supporting my dissertation research, the Office of Research

and Sponsored Projects for funding research travel, my

'niece’ Donna Washington for her long-term support,

including housing, meals, and hours of discussion, Carolyn

Connelly (and her cast and crew) for allowing me to actively

dramaturg their production of Fefu, my dear colleague Paul

Heinrich for modeling and theorizing innovative notions

about artist/activists, Trish Suchy for sharing her

experiences in Fornes’ writing workshop, my Women’s Center

dissertation group (Maude Schaafsma, Mary Kate Driscoll, and

Sally Chasnoff-Kahn) for their comradeship in those early

days of uncertainty, Lisa Ruddick and Judith Kegan Gardiner

for sharing unpublished manuscripts on objects-relation

theory, Rodolfo Vazquez for translating the nuances of Cuban

history, John Conteh-Morgan for translating a Santer a song

for Oshun, Sally Harrison-Pepper for sharing her Oxford,

Ohio production of Fefu with me, my sister Teresa Kent

Stewart and my long-time friend, Mary Suloway for their

practice-based skepticism of poststructuralist theories, my

father Louis Phillip Kent and his mother, Beulah Stonemetz

for their outspoken and unswerving ethical views, and my

mother Anita Iris Bartolomucci and her mother, Assunta

Camille Roscetti for their belief in the necessity of

women’s education and self-determination.

xx
 DEDICATION

This study is dedicated to my 'cousin,’ Shari Fenton,

and the 'Cambodian kids’ whose pragmatic struggles with real

life in Chicago’s Uptown both ground and inspire me.

I advance these theoretical and theatrical views of

society and social relations in hopes of augmenting the

childrens’ drive and adaptability and Shari’s continuing

ability to "pull rabbits out of a hat."

xx i
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

A B S T R A C T ............................................... iv

P R E F A C E ................................................. vi

NOTES TO THE READER ..................... xvii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................... xviii

D E D I C A T I O N ............................................... xxi

CHAPTER

1. CRITICAL SURVEY .................................. 1

'Aesthetic' critics ............................ 2
Robert Pasolli ............................ 3
Bonnie Marranca.............. 4
'Avant-gardist' critic ....................... 6
Ruby C o h n ...................................6
Toby Silverman Zinman ................... 7

Underpinnings of Political/Feminist Criticism

1965-1985 10
Liberal h u m a n i s m ................... 10
Liberal feminists ... 11
Gynocentric feminism (including
cultural and radical feminisms) 11
Feminist Theatre Background ... 13
Fornes’ Challenges for Feminist Critics . . . 17
Early Feminist Critics of Fornes .......... 17
Beverly Byers Pevitts ................. 17
Phyllis Mael ......................... 20
Patti G i l l e s p i e ..................... . . 21
Helene Keyssar ....................... 22
Beyond G y n o c e n t r i s m ....................... . . 22
Post-Gynocentric and Poststructuralist
Theatre Criticism ..................... 23
Materialist theatrefeminists . . 24
Sue-Ellen Case ............. 24
Jill D o l a n ................... 24
Fornes and Brecht . . . . 26
Julia Kristeva . . . . . ........ 31

xxii
 Linda K i n t z ................. 33
Deborah Geis ............... 34
Fornes’ Challenges from Feminists .......... 36
Cultural Criticism ......................... 40

2. MY PRAGMATIC FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE ............... 46

Pragmatic feminist perspective ............. 47
US f e m i n i s m ........................... 47
Practice of t h e a t r e .......................49
Philosophical pragmatism ............... 50
Art and T h e o r y ............................. 51
Societal Oppression and Resistance ........ 52
Michel Foucault ....................... 52
Disciplinary regimes of power . . 53
Michel de C e r t e a u ..................... 53
Tactics of the weak ............ 54
Strategies of the s t r o n g ........ 54
Political Oppression and Resistance . . . . . 56
Antonio Gramsci ....................... 56
Hegemony ....................... 56
Raymond Williams ..................... 56
Cultural hegemony ................. 56
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe ... 57
Class reductionism . 57
Democratic contestation . 57
E c o n o m i s m ......................... 58
Group Divisions and Forms of Capital .... 58
Pierre Bourdieu ....................... 58
H a b i t u s ................ 58
Forms of capital .......... 61
Divisions within the dominant
g r o u p ....................... 65
Experience and Subjectivity ................. 67
Teresa de Lauretis ................... 67
E x p e r i e n c e ....................... 67
Consciousness raising ............ 69
Coming to Self Consciousness ............ 70
Lisa Ruddick ......................... 70
Self-creating "play." .......... 70
Object-relations psychoanalyst
D. W. W i n n i c o t t .......... . . 71
The Subject-in-Practice ..................... 76
Judith Kegan Gardiner ................. 76

3. CONTEXTUALIZING FORNES: Familial, Cultural, and

Religious Roots ............................. 80
Paternal Family ............................. 82
The Maternal F a m i l y ......................... 89
Fornes’ Immediate Family ................... 90
Political Context ........................... 92

xxiii
 Family L i f e .................................. 94
Emigration to the U S ....................... 98
Cultural and Linguistic Roots: US/Cuban;
Spanish/English ........................ 101
Religious roots: Catholicism and Santeria . . 107
Fornes as a Bard/Jester and Child of Eleggua 111
Dulce over utile ....................... Ill
B a r d s .................................. 113
E l e g g u a ................. 120

4. EARLY P L A Y S ...................................... 125

Productions, Experimentation, "Learning the
R o p e s " ......................................... 125
Tango P a l a c e ............................ 131
The Actors S t u d i o ........................ 137
Open T h e a t r e .............................. 139
The Successful Life of 3 ..................142
Promenade . . . . . . . 148
Dr. K h e a l .............................. 160
Vietnamese Wedding ................... . 161
Red Burning L i g h t ................... 161-2
Molly*s Dream .......................... 165
Playwright/Director ................. . . . . 169
Playwright/Producer .......................... 172
Changing Writing Style ..................... 173

5. FEFU AND HER C R I T I C S .................................177

Fefu and Her F r i e n d s .......................... 179
Bonnie Marranca ................... . 185
Phyllis Mael .................... 187
Beverly Byers Pevitts . . . . 189
Ruby C o h n ................. 193
Helene Keyssar ....................... 194
Gayle Austin ....................... 195
Lurana O ’Malley ..................198
William Worthen ....................... 200
Deborah Geis . . . . . 205
Ann C. H a l l .............................. 209
My Pragmatic Perspective
as Production Dramaturg ............... 212

6. THE 'MUD* P L A Y S ..................................... 227

I N T A R ............................. 228
Fornes’ development process ................. 233
General hallmarks .......................... 237-8
‘Trapped’ women and guns . 238
Complex multiply-positioned characters
rather than types ................. 239
Realistic contexts; interpenetration of
public and p r i v a t e ................. 240

xx iv
 Disturbing imagesthat concretize theory 241
Warnings about reliance on rote language
and conventional 'truths'. . . . 242
The D a n u b e ............................. 244
M u d ........................... ...............250
S a r i t a .................................. 254
Abingdon Square .............................. 261
The Conduct of L i f e ..................... 265

7. AND WHAT OF THE MIGHT?: Fornes' Apocalyptic Vision

of American Greed and Poverty ............... 278
Nadine ....................................... 293
S p r i n g t i m e .....................................300
Lust . ................ 304
H u n g e r ......................................... 314

WORKS C O N S U L T E D ........................................... 325

APPENDIX I: MARIA IRENE FORNES TIMELINE ............. 337

XXV
 CHAPTER ONE

CRITICAL SURVEY

Fornes’ changing and sometimes paradoxical statements

about theatre, feminism, and social relations, along with

her continuing formal experimentation, have spawned a

hetereogeneous and growing body of criticism. Although

Fornes’ work has paralleled and contributed to fundamental

changes in theatrical and social ideas during the past three

decades, critical attempts to place Fornes within

conventional theatrical categories have been thwarted by her

conscious questioning of the usefulness of such categories

and her paradoxical positions on aesthetics, politics,

feminism, ethnicity, and theory. As a feminist theatre

scholar/practitioner, I am particularly interested in

Fornes’ fraught relationships with theatre feminisms and in

the seeming inadequacy of currently available feminist

theatre theory to fully analyze Fornes’ contribution to

feminist theatre for social change.

In this argumentative survey, I highlight the insights

and oversights of the various critical descriptions of

Fornes’ work under the headings: aesthetic critics, avant-

1
gardists, liberal and/or gynocentric feminists, materialist

feminists- adaptors of Julia Kristeva’s poststructuralist

theories, and cultural critics.^ In order to contextualize

Fornes and her critics, I sketch in a history of changing

views of (female) subjectivity and women’s oppression and of

US theatre feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. I also

chronicle Fornes* ambivalent response to her encounters with

various feminists.

Relying largely on New Critical methods, 'aesthetic*

critics, such as Robert Pasolli, observer of the 60s

experimental theatre scene in New York, and Bonnie Marranca,

co-editor of Performing Art3 Journal and PAJ Press, tend to

give thorough and insightful readings of 'what’s there’ in

Fornes’ scripts but seldom mention any social or political

context. They emphasize individual dramatic style and laud

works that transcend the simple usefulness or disposability

of topical or didactic 'political’ drama. They are more

interested in paradox and mystery than most other critics.

In newspaper and journal articles, 'aesthetic’ critics

typically explain works in terms of the taken-for-granted

assumptions of their readers— in the case of early Fornes,

primarily the hip liberal humanist readers of alternative

*In this opening chapter, I give greater attention to

critics not included in my later discussion of the ongoing
critical response to Fefu and Her Friends.
papers such as The Village Voice. Pasolli and Marranca

illuminate the artistic merits of Fornes’ unconventional

dramaturgy by using their own evocative writing to describe

her works and to suggest ways of understanding her themes,

or as Pasolli put it, to tease out her "presiding notions"

without coming down "like an elephant’s foot on Miss Fornes’

spider web" (59). However, aesthetic critics tend to miss

an essential aspect of Fornes’ complexity by downplaying her

politics.

Pasolli extended his Village Voice review of Red

Burning Light (1968) in order to characterize the entire

body of Fornes’ highly presentational and paradoxical social

satires (1963-68). In addition to capturing the hallmarks

of her early works, he also notices many qualities that

would permeate Fornes’ entire oeuvre, such as her focus on

the surprising significance of small everyday things

(objects, dialogue, actions) coupled with her emphasis on

the desires and fantasies of her characters. But he seldom

makes reference to either social or personal political

issues, such as inequalities based on economics or gender.

For example, in explaining these lyrics from Promenade— "How

original that my fingers go like this. One of these days

I ’ll sell them"— he ascribes the significance of the humor

to "an outrageous and entirely natural ignorance of ’the

facts’" (57). He misses the likelihood that in this satire

of prisoners, servants, and aristocrats, Fornes might be

lampooning the capitalist penchant for offering everything

for sale and for valuing things only in terms of the price

they will bring.

In the first of several essays following Fornes’

unfolding oeuvre (1981), Bonnie Marranca keeps her criticism

mostly aesthetic but begins to acknowledge the politics

erupting in Fornes’ work. Marranca honors Fornes’ demand

for unfettered creativity, which is consonant with the

critic’s own interest in individual artists and artworks

rather than artmaking as a social process. Like Fornes,

Marranca fears that political criticism means a strict party

line critique and that artistic compliance to such codes

will produce poor artistic products ("the trivialities which

frequently pass today as feminist art": Playwrights 61).

Notwithstanding, Marranca notes Fornes’ subversion of

popular forms and the economic and romantic conventions they

purvey, but her analysis of these subversions remains purely

formal. She alludes to political theories such as the

gender-coded public/private split so often reinscribed in

dramatic representation ("Fornes plays ironically with

domestic space, and the notion of domestic drama") but ends

the paragraph without speculating about the playwright’s

point or intended audience response. Elsewhere in the same

essay, Marranca comments,

 The dialectic between the private world of the
characters, as filtered through the author's own
private inner life, and the public theatrical
space they act it out in, is so outrageously
ironic it is downright subversive. (1981 61)

But she does not specify what exactly is being subverted,

and instead moves back to textual analysis.

Despite her generally apolitical orientation, Marranca

notes Fornes' nascent critique of class relations in

Promenade. although in doing so Marranca inadvertently

smoothes out the complexities of the characters' personal

politics. In addition, Marranca finds Fefu to be "deeply

feminist in its perspective and guiding spirit," but then

qualifies this accolade by praising "its analytical approach

to metaphysical questions and precision of thought [which]

remains non-rhetorical and non-ideological" (61), as if an

aesthetic perspective in an unjust world could be value-

free. Thus, I find it significant that this 'aesthetic*

critic places Fefu "apart— and ahead" of Fornes’ other pre-

1977 plays because of its "embodiment of a deeply personal

vision" (Playwrights 62). However, Marranca does not

connect her recognition of Fornes’ increasingly personal

vision with its feminist concomitant, that the personal is

political, nor does she explore Fornes* report that, "It is

precisely at a time when my work is following its most

mysterious and personal course that it has become more

political" ("Creative Danger" 15).

 Fornes* *avant-gardist * critics relish satiric expos s

of the irrationality of life (Cohn) or the black humor of

absurdist pessimism (Zinman). Unlike Pasolli and Marranca

who aim to explicate Fornes’ contradictory intentions, these

proponents of experimental and absurdist theatre try to

contain Fornes* work within their own critical projects.

In her 1982 survey of contemporary US drama, Ruby Cohn

notes Fornes "meticulous attention to visual as well as

verbal detail" and finds Fornes’ plays (through Fefu) to be

"slight on the surface, yet surprisingly memorable.

Floating away from realism, they offer an oblique critique

of reality" (69). Setting the lively, sometimes chaotic

Off-Off-Broadway experiments of Fornes and her

contemporaries against a backdrop of Broadway’s stultified

commercialism, Cohn highlights the battles Fornes stages

between exemplars of rationality and practitioners of

caprice or irrationality. This approach provides a basis

for plausible readings of the magical realist/absurdist duet

Tango Palace, the socio-sexual satire The Successful Life of

Three, and the comic-didactic monologue Dr. Kheal. but

encourages Cohn to conclude her otherwise promising reading

of Fefu by construing the ambiguous ending as simply another

version of "Fornes’ own major theme--the triumph of the

irrational" (72).^ Adherence to this theme, coupled with a

New Critical reluctance to relate drama to 'real world’

social conditions, renders Cohn unable to offer more than a

brief plot summary of Promenade and Molly’s Dream or to

probe the class and gender relations foregrounded in both

plays.

Invited by Cohn and Enoch Brater to discuss women

playwrights in relation to theatre of the absurd, Toby

Silverman Zinman claims that Fornes’ oeuvre conforms to

Martin Esslin’s definition of absurdism— dramaturgy which

employs revolutionary form and content to convey

"metaphysical anguish stemming from our [sic] culture’s loss

of meaning, value, and certitude" (204). Fornes’ "emphasis

on the visual rather than the verbal," according to Zinman,

exemplifies absurdism’s "crucial preference" for "concrete

4
‘For a comparison of Cohn’sreading of Fefu with other
critics of the early 1980s, see chapter five.

•’Fornes explains that the surrealism in her portrayals

of ordinary people comes from staging her observations
without filtering out the portions that challenge
conventional logic. She first noticed this aspect of daily
life when she had a job conducting a psychological survey
door-to-door:

At random I had to pick a person and interview him

or her. And I went to just two or three houses
and I was so amazed by these people's mentality
and how they lived, I couldn’t bear it. . . . It
was pure surrealism, and that’s the waywe live.
Outside our circle of friends, people we have an
affinity with, life gets stranger and stranger.
(Marx 8)
images, its abandonment of rational discourse, and its

insistence on showing rather than saying that life is

senseless” (206, 204). Although Zinman evokes a cynical

hopelessness not present in Fornes' work, there are

certainly absurdist elements in Fornes' writing and Fornes

was impressed with European avant-gardists such as Beckett,

Ionesco, and Genet (Fornes interview 1/23/93).

But Zinman draws a rigid distinction between absurdism

(which "springs from a feeling of deep disillusionment") and

political drama (based on "a belief that remediation of

societal as well as individual attitudes is feasible") and

thereby cannot account for Fornes' paradoxical and

unsettling political observations (204, 205). For example,

Zinman praises Fornes both for creating characters whose

quests for escape are always defeated in keeping with "the

absurdist vision" and for her belief "in theatre as a

liberating force" (Zinman 213, 211). Zinman correctly

identifies a typical Fornesian paradox, but in order to

place it within the "absurdist vision," she cites Fornes:

I d o n ’t romanticize pain. In my work people are

always trying to find a way out, rather than
feeling a romantic attachment to their prison.
(in Zinman 211)

However, Zinman omits the end of the quote--"the characters

don’t have to get out, i t ’s you [the audience member] who

has to get out" (in Savran 55)--in which Fornes’ divulges

her dramaturgical strategy for changing "individual

attitudes" in the audience. Even in Fornes’ early plays,

absurdist notions are balanced and challenged by other

political and philosophical insights: in Promenade. a class

analysis; in Tango Palace, questions of spirituality and

transcendence; and in The Successful Life of 3 . a witty

interrogation of the logic of sex and gender relations.

Although she does not always work within its parameters, a

specifically Cuban version of "Latina magical realism"

describes Fornes’ treatment of rational and irrational

phenomena, visual and verbal elements, better and more

broadly than Zinman’s absurdist label.*

In trying to enlarge the absurdist rubric to encompass

all of Fornes’ plays and ideas, Zinman also sequesters

Fornes from feminism. Despite her allowance that "it is

certainly plausible to read [Fornes’] plays as feminist

documents," Zinman reduces Fornes’ 'political’ stance to

"the Beckettian premise 'Nothing to be done’" (205). She

then polarizes Fornes’ complex relationship with various

feminisms by referring to Fornes’ "rejection of the

[feminist] label" and by claiming that "Fornes is, to my

mind, committed to theater, not politics" (205). With

feminism out of the way, Zinman then claims that Fornes

*See chapter three for a discussion of cultural

influences on Fornes’ style.
creates absurdist images of "marriage itself, of the

universal, permanent warfare of male/female relationships"

and further that Fornes "theatrically demonstrates that it

is naive and profitless to assume that the complex enmity

inherent in such relations is remediable" (207, 209). In

addition to misrepresenting Fornes’ non-essentialized views

on gender, Zinman's interpretation relies on generalized,

patriarchal, (and heterosexist?) assumptions which she

imputes to Fornes.

Underpinnings of Political/Feminist Criticism 1965-1985

Of course, these primarily aesthetic critics only seem

to be relatively apolitical because their politics align

with the prevailing paradigm of liberal humanism in which

the unified, knowing, and autonomous subject or self is

characterized by radical individualism and the capacity to

reason and thus to pursue individual fulfillment. However,

feminists such as Catherine Belsey have pointed out that

within liberal humanism "men and women are not symmetrically

defined" (9). Men are seen as producers of knowledge and

art— actors in the public sphere of the economy and the

state, while women are seen as consumers and the subjects of

art— silent actors in the private sphere of the home and

family. By obscuring its own origin at the beginning of the

modern period, liberal humanism hopes to naturalize gender

 11

division based on differing biological functions and to

avoid the politicization of 'private' matters.

Various feminisms reacted against the sexism underlying

liberal humanist ideals. Liberal feminists argue that

women’s human potential is inhibited and distorted by a

society that allows for the self-development of men while

women are unfairly and irrationally relegated to the private

sphere--as dutiful daughters, supportive wives, nurturing

mothers, useful prostitutes, and/or sacred virgins. Liberal

feminist activism tends to focus on preparing women for

increased participation in public sphere activities and to

rely primarily on rational argument, legal remedies, and

increased educational and public sphere economic and policy­

making opportunities in order to narrow women’s inequality.

On the whole, liberal feminism remains reformist with

respect to the (liberal humanist) status quo and does not

challenge the existing state apparatus and economic system.

If liberal feminism minimizes differences between women

and men and works to secure access for women to existing

institutions (such as theatres and training programs),

gynocentric feminism (including cultural and radical

feminisms) stresses gender differences and rejects the

values embodied in traditionally male-dominated

 12

institutions Gynocentric feminists argue that existing

societal institutions are based on the oppression of women,

and that current societies devalue and repress women's

experience while exalting a masculinist culture of violence

and individualism (172). Under the banner "the personal is

political," gynocentric feminism has expanded the realm of

politics to encompass 'private* sphere activities such as

sexual relations and child-rearing practices, focusing on

sex as well as gender issues. However, despite talk about

continuity and connection, gynocentrism tends to fall back

on dichotomies, aligned on either side of a female/male

division, and to either overvalue traditional female virtues

or portray all 'feminine' attributes as the result of

victimization. In these cases, gynocentrism and liberal

feminism differ mainly in whether they recommend male/public

sphere or female/private sphere values for liberated women.

Although some radical feminists (such as Shulamith Firestone

and Adrienne Rich) take into account class, sexual, and

racial differences, gynocentric arguments tend to suffer

from an insufficiently historicized account of patriarchy

and the intertwined tendencies toward universalizing

For pertinent discussions of the differences between

liberal and gynocentric feminisms, see Iris Marion Young’s
"Humanism, Gynocentrism, and Feminist Politics," Alison
Jaggar’s Feminist Politics and Human Nature, and Gayle
Austin’s Feminist Theories for Dramatic Criticism.
 13

"women’s experience" and defining "'women’ as a category

with a set of essential attributes" (Young 181).

Feminist Theatre Background

In the 1960s, a women’s movement from within American

theatre began in at least three (often overlapping) ways:

with liberal reform (women struggling for inclusion in

existing structures), with formal experimentation (in

alternative theatre groups and Off-Off Broadway venues), and

with explicitly political theatre (in Marxist and other

revolutionary or protest groups). However, as women in

theatre grew in feminist consciousness, many of them outgrew

these spawning grounds. Liberal feminist attempts to reform

and/or gain access to mainstream institutions were

undermined by the inadequacy of liberating women one at a

time, by the inflexibility of masculinist standards in the

face of 'feminine' needs (such as time for parenting,

alternative career paths, and different directing and

management styles), and by mainstream resistance to new (in

this case, women’s) subject matter, style, and perspective.

Women found experimental theatres to be sexist, sometimes

more insidiously so than mainstream institutions, but their

experiments led them to question traditional values beyond

theatre (such as the complicity between liberal humanist

values and commercial theatre). Women in the New Left,

anti-war, and Black Power movements grew impatient with the

 14

perpetual subordination of the "woman question" to

supposedly more fundamental economic and political issues

and were outraged by the overt sexism and misogyny expressed

both publicly and privately by male 'comrades.' By the mid-

70s, a significant number of feminists had rejected both

liberal reform and masculinist activism and formed

collectively-run gynocentric theatres which provided a haven

for consciousness raising and which focused specifically on

women’s experiences and issues.®

Fornes’ career runs parallel to but does not conform to

this general history. After her first two independently-

written plays met with unusual (non-mainstream) success, she

participated in traditional theatre classes and experimented

with a number of alternative theatre groups. Fornes refused

to join primarily political groups (both anti-Castro and

anti-war) in order to avoid what she perceived as their

potential dogmatism and didacticism, their tendency to

simplify and dichotomize complex social issuesJ Along with

other theatreworkers, including Marranca and Robert

For descriptions of these groups, see Dinah Leavitt’s

Feminist Theatre Groups in America: Four Case Studies
(1980), Karon Malpede, ed. Women in Theatre: Compassion and
Hope (1981), and Elizabeth Natalie’s Feminist Theatre: A
Study in Persuasion (1985).
ij
For Fornes’ encounter with an anti-Castro group, see
the "Cultural and Linguistic Roots" section of chapter
three.
 15

Brustein, Fornes reacted against the seeming conviction

among some political groups "that right thinking was a

satisfactory substitute for the subtlety and control of the

playwright, the discipline of the actor and the

orchestrating intelligence of the director" (Bigsby 323).

As a participant and champion of experimental theatre,

Fornes shared Brustein’s fear that anti-war theatre was

becoming increasingly unwilling to "countenance complexity,"

and wrongly represented "life as a melodrama, a battleground

of moral extremes" (Brustein, in Bigsby 322).**

The probability that some of these fears were based on

a misunderstanding and/or distaste for the aesthetic/

political balance of guerilla theatre is implied by Fornes’

own theatrical contributions to anti-war protest. In

addition to the military burlesque Red Burning Light

mentioned above, Fornes created and led a quiet interactive

drama, Vietnamese Wedding, in which actors guided audience

volunteers in portraying a Vietnamese bride and groom and

their families while the remaining audience members observed

as wedding guests. Rather than directly protesting US

Q
“Robert Brustein based his opinion on productions he
hosted at Yale during the 1967-68 season, in particular The
Living Theatre’s Paradise Now which, according to theatre
historian C.W. E. Bigsby, struck Brustein as "anti­
intellectual, repressive, amateurish, and resonant with
hatred" (Bigsby 323). For one overview of the impact that
Vietnam War protest had in radicalizing US theatres from
Yale Rep to experimental groups, see Bigsby 311-333.
 16

involvement in Vietnam or even war in general, Fornes

invited audience/participants to experience 'the enemy'

engaged in an unfamiliar but comprehensible ritual with

universal significance. By having the audience enact the

drama, Fornes encouraged them to move beyond cognitive

dissonance toward a sort of bodily 'consonance' and communal

empathy. This aesthetic/political choice exemplifies

Fornes’ lifelong interest in rituals of daily life, in the

personal side of individual/societal interaction, and in

artistic revelation rather than politics per se.

Given her wariness of political groups, her independent

success, and her reticence about ascribing discrimination

solely to gender, it is not surprising that Fornes did not

turn to gynocentric theatre. When opportunities for

playwrights to stage new work dried up, she co-founded and

ran organizations dedicated to the production of

experimental work. In so doing, she gained valuable

practical experience and obtained the artistic and technical

control other women sought in separatist theatre groups. In

fact, Fornes’ management of the New York Theatre Strategy

from 1972 to 1975 afforded her a better opportunity to gain

practical theatre experience than most gynocentric groups

offered, since these groups’ performances typically had low

production values and focused more on raising consciousness

than on exploring theatrical mediums of communication as

 17

such.® By the time, Fornes resumed full-time playwriting in

the late 70s, her work had become more female-centered, more

personal, and more political--without the benefit of a

gynocentric group.

Fornes* Challenges for Feminist Critics

Although Fornes is proud that "a great many people who

are sympathetic consider [her] a feminist" ("Creative

Danger" 15), feminist critics vary widely in their

estimation of her accomplishments. One critic claims that

Fornes’ theatrical career as well as her early plays

epitomize feminist theatre (Keyssar 121-22); another critic

finds no "indication of a latent feminism" in Fornes’ work

(Gillespie 192). Critics of Fornes’ more recent plays

allege, in one instance, that Fornes is "adamant about

disassociating herself from feminism" (Dolan 141, fn 29),

and in another, that she is a "hard-core feminist [who

thinks] all men are pigs" (in Austin, "Process"). This

disparity reflects the array of (feminist) critical

perspectives developed since the mid-60s as well as Fornes’

eclectic range of dramaturgical topics and strategies.

Early Feminist Critics of Fornes

In her 1980 dissertation on plays written by American

women in the 70s, Beverly Byers Pevitts typifies theatre

®For a discussion of Fornes’ involvement with the New

York Theatre Strategy, see chapter four.
 18

workers’ habit of gleaning useful ideas and images from

disparate or even opposing traditions and combining them

into a workable approach (to both the production and the

criticism of drama). Employing a primarily gynocentric

approach, Pevitts calls for a critical separatism in which

women, sheltered from the monopoly of "phallic criticism,"

could "formulate feminist perspectives in their own dramatic

literature" (9). Pevitts calls upon feminist critics "to

take part with intensity and energy in the process of the

establishment of a new woman and a new way of life" (9). In

order to achieve this, Pevitts charges feminist criticism

with the responsibility to promote "high critical standards

rather than the mere existence of plays by women" (9). Like

Anselma Dell’Olio (director of an early feminist theatre

group), Pevitts is concerned ahout the tendency for women's

consciousness-raising groups to turn theatre into dogma

rather than provocative or lasting drama (18). Instead of

"prescriptive" criticism, Pevitts calls for "activist

criticism . . . [which] goes beyond itself and adds on a

lesson or ’call to action’" (23-24).

Pevitts' focus on criticism rather than playwriting as

necessarily the site for feminist activism is consonant with

Fornes’ own distinction between the function of art "to

reveal" and of politics "to indicate . . . what to do next"

(in Mael 189). Fornes’ plays often instruct, not by

 19

providing examples or model behaviors to be emulated; but

rather by demonstrating how things currently exist and the

complexities of particular characters’ survival strategies

under constrained circumstances. However, by leaving the

choice of political response up to critics and the audience,

Fornes risks misinterpretation of her artistic

'revelations.’ For example, Pevitts praises Fornes for

eschewing stereotypical roles for her characters but also

for examining "woman’s inclination not to trust other women"

(Diss 155). In so doing, Pevitts implies that Fefu, a

character who makes provocative statements about women’s

mistrust, speaks for Fornes and further that she accurately

expresses all women’s (or "woman’s") inclinations. Pevitts

does not examine Fefu’s reasons for making such statements

to her women friends, but accepts this biased declaration as

the truth about "woman." However, in all fairness, Fornes

sets up the possibility of such misreadings by revealing

complex social conditions without suggesting how they might

be changed and by re-presenting sexist statements in a

quasi-realistic setting.

In tandem with such gynocentric perspectives, Pevitts

also retains the (liberal feminist) goal of eventually

gaining access to commercial productions, mainstream

audiences, and 'aesthetic* as well as 'political* criticism,

while taking into account material obstacles to women’s

 20

advancement within mainstream theater (e.g., child care

needs, travel expectations, and exclusionary 'old b o y ’

networks) (4-5). Pevitts falls somewhere between

aesthetic/commercial critics and liberal/cultural feminists,

while also laying the groundwork for theories of feminist

drama criticism.

Within the constraints of an encyclopedia entry,

Phyllis Mael (1981) provides the most inclusive, progressive

socio-political perspective of the early critics. She

offers an astute analysis of Fornes’ creation of "new forms

to express a personal idiom for theatre" and contends that

"although some might consider her [early] works too

abstract, too concerned with form and texture, Fornes

insists a strong message is present in most of her plays"

(189). By arguing that Fornes’ work successfully bridges

the art versus politics gap, Mael avoids the related

division between aesthetic and political theatre criticism.

She seconds Richard Gilman’s opinion that Fornes’ cinematic

staging makes use of "film’s freedom . . . from the

oppressions of finite time and space," but also specifies

the targets of Fornes’ early parodies: "masculine rivalry,

financial success, justice, and roles of women," "the abuse

of power, the injustice of those who are supposed to uphold

the law, and the illogical and random nature of life" (189).
 21

But not all feminist critics were able to discern the

political commentary woven through Fornes’ witty, ironic,

sometimes zany, experimental dramas. In sharp contrast to

Pevitts’ and M a e l ’s judgments, in her survey article,

"America’s Women Dramatists, 1960-1980," theatre historian

Patti Gillespie dismisses Fornes (along with Women's Theatre

Council co-founders, Rosalyn Drexler, Julie Bovasso, and

Rochelle Owens) from feminist consideration with the

following pronouncement:

Indeed, perhaps the most intriguing trait of women

dramatists of the 1960s is that their plays shared
few features and that they were not aware of
themselves as women: neither they nor their works1(1
gave any indication of a latent feminism. (192)iU

By mistakenly confining Fornes’ career to the 1960s,

Gillespie precludes discussion of Fornes’ explicitly

feminist 'series’ beginning with Fefu and Her Friends (1977)

and continuing with Evelyn Brown (1978) and Eyes on the

Harem (1979). She also missed the opportunity (in 1981,

four years after the first production of Fefu) to re-examine

In 1977, Rochelle Owens explained that while we are

all "aware of women as an oppressed group in all spheres,"
some of her plays "transcended from the experience of being
a woman and some just from being a writer" (in Pevitts 180).
Owens' statement reflects a sensibility shared by Fornes and
other members of the Women’s Theatre Council, most of whom
were still writing plays about women at the time of
Gillespie's 1981 article.
 22

Fornes’ "60s" plays with the hindsight afforded by Fornes’

works from the 70s.

By combining {more accurate) theatre history with drama

criticism, Helene Keyssar (1985) is able to appraise Fornes’

production work as well as the content and staging of her

plays for their contribution to feminist theatre. In her

chapter on "networks," Keyssar commends both Fornes’ plays

and her co-founding of the Women's Theatre Council and

subsequent management of "its offspring, Theatre Strategy,

an organisation of playwrights dedicated to sending

experimental (including feminist] plays across the country"

(1 2 1 ) .

Beyond Gynocentrism

By the mid-1980s, feminist critics arguing from

lesbian, 'Third World,’ socialist, and poststructuralist

perspectives had charged that gynocentric representations of

women tended toward essentializing definitions of 'Woman’ or

'women,’ toward a specious universalizing of womanhood or

women’s experience, and in some cases toward racism and

heterosexism. While acknowledging a continuing need to

raise (both women’s and me n ’s) consciousness of female

oppression and female worth, these critics called for more

complex, nuanced understandings of (female) subjectivity,

conditioning social forces, and social relations across

 23

divisions other than gender. Alternative strategies

included:

the Combahee River Collective’s call for an

"integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact
that major systems of oppression are interlocking"
(Combahee 272);

- Barbara Smith’s admonishment to feminist scholars to

re-connect their theoretical/critical work to the
liberation movements that fostered it (Smith, Brave
50) ;

- poststructuralists’ critique of the underlying

process through which subjects are constituted "by a
discourse that weaves knowledge and power into a
coercive structure that . . . [ties] the individual to
her identity as a woman" (Foucault, in Alcoff 415); and

- socialist feminists’ historically-based analysis

that gender, like other axes of social difference, is
"socially constructed and therefore socially alterable"
and that humans "continuously re-create their
physiological and psychological constitution" as well
as their physical and social context through "conscious
and cooperative productive activity" (Jaggar 303).

Post-Gynocentric and Poststructuralist Theatre Criticism

Gynocentric theatres flourished from the mid-1970s into

the early 80s. In 1977, there were at least 73 feminist

theatre groups "known to be active across the United States"

(Brown 87). By 1990, only three of those groups were still

active (Canning 269). In 1986, Roberta Sklar, a feminist

who had moved from The Open Theatre into gynocentric

collectives, placed the demise of women’s theatre groups in

the context of a "new age of conservatism equal to the

1950’s, supported by the new economics . . . an era

unfriendly to the advancement and equality of women," a time

 24

during which "alternative health centers, day-care centers,

consciousness-raising groups, women's presses, and women’s

production companies" as well as theatre groups were

folding. Gynocentric theatre groups were also weakened by

the 'burn-out' of dedicated members and by divisions between

professional and amateur theatre people and across identity

politics. In other words, gynocentric theatre groups

experienced the tensions that were also erupting in other

types of feminist groups and in feminist theory.

In the late 1980s, materialist theatre feminists in the

US unveiled a new theoretical platform (in books written by

Sue-Ellen Case and Jill Dolan). In Theatre and Feminism

(1988), Case

underscores the role of class and history in

creating the oppression of women. . . . Derived
from Marxism, materialist feminism posits that
class determines the situation of all people
within capitalism. (Case 82)

It seems surprising then that she omits Fornes from her

feminist theatre survey, since Fornes, as much as any other

US playwright, has continued to incorporate the intertwined

dynamics of class and gender into her increasingly complex

characters and subtle parables of social relations.

In The Feminist Spectator as Critic (1988), Jill Dolan

sets out to unseat the "ideal [white, middle-class,

heterosexual, and male] spectator" and "to illuminate the

differences between spectators positioned in front of the

 25

representational frame" (1, 2). However, Dolan rapidly

shifts from examining different spectators to theorizing a

new ideal lesbian-feminist spectator. Much of her analysis

of acceptable feminist theatre and ideal spectators is based

on Lacan’s account of subjectivity in which only males have

access to symbolic systems such as speech, theatre, and

criticism. But as Elinor Fuchs points out,

feminist scholars working within Lacanian terms

[seem to accept that] representation as such is
created and operated by male desire, and thus
excludes the female subject at the root. (Fuchs
138)

Working within these limitations, Dolan recommends only two

feminist strategies: performance and criticism from a

lesbian perspective and/or feminist adaptation of Brechtian

techniques.

Under these circumstances, Fornes is granted

conditional admission to Dolan’s survey only insofar as she

exemplifies Dolan’s second recommendation for theatre

feminists--the adaptation of Brechtian techniques to

denaturalize "illusionist forms of traditional theatre" and

to "undermine the tyranny of male narratives of desire" (14,

101). At the outset, Dolan announces that Fornes is 'not

feminist’ because she does not passively accept

theoretically-based readings (appropriations?) of her plays:

Fornes is adamant about disassociating herself

from feminism. In a taped interview, . . . Fornes
bemoaned the fact that "no one wants to see what’s
there" in her plays; "They all want to apply it to
 26

their own theories." Nonetheless, despite Fornes'

disclaimers, a feminist reading is clearly
relevant. (Dolan 141, Fn 29)

Notwithstanding, Fornes’ plays and methods may be usefully

illuminated by considering them in light of Dolan’s

Brechtian analysis.

Dolan is correct that Fornes and Brecht display formal

similarities and perhaps share some dramaturgical goals;

however I disagree with Dolan’s wholesale indictment of

realism, her readings of specific plays, and the false

impression that Fornes' techniques are derived from Brecht.^

Dolan’s definition of feminist gestus as "a visual sign of

the power dynamics in gendered social relations" may be

expanded to illuminate Fornes’ creation of powerful images

to concretize theoretical insights about social relations

marked by multiple, intertwined hierarchies including gender

(108). And though Dolan is right that Brecht and Fornes

share an interest in getting audiences to acknowledge things

usually unseen and unspoken, Fornes’ techniques and her

^Fornes had relatively little contact with Brechtian

theatre or theory, especially in comparison to her earth-
shattering encounter with Beckett’s Waiting For Godot and
her familiarity with the other absurdists. With the
exception of Three-Penny Opera. which she finds similar in
its "charming" light tone to her 1965 musical satire,
Promenade, Fornes complains that Brecht’s plays are "heavy-
handed" and "bombard" the thinking spectator (Interview
1/23/93). Fornes believes that political plays are most
effective when they are subtle, even delicate so that
viewers come to their own understanding of the work.
 27

focus on interpersonal rather than societal relations differ

from Brecht in ways that highlight important differences

among various feminist practices as well.

Fornes fulfills Dolan’s requirement that feminist

theatre encourage the spectator to "be astonished at the

circumstances under which the characters function" (107),

but Fornes focuses on the functioning, not the

circumstances.^ Both Brecht and Fornes employ episodic

parables; but the surprising (even shocking) formal power of

Fornes’ compilations of many short episodes comes from her

inclusion of "irrational" experience (such as staging

characters’ fantasies or allowing them to speak their

desires plainly) and her method of paring away unnecessary

words to leave thoughts and feelings naked ("Hedda" 19). In

several scenes from And What of the Night? and Abingdon

Square an actor makes a single cross or looks out the window

while listening to music. Fornes includes only enough to

1Q
Fornes’ 1987 production of Hedda Gabler is an extreme
case in point. In opposition to current feminist views of
the play and in order to focus on Hedda as "a free agent,"
Fornes removed as many constraining circumstances as
possible (Paran 19). She avoided restrictive Victorian
costumes and cut stage directions that might indicate that
Hedda was pregnant. Fornes reports that

Someone said to me, "If Hedda is not pregnant and

not oppressed by society then i t ’s not an
interesting play." To me it’s much more
interesting. We all know society's bad— that’s
been done a million times already. (in Paran 19)
 28

evoke the feeling or intimate the 'point' of the scene and

does not clutter her presentation with anything that can

possibly be omitted. Throughout her career, Fornes' method

has been one of subtraction, more like Beckett than Brecht

(Pasolli 57).

Dolan derives from Brecht the idea that "realism

naturalizes social relations imposed by dominant ideology

and mystifies its own authorship" (106). Fornes too

recognizes the power of naturalizing relations but in her

later, more realistic plays she often redeploys these

psychological processes by staging unfamiliar or unaccepted

characters or situations as 'natural' or typical rather than

trying to defamiliarize or to deconstruct dominant

representations. Fornes uses this process, which I term

'familiarization' in at least two general ways: first, to

mainstream the 'deviant,’ including fantasy, variant

sexuality, characters not usually featured on stage; and

second, to shock middle class audiences out of their

complacency by staging unromanticized, matter-of-fact scenes

of everyday brutality, the unexpected tenderness of people

in the meanest of circumstances, and the suppressed

debilitation and dehumanization of even the most privileged.

In the latter case, Fornes’ work may achieve effects similar

to Brecht’s intentions, but she is more interested in the

internal contradictions of individual characters. In

 29

Fornes' later plays, there are no simple characterizations

of victims simply as 'victims,' as one instance of a type.

For example, audiences are asked to consider a character

like Nena, a street waif subjected to frequent beatings and

rape at the hands of a military officer, who then 'accedes'

to the position of servant and shares this life philosophy:

I should value the things I have. And I should

value all those who are near me. . . . And if
someone should treat me unkindly, I should not
blind myself with rage, but I should see them and
receive them, since maybe they are in worse pain
than me. (Conduct 85)

Under Fornes’ direction, this speech is delivered without

irony or self-pity. She leaves pity and outrage to the

audience.

When Fornes employs familiarization to mainstream

'unaccepted' relations, she first presents the 'deviants’ as

normal, and only after these characters are firmly

established does she present questions or justifications

about their acceptability. For example, in Springtime. the

second part of the play cycle And What of the Night?, we see

Rainbow fall in love with another woman, Greta. In the next

scene, Greta is seriously ill and being cared for by

Rainbow. The fact that theirs is a lesbian relationship is

naturalized and goes unmentioned until late in the play,

when Rainbow repeats to Greta her conversation with a

domineering man who tried to persuade Rainbow that she

should love men. By then we are already accustomed to

Rainbow and Greta as lovers and interested in their

individual situation--their tenderness, Greta’s illness, the

illegal work that Rainbow performs to support her--so the

questioning of Rainbow’s sexual preference by a disturbed,

if not totally evil, character garners little audience

sympathy. In both cases of familiarization, Fornes’ method

and intent depend on what is being 'naturalized’ for a given

audience and who is being empathized with and how.

Reinvesting old theatrical processes (such as realism) with

different content or staging tabooed subjects within a

familiarizing context walks a fine line between subversion

and reinscription, a line Fornes is willing and capable of

treading.

Dolan rejects dramaturgical strategies (such as

empathy) and representational styles (such as realism)

because they have usually carried oppressive or exploitative

messages.^ Unlike Dolan, who (following Brecht) recommends

for feminists a "critical, reflective position [that]

13
“Feminist refutations of the total rejection of stage
realism were presented at the 1991 ATHE conference on a
Women and Theatre Program sponsored panel "The Value of
Realism to Feminist Drama." Presenters included Mary
Cutler, Judith Barlow, Patricia Schroeder, and Sheila
Stowell. See, for example, Stowell, "Rehabilitating
Realism," The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.
Lawrence, K S : The University of Kansas, Spring 1992, Vol VI,
No 2: 81-88.
 31

disrupts the process of identification" (106), Fornes often

works to produce audience identification, to encourage the

audience

to receive the experiences of others (because] we

are one with humanity . . . with the kind ones and
the beautiful ones and the talented ones, but we
are also one with the victims of crimes and with
the murderers. (in Austin, Process 90).

In Fornes’ work, identification and empathy are harnessed to

carry progressive messages which encourage audiences to

embrace differences and a sense of shared humanity.

More recently, feminist critics have begun to employ

theories developed by "French post-feminist," Julia

Kristeva. In her ground-breaking 1973 article, "The System

and the Speaking Subject," Kristeva contests "reductive"

conceptions of the "preconstituted, singleminded, freely

choosing" speaking self (posited by phenomenology and

linguistics) and of the "single subject subsumed into a

group, determined by pre-existing tribal or ideological

formations" (as perceived by anthropology and Althusserian

Marxism) (Jones 57). Instead, she proposed a new semiology

or "semanalysis [which] conceives of meaning not as a sign-

system but as a signifying process" (Kristeva, "System" 28).

Kristeva hopes to improve upon Lacan’s theory of subjects

painfully conscripted into a preexisting phallocentric order

in which only males have access to the Symbolic (e.g.,

language, writing, theatre) by retheorizing the split

 32

subject of psychoanalysis as a "subject-in-process" whose

acceptance of the social constraints necessary for

(masculine) symbolic language is continually contested by

the persisting (feminine) semiotic language of instinctual

drives. In her early work, Kristeva describes this speaker

as "invariably subject to the signifying and/or social

codes" but also able to "infringe the code" in order to "get

pleasure from it, renew it, even endanger it" ("System" 30).

By "signifying process" Kristeva means the textual

"interplay of semiotic and Symbolic" through which "the

energies of the unconscious simultaneously attack the formal

conventions of language and are supported by them" (Jones

59; emphasis added).

Although Kristeva promised to "locate signifying

practices in the historically determined relations of

production" and to "give a hearing to any or all of those

efforts which have been renewing and reshaping the status of

meaning within social exchange" (32), in practice her

"relations of production" have referred primarily to the

production of Lacanian subjects while avant-garde poetry

provides her primary example of efforts to reshape (social)

meanings. She has 'corrected’ some Marxists’ relegation of

language (and theatre) to the superstructure by substituting

psycholinguistics for political economy as the base of all

social relations, production, and systems. Kristeva tends

 33

to conflate linguistic disruption and aesthetic innovation

with positive social transgression, if not social change.

At this early "quasi-Maoist" phase of her political

development, she valorized aesthetic innovation regardless

of content while denigrating norm-conforming behaviors as

necessarily regressive (Fraser, "Discourse" 187).

In a pair of insightful articles, Linda Kintz uses

Fornes’ play The Conduct of Life (about the interrelations

of domestic and state violence in a Latin American

dictatorship) to illustrate her point that since "fascism

and the metaphysics of the Sign operate on gendered

terrain," the critique of these power/knowledge systems must

also be gendered ("Gender" 99). However, Kintz’ argument

for gendered readings of the symbolic functions of

(particularly fascist) violence is considerably stronger

than her wider interpretation of Fornes’ play.** Although

she sometimes exceeds the limitations inherited from

poststructuralist theories, Kintz tends to replicate

Kristeva’s political/linguistic pessimism and overemphasis

on female/male differences, and to rely on psychoanalytic

abstractions (such as maternity) instead of examining

everyday practices (such as pregnancy, childbirth, child-

rearing, or other types of care-taking), a strategy that

^See my detailed critique of Kintz’ reading in the

chapter six discussion of The Conduct of Life.
 34

leads back to biological essentialism. For example, Kintz

indicates some recognition of Kristeva's limitations in a

passing reference to "overlapping configurations of class,

gender, age, race" ("Boundaries" 88) and (in a footnote) to

the necessary distinction "between the phobically

constructed masculine body . . . and another kind of

masculine body and sexuality" ("Gender" 93). When— less

frequently— Kintz adapts the ideas of more ethnographieally-

based theorists (such as Michel de Certeau and Pierre

Bourdieu), I find her dialogue between theory and her

accounts of symbolic fascist violence and resistance to it

more persuasive.

In her 1990 article on Fornes’ "performative language

as gestus," Deborah Geis argues that Fornes’ plays

illustrate "the theater’s unique status as an arena for the

enactment or ’voicing’ of multiple subject positions" (292).

To make this argument, Geis begins with Kristeva’s "speaking

subject," dismissing Kristeva’s tendency toward male/female

polarities and relying instead on revisions that posit "the

'polyvocal’ nature of the female subject . . . as a way of

describing the processual nature of subjectivity" (292).

However, Geis retains Kristeva’s tendency to universalize

the female subject and her theoretical limitations on

female’s speech. Geis then turns to Brecht’s concept of

gestus in order to find some way for women to refuse or

 35

contradict the status quo they must 'inevitably’ speak.

Eventually, Geis quotes Patrice Pavis’ definition of gestus

as the "radical" disjunction between "the shown (the said)

and the showing (the staging)" (Geis 292) in order to arrive

at the commonly held perception that Fornes uses theatrical

irony to make social commentary and infuses her

'surprisingly' realist style with presentational strategies.

Perhaps because she had seen the play in performance, Gei s ’

reading of Mud is her most careful and most politically

useful. By combining her own previous research on

monologues with a more performance-based reading of Brecht,

Geis improves upon Dolan’s play analyses by acknowledging

that Fornes has not assigned positive and negative traits to

her characters according to gender.*** Unfortunately, in her

analysis of Fornes’ other works, Geis frequently makes

unsubstantiated statements, misquotes the plays, and imputes

poststructuralist ideas, such as an "interest in the

impossibilities of the discourse of the theater itself"

(296), to Fornes.*®

***For my analysis of Mud and critics’ responses to it,

see chapter six.

***Geis states without textual support that "most

characters in Fefu have difficulty accepting the body as a
possible site for the inscription of their subjectivity
because their bodies have already been (in)scripted for them
with the male codes of their culture" (298). In support of
her allegation that the characters in Fefu "live in a
society . . . which insists on denying the validity of
female sexual energy," Geis misquotes Emma’s jest about
 36

Because of this history of critical (m i s )readings based

on preconceived standards and partial studies of Fornes’

oeuvre, in this study I analyze Fornes’ career and works by

combining an aesthetic critic’s careful examination of

"what’s there" in her productions with my political interest

in evaluating her contribution to feminist theatre for

social change.

Fornes’ Challenges from Feminists

Although variously-positioned feminist critics have

tended to treat only those works easily apprehended from

their particular perspectives, with Fefu and Her Friends

(1977), Fornes won accolades from most feminists. Their

acclaim was reinforced by her next two productions: Evelyn

Brown (1978), which examines a New England servant’s daily

work, and Eyes on the Harem (1979), about the Turkish

Empire, with an emphasis on women. 17 But, The Visit (1981),

an "erotic, turn-of-the-century piece . . . [in which] the

men wore these white porcelain erect phalluses decorated

divine judgment of sexual performance by adding the word

"by": "In heaven they d o n ’t judge goodness b£ the way we
think" (Geis 297). Other significant misquotes appear on
pages 294 and 297.
I?
“These two pieces as well as The Visit were highly
presentational and imagistic works based on uncorrected (and
unpublished) manuscripts. Fornes has not released these
scripts for analysis, because she fears that, especially
without seeing the original productions, these fragmentary
scripts would be confusing or even misleading.
 37

with a blue circle like very fancy Swedish dishware, and the

women wore white porcelain breasts" ("Creative Danger" 15),

drew feminist criticism hardly distinguishable from old-

fashioned censorship. According to Fornes,

There were a number of women who came to this play

assuming that they would see feminist art, and
they were horrified to find a work of such
frivolity where men’s penises were paraded around
with delight. (15)

However, viewed as part of Fornes’ larger body of work, The

Visit, which resembles her campy social satires of the 60s,

continued Fornes’ lifelong exploration of human carnality^

and sexuality, albeit more exuberantly than in Fefu.

By the mid-1980s, Fornes had come to see at least some

tendencies within feminism as limiting rather than

liberating for women in theatre, although at times Fornes

has overstated her disagreement with such criticism. Out of

frustration with gynocentric critics who were dismayed that

in Mud she didn't put Mae "in a situation that shows her in

an unfavorable position from which she escapes" or that

proves that Mae "is noble and the men around her are not,"

10
Fornes does not use the term "carnality" in the
pejorative sense, but rather to indicate the material
reality of corporeal sexuality and desire. Especially from
a Latin American perspective, Fornes’ interest in the
carnality of both women and men controverts cultural
stereotypes of male machismo and female chastity and the
resulting sexual double standard (see Kaminsky 15-18).
 38

Fornes made the contextually valid but theoretically

questionable statement that M a e ’s "difficulties have nothing

to do with gender" (Betsko 166), In 1985, she tried to

clarify her position:

I am feminist in that I am very concerned and I

suffer when women are treated in a discriminatory
manner and when I am treated in a discriminatory
manner because I am a woman. (in Cummings 55)

If I were limited to writing [and directing] plays

to make a point about women, I would feel that I
was working under some sort of tyranny of the
well-meaning. ("Creative Danger" 15; see also
Paran 19)

In 1991, at the Second International Women Playwrights

Conference, Fornes observed as attempts to theorize general

standards for feminist theatre were stymied by the divergent

experiences of women in different ethnic/national, racial,

sexual, and economic circumstances. A playwright from

sexually-permissive Finland called for "less sex" in the

theatre; a Brazilian performer touted female erotic

expression as an antidote to the macho tradition that "men

could talk about sex, while women were limited to romantic

drivel"; and theorists were in a quandary about whether

feminist theatre should blazon or conceal women’s sexuality

and eroticism (Shteir 54). According to American Theatre,

A few women argued convincingly against curbing

the imagination for any political line.
"Respectfulness is crippling," San Francisco
performance artist Terry Baum said, adding that
women have already been censored enough, and
 39

shouldn’t limit themselves by what is politically

correct. (Shteir 54)

Recognizing that different women’s contexts will necessarily

bring forth different sorts of plays, and as always

crusading for aesthetically sound rather than 'ideologically

correct’ art,

Maria Irene Fornes went so far as to call for the

evasive humanist "standard of excellence" as a way
to judge work. When the audience booed, Fornes
retaliated by shouting, "My work is as political
as anybody’s!" (54)

Fornes often makes such dissenting remarks in order to

question notions that underlie an assumed consensus, such as

the appropriateness of general guidelines for international

feminist theatre, and to re-direct a group’s attention to

neglected problems. Fornes’ unsettling, or in my terms

‘jestic,’ style of political intervention predates current

feminist arguments and is evident throughout her entire

oeuvre.

Unfortunately, however, Fornes’ statements at

conferences and in interviews are less subtle and thus more

often deemed simplistic or anti-theoretical than her

theatrical presentations of similar material. It is in

response to theorists’ tendency to misinterpret her plays

that Fornes objected that "no one wants to see what’s there"

in my plays; "they all want to apply it to their own

theories" (in Dolan 141, fn 29). But Fornes’ consequent

 40

reputation for being 'anti-theory' is untenable given her

practice of concretizing theoretical insights with startling

images and for infusing deceptively simple, almost innocent,

dialogue with sharp social commentary. Fornes

differentiates abstract theory from artistic practice in the

following terms:

[Art] has to do with understanding but in a manner

that is much more profound than the brain drawing
rational conclusions, [which] is not the deepest
and most important form of thinking. Rational
conclusions are wrong 99% of the time and yet so
often people are quite satisfied with a rational
conclusion that seems perfectly to add up and just
happens to be wrong. . . . [Art] is not like a
rational conclusion that you try to figure out; if
art is not working, it doesn't exist and there’s
nothing there. When it’s working, it's
devastating. (Interview 1/23/93).

Out of frustration with much of current theoretical

practice, Fornes dichotomizes theory and practice. As an

alternative, I use mutually-informed theorizing,

observation, and production experience in order to analyze

the embodied theory and theatrically-realized ideas conveyed

through Fornes’ plays.

Cultural Criticism

Cultural critics are attracted to the contradictory

identifications and strategies of Fornes’ multiply-

positioned characters. However, some critics have wondered

why Fornes so infrequently foregrounds Latina/o ethnicity,

even though she has spent many years directing the INTAR
 41

Playwrights-in Residence program at the Hispanic Cultural

Center in New York. Only one of the plays in this study

(Sari t a ) specifically depicts US-Cuban life.'** And as I

argue in my discussion of that play, rather than

emblematizing or problematizing Latino/a culture, Fornes

focuses more on generational, gender, and religious

differences among Cubans than she does on their cultural

differences with the one sympathetic Euramerican character.

Thus, she may not provide an obvious model for identity-

based criticism or anti-racist activism. I believe the

reasons for Fornes’ seeming 'reluctance' to embrace either

Latina or female "identity politics" are at least twofold.

Both playwrights and critics tend to see the world

through the lens of their own personal experiences. Unlike

the playwrights surveyed in Lillian Manzor-Coats' article on

social politics in US-Cuban musicals, Fornes never lived in

a barrio or neighborhood that was subject to systematic

racial/ethnic discrimination. She grew up in an atypically

bohemian family in Cuba, moved with her mother and sister to

New York where they did not live in an ethnic enclave, and

IQ
In 1987, Fornes directed Abingdon Square at San Diego
Repertory Theatre where "it was performed on successive
nights in English and Spanish" (Marranca "State of Grace"
25). In several university productions, Fefu has been cast
multiculturally.
 42

spent several years in Europe during her young 20s. Thus,

she does not necessarily share a worldview with later Cuban

refugees in Miami, Puerto Ricans in New York, or Chicano/as

in Southern California.

Because she does not see any one marker of identity or

axis of oppression to be solely dominant in either life or

theatre, Fornes does not believe it necessary for a

playwright to ground her critical perspective upon sexual

orientation, gender, ethnicity, or any other identity-based

authoritative position. Her outrage at social inequalities

is focused through her broad understanding of "class" as the

unsubstantiated feelings of superiority and consequent

dominance produced and reproduced by the members of one

group in relation to other groups^. Although she recognizes

experiential commonalities between groups of people, she is

particularly interested in the unique subjectivity of

individuals constructed through multiple identifications.

If Fornes were to embrace any identity label, it would

be that of playwright/director. The perspicacity of her

social critique arises from her continually-honed creative

2D
During a spirited discussion of strategies for
incorporating multiculturalism into the largely white,
masculinist, mainstream canon, Fornes exclaimed, "It all has
to with class. It’s a predominance, a [sense of]
superiority, i t ’s disgusting!" (personal notes, ATHE
conference, August 1992).
 43

process through which she tries to capture pre-rational (and

pre-rationalized) ideas, impressions, and images before

explicitly theorizing them. In other words, Fornes uses an

inductive method, a net for gathering up disparate material,

rather than a deductive identity- or theory-based method or

lens for filtering out contradictory or seemingly

insignificant details.

In reaction to reductive readings of her social

critique, Fornes responded,

To understand Mud as being about M a e ’s oppression

and my more recent play The Conduct of Life about
the subjugation of Latin American women is to
limit the perception of those plays to a
singleminded perspective. ("Creative Danger" 13)

Rather than depicting typical or model social

behaviors, Fornes creates characters who respond to social

situations in unexpected and novel ways. She asks audiences

to acknowledge problematic social relations and to

contemplate social change by showing characters in the

contradictory, vacillating process of thought.

Notwithstanding gynocentric disappointment or theoretical

skepticism, I agree with Fornes that she contributes richly

to feminist drama by showing ordinary women of various

ethnicities— such as Mae (Mud), Nena (Conduct.), and Birdie

(Night)--coming to consciousness and making changes in their

interpersonal relations and social circumstances.

 In summary, I believe that much of Fornes’ friction

with feminists stems from their insistence on judging her as

solely a feminist playwright/director, while ignoring her

actual position as an 'organic intellectual,’61 or practice-

based theorist of socially-engaged, imagistic theatre--

including but not limited to feminist issues. Given her own

hybridity as a multi-lingual US-Cuban playwright/director/

designer working Off-Off-Broadway, Fornes believes that a

person’s gender or ethnicity cannot be cleanly separated

from other axes of identity (and/or oppression). Although

her work has become increasingly personal and political, she

does not write simply as a representative of her gender,

ethnicity, sexual preference, or class because she has

observed that these categories are intertwined, with

different aspects salient in different situations. When

asked if she encounters personal discrimination in the

theatre, Fornes responded that she prefers "not to be

suspicious and not to give too much thought" to whether her

1\
Antonio Gramsci distinguishes "traditional
professional intellectuals" (literary, scientific, and, in
this case, dramatic 'experts’) from "organic intellectuals"
--"the thinking and organising element of a particular
fundamental social class . . . [who] direct the ideas and
aspirations of the class to which they organically belong"
(Hoare & Smith, in Gramsci 1). I use the term to underscore
that Fornes’ expertise is grounded by her "active
participation in [the] practical life" of theatre writing,
directing, and teaching (Gramsci 10).
work is rejected because she’s female, avant-garde, not

avant-garde enough, or a speaker of English as a second

language (in Cummings 55).

 CHAPTER TWO

MY PRAGMATIC FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE

Pragmatic: 1) of or relating to the

affairs of a community or state; 2) active in
affairs; 5) dealing with events in such a
manner as to show their interconnection.

Pragmatism: 4b) an American movement in

philosophy founded by Peirce and James and
marked by the doctrines that the meaning of
conceptions is to be sought in their
practical bearings, that the function of
thought is as a guide to action, and that the
truth is preeminently to be tested by the
practical consequences of belief.

Pragmatical: 3) of, relating to, or

experienced in business or affairs.

- Webster’s Third New International

Dictionary

"Asunto" means business or question or matter

in Spanish. What, I wonder, is the female of
all that.

- Fornes’ inscription in author’s copy of

Promenade

Fornes creates an embodied theory of social relations

by staging telling scenes or moments from everyday life. By

framing and highlighting social dynamics, she works to

create ways of understanding society and the social

46
 47

functioning of especially low power individuals without

oversimplifying the multiple subject positions and disparate

forces that shape lived reality. In order to illuminate

Fornes’ complex visions and her capacity to examine and re­

present the material social conditions of women and other

oppressed groups, I bring together analyses, theories, and

strategies from various strands of feminism, from theatre

theory and practice, and from progressive philosophy.

Useful concepts include the workings of knowledge/power

regimes (Foucault), the tactics of low power agents (de

Certeau), broadened notions of class and capital based on

cultural as well as economic factors (Bourdieu), and

practice-based accounts of the self-reflexive experience and

continually developing consciousness of social subjects (de

Lauretis, Ruddick, Gardiner). These concepts underlie my

argument for the efficacy of Fornes’ peculiar blend of

aesthetic innovation and unconventional social politics. As

the epigraphs above indicate, the overlapping meanings of

"pragmatism" provide a starting point for such an

explication.

My pragmatic feminist perspective aims to recuperate

and re-energize US feminism’s focus on lived experience,

practical politics, and historical specificity. This

perspective conjoins socialist feminism with theories from

outside of marxism, most importantly, women of color’s

 48

fusion of theory and practice, and their insistence on

liberation from all forms of oppression. As Barbara Smith

defines it, feminism

is the political theory and practice that

struggles to free all women. . . . Anything less
than this vision of total freedom is not feminism,
but merely female self-aggrandizement. (Smith,
Brave, 49)

By advocating integrated analysis and struggle against

intertwined systems of oppression, pragmatic feminism

includes liberal feminist struggles for access to

'public sphere’ activities in existing institutions,
but links the fight against gender discrimination to
other liberation efforts.

incorporates gynocentric feminist struggles over the

conduct of 'private sphere’ activities, without making
gender the only significant indicator of social
position.

retains classical marxist interest in historical

changes in social relations and in improving material
and economic conditions. However, pragmatic feminism
counters the view that 'secondary contradictions’ (such
as sexism and racism) would necessarily disappear with
the end of capitalism, and encourages currently
oppressed individuals to gain access to and control
over existing social institutions.

hopes to prevent a 'theoretically advanced’ vanguard

from becoming yet another power elite, by insisting
that those most effected by an institution or policy
exercise central decision-making power.

expands materialist feminist interest in the

performance of gender to include other markers of
difference.

reconceives the analysis of theatrical representation/

discourse as one of many interconnected arenas for
feminist/social change activism both inside and outside
theatre.
 'Pragmatic feminist criticism’ is necessarily tied to

the practice of theatre. I have found that whether or not a

production is deemed good or bad, accomodating or

antithetical to a given critic’s theoretical position,

production analyses are most useful when critics self-

reflexively articulate the dynamics and results of 'good

faith’ encounters with texts and performances. Therefore,

my method is adaptive, allowing my perspective to be

affected by Fornes’ ideas, images, texts, and contexts. I

agree with Barbara Christian that "every work suggests a new

approach" ("The Race for Theory" 79). Thus in this study, I

adapt conceptions of the bard/jester and of the Santer a

trickster figure, Elegg a, in order to illuminate Fornes’

consistent yet changeable dramaturgical/political styles and

tactics.

Pragmatic critics improve the accuracy and

applicability of their criticism by observing and

interviewing practitioners, by participating in theatre

productions, and by subjecting their theory and criticism to

the scrutiny of theatre practitioners and community members,

particularly those being criticized. In order to better

understand and explicate Fornes’ work, my research includes

production experience, personal interviews, and extensive

observations as well as more traditional scholarly methods.

 50

Like a production dramaturg, I explicate Fornes*

theatrical and political ideas and practices as evidenced in

her published plays and essays. Although I freely

acknowledge that the playwright’s intentions cannot be the

'last word* on the interpretation of her plays, in this

debut study of Fornes’ oeuvre, I allow her to have the first

word. As indicated in the chapter one critical survey, if

New Critical methods allowed authors (or more usually

certain authoritative critics) to argue for the most

accurate meaning of the author’s intentions, the current

"intentional fallacy" encourages contemporary critics to use

others’ plays as raw material in their manufacture of 'more

sophisticated’ theoretical products. In other words, I

agree with Christian that much of the current "emphasis on

literary critical theory is as hegemonic as the world it

attacks" (71). In this study, I hope to strike a balance

between "theoretical criticism" and "practical [theatrical]

criticism" and to perform a first reading of Fornes’

published oeuvre. Like Christian, I strive to render the

author’s "world as large and as complicated as I experienced

it, as sensual as I knew it was" (Christian 72).

I have also chosen the term 'pragmatism’ to allude to

selected tenets of philosophical pragmatism, in particular

C. S. Peirce’s model of linguistic signification in which

active subjects use signs that refer to real objects and

 51

other subjects, in contrast to the deconstructive view that

language is a system of signs and that meaning is endlessly

deferred. My use of the term 'pragmatic feminism’

designates a practical, inclusive feminism that

1) perceives individuals as multiply positioned by race,

ethnicity, age, sexual preference, body type, marital
status, occupation, care-taking responsibilities,
education— circumstances not totally separable from
gender;

2) analyzes particular situations and tests specific

strategies whose success or failure provides data for
another round of theorizing;

3) involves at least temporary alliances and coalitions

with groups not primarily concerned with gender and
supports related progressive social causes (such as the
anti-nuclear movement); and

4) focuses on the interconnections between 'private’ and

'public' decisions.

In summary, my pragmatic, activist, theatre-based criticism

assumes that social relations are mutable, that linguistic

signification involves active subjects and real objects, and

that individual subjectivities and group identities form and

change over time.

Art and Theory

For Fornes, art has "a beauty," "an aesthetic element

that makes it true, totally meaningful, much more meaningful

than an idea"; but art also has a cognitive element which is

"more than thinking, it’s like getting lifted or thrown

back; it has an impact" (Interview 1/23/93). Fornes’

peculiar blend of art and politics challenges me to

 52

explicate her politics without smoothing away the

contradictions and to illuminate her aesthetics without

explaining away her ambiguity. In order to evaluate Fornes’

contribution to feminist theatre for social change, I have

adapted a number of concepts from contemporary social

theory.

Societal Oppression and Resistance

As an alternative to deterministic accounts of

society’s constitution of subjects and the near

impossibility of meaningful resistance, I turn to Foucault’s

historicization of discourses and disciplines and to de

Certeau’s theorization of the practice of everyday life.

Michel Foucault "has done more, perhaps, than anyone

since Marx to expose and warn against the enormous variety

of ways in which humanist rhetoric" (and other 'liberatory*

and/or social ‘service’ discourses) are co-opted in order to

secure the "productive service" of a docile populace

(Fraser, Practices 65; Foucault 66). Foucault traces the

shift from the sovereign’s repressive power to a more

‘democratic,’ productive style of governing through gaining

"access to the bodies of individuals, to their acts,

attitudes, and modes of everyday behavior" (66). In modern

Western societies, citizens are governed via medical, penal,

religious, and educational institutions that "manipulate and

condition" individual bodies through practices such as

 53

school discipline and Taylorism. Likewise, "the

administration, control, and . . . accumulation" of workers

and capital is accomplished under the guise of managing such

•problems' as sexuality, "demography, public health,

hygiene, housing conditions, longevity, and fertility" (67).

Foucault provides an account of how society constitutes

subjects (if not the reverse) and a history of disciplinary

regimes of power. However, in his zeal to oppose dominance

through normalization, Foucault renders all norms

constraining and forfeits all normative standards for

discerning better or worse means of governing.

Notwithstanding, some feminists have found in Foucault’s

"genealogies" the basis for an aesthetics or politics of

everyday life.

In Nancy Fraser’s judgment,

[Foucault’s] very outrageousness in refusing

standard humanist virtues, narrative conventions,
and political categories provides just the jolt we
occasionally need to dereify our usual patterns of
self-interpretation and renew our sense that, just
possibly, they may not tell the whole story. (65-
6)

This characterization aptly describes Fornes as well. Like

Foucault, Fornes upsets norms and conventions and explores

the inherent risks and potential power of gaining knowledge.

Upon close examination of Foucault’s panoptic world,

Michel de Certeau discerns, within the networks of power

that "are becoming more and more tightly woven, flexible,

 54

and totalitarian," a "degree of plurality and creativity"

(de Certeau 31, 30). He ascribes this "play" in the system

to the largely invisible tactics of the weak who "vigilantly

make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in

the surveillance of the proprietary powers" (37). De

Certeau differentiates this "art of the weak" from the

strategies of the strong, defined as the "manipulation of

power relations" by a subject (such as "a business, an army,

a city, a scientific institution") capable of delimiting its

own base (or place) from which to control relations with

exterior targets or threats (such as "customers or

competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city,

objectives and objects of research, etc.") (35-6). Thus,

for de Certeau, strategies "produce, tabulate and impose"

spaces (30).

In contrast, the tactics of low power agents are

"determined by the absence of a proper locus;" or in other

words, "the space of a tactic is the space of the other"

(36-7). While "strategies pin their hopes on the resistance

that the establishment of place offers to the erosion of

time," tactics depend on "a clever utilization of time" as

exemplified by the French workers' ruse, la perruque, in

which "the worker’s own work [is] disguised as work for his

employer" (38-9, 25). De Certeau notes that in such

examples as "writing a love letter on 'company time’" or

 55

"'borrowing’ a lathe to make a piece of furniture" for

oneself, the worker is not pilfering materials but rather

diverting time from the job "for work that is free,

creative, and precisely not directed toward profit" (25).

De Certeau also includes under the rubric "tactics" a

kind of consumption (exemplified by Native American and

Afro-Caribbean syncretizations of Christian mythology with

their own religious practices), in which

a rationalized, expansionist, centralized,

spectacular and clamorous production is confronted
by an entirely different kind of production . . .
characterized by its ruse, its fragmentation (the
result of circumstances), its poaching, its
clandestine nature, its tireless but quiet
activity, in short by its quasi-invisibility,
since it shows itself not in its own products
(where would it place them?) but in an art of
using those imposed on it. (31)

By acting on both Foucault’s and de Certeau’s insights,

theatre feminists may strive to operate as strong consumers

and producers by coordinating their tactics and also gaining

access to strategic spaces. For example, Fornes makes

tactical use of received forms by re-configuring the social

relations and conventional contexts of cabaret, melodrama,

tragi-comedy, realism, and absurdism. She also acts

strategically by directing her own plays, running an

alternative theatre, and leading an Hispanic writers’

workshop. However, in both cases, Fornes comes down firmly

on the side of the oppressed. Especially in her later

 56

plays, she depicts the survival tactics of the weak--in

order to rouse her audiences to make use of their relatively

greater access to strategic power.

Political Oppression and Resistance

In order to embrace a marxist focus on the material

bases of social organization and change while avoiding the

problems associated with traditional marxist notions of

inevitable (armed) revolution, economic base and social

superstructures, class reductionism, and economism, I turned

to the following conceptions.

In his Prison Notebooks. Italian Communist Antonio

Gramsci developed, though never specifically defined, the

concept of "hegemony" in contradistinction to "rule," the

enforcing of relations of domination by explicit political

action or physical coercion (Williams 108). By blending

Gramsci’s ideas with the marxist concepts of 'culture' as

"the whole social process" and 'ideology' as the "expression

or projection of a particular class interest," Raymond

Williams arrives at a provisional definition of cultural

hegemony as "a complex interlocking of political, social and

cultural forces" which strives to organize "dominant

meanings and values" in order to control a society's

"distributions of power, [goods] and influence (108-9).

While "by definition it is always dominant, [hegemony] is

never either total or exclusive, [for] at any time, forms of

 57

alternative or directly oppositional politics and culture

exist as significant elements in the society" (113).

Although the dominant culture "produces and limits its own

forms of counter-culture," in order to remain dominant it

must "control or transform or even incorporate" alternative

or counter hegemonic blocs (113-114). These concepts begin

to explain how a dominating or hegemonic class legitimizes

its domination through mediating social structures such as

education, religion, news media, and the arts as well as

through direct coercion and repressive force.

In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical

Democratic Politics (1985), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal

Mouffe jettision the traditional marxist maxim that because

of their fundamental positions in relations of production,

the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the only two

potentially hegemonic classes. By doing so, they reject

class reductionism--the privileging of the working class as

the only possible revolutionary (or counter-hegemonic) class

— because this precept necessarily marginalizes the already

existing radical democratic struggles of the so-called "new

social movements," such as feminism, anti-racism, the gay

and lesbian, peace, and ecology movements (Laclau & Mouffe

181-185). They argue that these "new" antagonisms should be

seen as a deepening and broadening of democratic

contestation, which must always include socialist opposition

 58

to capitalist means of production but which cannot be

reduced to or subsumed by economic/class struggle (153).

Mouffe and Laclau also jettison economism— rendering the

political, social and cultural secondary to a fundamental

economic relation. In their theory, the cultural production

of meaning and subject positions (e.g., feminist theatre and

spectatorial positions) is central to forming and

maintaining hegemonies. Pragmatic feminism similarly

rejects gender reductionism— the a priori designation of

gender struggle as separable or more fundamental than class,

race, or sexuality issues and the assumption that w e ’re all

'women' or that we necessarily share the same subject

positions. Instead this expansive form of feminism joins

with other emancipatory movements in working for counter-

hegemonic definitions of needs, rights, and the distribution

of social and cultural goods.

Group Divisions and Forms of Capital

The term 'hegemony’ sometimes refers to domination

through persuasion and at other times to "the shaping

perceptions" and "lived system of meanings" experienced by

individuals and groups within a society (Williams 110). The

second meaning, however, is better handled by Pierre

Bourdieu’s concept, *habitus. ’ For the purposes of this

study, I reserve the term 'hegemony’ to describe

contestation between coalitions (or 'historic blocs’)

 59

struggling to keep or to gain political control by

influencing a society's "common sense" notions about just

relations among groups and distribution of 'good’s. In

contrast, I use Bourdieu’s term *habitus' to designate the

lived sense of reality, the set of embodied dispositions,

and the meanings and values that individuals share with

their group or class.

According to Bourdieu, groups translate their material

conditions and social possibilities into a constructed sense

of reality, or doxa. Through institutions such as law,

education, religion, the economic structure, political and

artistic representation, doxa (or 'common sense’)

legitimates hierarchies and inequalities by defining them as

natural and objective. For example, through myths and

rituals doxa may inculcate the 'natural’ inferiority of

women and foreigners. Thus, habitus refers to a person’s

internalization of doxa as a practical orientation to the

world, imbedded in the "most automatic gestures" and

apparently "insignificant techniques of the body— ways of

walking or blowing one’s nose, ways of eating or talking"

(Bourdieu, Distinction 466). These largely subconscious

actions are read as marks of distinction and seem to justify

'natural’ divisions of labor and of the work of domination.

These physical postures and mental dispositions contribute

to a person’s social 'know h o w ’--practical knowledge that is

 60

not just "a mere reflection of the real world" but which has

a genuinely constitutive power (467). In Bourdieu’s theory,

hegemony can be seen as the political and symbolic struggles

between status groups (characterized by different habitus or

lifestyles) over the 'correct' perception of the social

world (Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu 5-6,

[hereafter Intro 1) .

While Bourdieu insists that "habitus is never fixed,

either through time for an individual or from one generation

to the next," he also maintains that subjects do not 'make

history just as they please’ (Intro 11). Although habitus is

not a determining structure (Intro 12), new subjects are

disposed to see the world as their group does because "a

whole universe of ritual practices and also of discourses,

sayings, [warnings, and] proverbs" mediate their actions and

perceptions (Bourdieu, Outline 167). However, when rapid

change or migration alters the objective conditions between

generations, the child’s habitus changes in an attempt to

strike a compromise between myth and material reality (Intro

12) .

In order to explain the reproduction of hierarchical

differences between groups, Bourdieu expands the meaning of

"capital" to include seemingly non-economic 'possessions’

and marks of distinction. For Bourdieu, marxism is too

accepting of the hegemonic (capitalist) strategy of limiting

 61

the meaning of 'capital' to mercantile exchanges, because

the definition of purely economic activities as "self-

interested" implies that all other forms of exchange are

"disinterested" or non-economic (Bourdieu, "Capital" 242).

Based on his findings that the dominant class has a "virtual

monopoly" on practices and assets thus excluded from

critique as 'disinterested,’ Bourdieu argues that these are

the very "forms of exchange which ensure the

transubstantiation whereby the most material types of

[economic] capital . . . can present themselves in the

immaterial form" of cultural or social capital (242). Since

symbolic capital (prestige, status, and authority) is

"perceived and recognised as legitimate," with "the power to

represent common sense and . . . to create the 'official

version of the social’" (Intro 13), this largely

unrecognized "interconvertibility of economic and social

[and cultural] capital serves to maintain relations of

domination" (6).

Bourdieu defines the different forms of capital as

follows:

economic capital is "immediately and directly

convertible into money and may be institutionalized as
property rights" ("Capital" 243); commercial capital
(e.g,. a business) is a more fluid form of economic
capital but also harder to transmit to the next
generation without loss (254)
 62

cultural capital can exist in three related forms:

the embodied state as "long-lasting dispositions

of the mind and body" which require personal labor
to acquire and which cannot be delegated, such as
education and training (243-4),

the objectified state as cultural goods (books,

pictures, instruments, machines) that also require
the knowledge and ability to 'consume' them in
order to reap their full benefits (243), and

the instititutionalized state as educational

qualifications and certifications that guarantee a
constant rate of exchange between cultural and
economic capital (248).

Dominant groups tend to accumulate cultural

capital at a higher rate than dominated groups because
education takes time and money to acquire, "scholastic
yield" is significantly increased by the amount of
cultural capital previously invested by the family, and
material gains from education depend on employment
opportunities (influenced by social capital) (244).

social capital is "the aggregate of the actual or

potential resources" gained by access to "a durable
network" (such as a fraternity or professional
association) that can be effectively mobilized "to
secure material or symbolic profits" (248-49).

The volume of an individual’s social capital

depends on the size of the network and the combined
capital of each member as well as upon the constant
maintenance of relations of mutual "gratitude,
friendship, respect or even rights" (250). Because
this maintenance requires expenditures of time and
money and the cultural 'know h o w ’ and disposition to
secure 'connections,’ the logic of social capital is
skewed in favor of possessors of inherited capital
(250-51).

Although (and because) economic capital is at the root

of social and cultural capital, these relatively 'hidden’

forms of economic advantage produce their specific effects

to the extent that they conceal their economic converti­

bility (252-3). For example, educational/cultural capital

"combines the prestige of innate ability with the merits of

acquisition" (245). Because the economic resources

necessary to maximize educational opportunities are

disguised, education functions as "symbolic" capital,

conferring upon its bearer the right to assign names,

values, and rewards. Despite this tendency, education

presents the possibility for members of dominated groups to

dispossess the dominant group of their monopoly on

transmitting cultural power and privileges (254).* For

Bourdieu then, hegemony involves struggle for social

positions determined by varying allocations of capital

(Intro 8), in which

some habitus (those of dominant social and cultural

fractions) act as multipliers of various kinds of
capital and in fact constitute a form of symbolic
capital in and of themselves. (12)

Bourdieu’s theories of capital also help to illuminate

differences between and within individuals' habitus.

Bourdieu characterizes the habitus of any socio-economic

group as relatively stable, and individual habitus as a

mechanism functioning (for the most part) below the level of

^Interestingly, Fornes focuses on the status-shifting

potential of gaining and wielding various kinds of knowledge
(M u d , Abingdon Square, Fefu) and on education’s role in
maintaining hierarchical differences between people (M u d ,
Dr. Kheal, Tango Palace).
 64

everyday consciousness. However, in practice, every

individual is a member of several different kinds of groups

(gender, racial/ethnic, occupational, religious, age) and

partakes of the habitus of each group and of various groups

over time. This incomplete overlap means that some

dispositions will be doubly reinforced while others will be

in conflict (see Diagram 1).

Female

W/,1 Reinforcing
iCCt. Latina
X i Contradicting

Diagram 1

For example, a Latina accountant may derive dominant status

from her education and occupation but dominated status from

her gender and ethnicity in mainstream US society.

In addition to clarifying one aspect of subjective

multipositionality, Bourdieu makes another improvement on

 65

class analysis by exploring divisions within the dominant

group, such that those with more cultural than economic

capital (e.g., professors and intellectuals) are dominated

by the possessors of greater economic capital (e.g.,

corporate executives and industrialists). However, he also

notes that "the use or exploitation of cultural capital

presents particular problems" for the dominant fraction: if

they "buy" intellectuals, they lose the "effect of

legitimation"; in order to concentrate (hired) cultural

capital, they must bring together its possessors, "which can

have all sorts of unwanted consequences" ("Capital" 245).

According to Bourdieu, some of those 'unwanted' political

consequences result from a structural homology between

dominated groups and the dominated fractions of the dominant

group, who may then become empathetic spokespeople for both

groups.

These theories suggest a pragmatic way of reading

several of Fornes' plays. In Conduct, Fornes seems to draw

an analogy between the risks and potential power of an

artist (such as herself) speaking out on behalf of the

oppressed by showing the working-class maid, Olimpia,

risking reprisal from her violent employer, by raging

against his abuse of an impoverished street waif. In

several plays, women occupy positions within the dominated

fractions of their socio-economic class, thereby

 66

constituting a potentially progressive or revolutionary

fraction within their group. For example, in Lust and

Conduct, Fornes depicts the surprising moments when upper

and middle class women strike back (physically or verbally)

at the husbands and fathers who had been subjugating them.

Throughout her later plays, Fornes’ characters are

confronted by dire and/or changing circumstances in response

to which they may try to maintain their current position or

else reach across group divisions/definitions to take up new

social positions.

Bourdieu does not provide a history or politics of

social transformation and emphasizes the self-perpetuating

tendencies of complex systems of privilege (such as

education and business practices) (Intro 112). Nonetheless,

he supplies conceptual tools and models a pragmatic method

through which general theories derive from, and are applied

to, detailed studies of the dynamics of power and capital in

specific fields. For example, Bourdieu’s conception of

habitus supports the socialist feminist tenet that 'class’-

based resistance must be organized on the basis of a group’s

"'subjective’ sense of itself" as well as on "its

'objective’ position relative to the means of production"

(Jaggar 333). In addition, his conceptualization of social

capital indicates how subjects can transform "contingent

relations, such as those of neighborhood, workplace, or even

 67

kinship . . . into useful relationships that can secure

material or symbolic profits" for the 'union' or

organization (Bourdieu, "Capital" 249). By defining

symbolic capital as a special form of economic capital,

culture (including theatre) can be seen to have material

force (Intro 207).

Like Fornes, Bourdieu "does not easily align himself

with political parties or orthodox sects of the Left and he

does not readily make alliances with political powers"

(Intro 212). Moreover, Fornes seems to share Bourdieu’s

awareness that "mechanisms of delegation and representation

(in both the theatrical and the legal senses)" present the

possibility both for concentrating the social capital of a

group and for the "embezzlement or misappropriation" of

group trust by its representatives ("Capital" 251). Despite

their reluctance to engage in traditional politics, both

Bourdieu and Fornes place struggles for equality "at the

very core of [their] work" (Intro 212).

Experience and Subjectivity

In Alice Doesn't (1984), Teresa de Lauretis defines

experience as "a complex of habits resulting from the

interaction of ‘outer world' and ‘inner world,' the

continuous engagement of self or subject in social reality"

(182). This lifelong process of interaction and

interpretation precludes the possibility of subjectivity

fixed in infancy and of perfectly reproduced social systems,

despite the conditioning influence of existing power

relations which tend to be counter-progressive and non-

emancipatory. For de Lauretis, then, linguistic interaction

(or semiosis) is not just an endless regression of sign-

interpretant-sign reactions in which meaning (and by

implication, judgment and meaningful action) are endlessly

deferred, but rather a series of interlocking interactions

which may "end" by changing the subject and, through the

subject, "outer" reality as well. More specifically, de

Lauretis argues that the semiosic "chain of meaning comes to

a halt . . . by anchoring itself to somebody, some body"

(Alice 178) .

[T]he notion of habit as "energetic" attitude, a

somatic disposition at once abstract and concrete,
the crystallized form of past muscular/mental
effort, is powerfully suggestive of a subject
. . . physically implicated or bodily engaged in
the production of meaning, representation and
self-representation. (Alice 183; emphasis added)

Thus, de Lauretis' concept of 'experience'— each woman’s

evolving complex of mental and physical habits and

dispositions--points to a way of understanding how a woman

can effect emancipatory changes in personal and collective

"self-representation," notwithstanding Foucault’s and

Bourdieu’s accounts of the subconscious, embodied workings

of discipline and habitus.

 69

In order to specify the semiosic practice through which

women constitute themselves as subjects, de Lauretis

resurrects the term, "consciousness raising" or

"consciousness of one's self" (from the Italian feminist

term, autocoscienza) (Alice 185). This renewed consciousness-

raising, which encompasses both theory ("analyzing self and

reality") and practice ("acting politically") (185), entails

two interwoven processes:

experience (the direct action of the outer world

on the inner [mediated by signs]) and deliberation
(the indirect action of the inner world on the
outer through the operation of habits).
(Colapietro 117)

De Lauretis maintains that this "collective articulation of

o n e ’s experience of sexuality and gender . . . has produced,

and continues to elaborate, a radically new mode of

understanding the subject’s relation to social-historical

reality" (185).^ She concludes that

feminism has not only "invented" new strategies,

new semiotic contents and new signs, but more
importantly, it has effected a habit-change in
readers. spectators. speakers. etc. And with that
habit-change it has produced a new social subject,
women. (185-86; emphasis added)

‘This perception is borne out by the continued use and

adaption of consciousness raising techniques by diverse
groups of women, including women of color and lesbians who
felt their issues had been excluded from earlier CR groups
of predominantly white, middle-class, heterosexual women
(cf. "Combahee" 214).
 70

From this perspective, feminist theatre practice may be seen

as embodied theory, another form of ‘self consciousness,’ a

way of re-presenting and examining women’s experience with

the outer world in a process of polyvocal, multilayered

public deliberation that intends to change the habits of all

who participate. One of the purposes of this study is to

evaluate Fornes' contribution to these 'self conscious’

feminist processes.

On this basis, I can now consider Fornes (and each of

her characters) as a positioned subject— as neither an

essentialized site of unified subjectivity nor an 'effect’

of an abstract systems of signs, but rather as a semiosic

agent interpellated by multiple discourses and constantly

engaged in practices which collectively constitute social

reality and realign her beliefs, habits, and actions.

Coming to Self Consciousness

De Lauretis’ account of semiosic agents and social

systems mutually changing over time is incompatible with the

psychoanalytic notion of gendered subjectivity fixed in

infancy. Therefore, as an alternative to the Oedipal

explanation of how each subject comes to consciousness of

herself, I would like to advance Lisa Ruddick’s "feminist

elaboration" of the vital influence of primary caretakers,

mentors, and peers on a subject’s self-creating "play."

Ruddick selectively adapts observations and ideas from

 71

object-relations psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott in order to

posit that the strength, independence, and stability of a

subject’s sense of self, her "soul," depends upon the

quality and quantity of her creative play and the degree to

which those around her acknowledge, value, and facilitate

her playing. In Playing and Reality (1971), Winnicott

theorized that each child evolves its sense of a core self

by designating and playing with a "transitional object,"

such as a security blanket or stuffed toy (Playing 2). This

first 'not-me’ object "with which the infant does something

like play" is neither part of the infant’s body, nor fully

recognized as belonging to external reality (Ruddick 2). In

a healthy relationship, adult caretakers never ask the

question: "Did you create this object, or did you find it

conveniently lying around?" (Playing 96). By respecting the

transitional object and mirroring the child’s manipulation

of it, the caretakers validate "the child’s evolving sense

of creativity and agency" (Ruddick 2). Caretakers

facilitate a child’s development of a healthy, centered

sense of self by allowing her to be "in charge of the

experiential zone surrounding the object," the

"transitional" or creative play space. Both Ruddick and

Winnicott emphasize that this 'self’-creating activity

'results’ in a self-concept fundamentally different from the

Freudian ego: according to Winnicott, "it is not instinctual

 72

satisfaction that makes a baby begin to be, to feel that

life is real, to find life worth living" (Playing 98).

Especially since fully developed subjectivity requires

caretakers or mentors to regard a subject’s transitional or

play space as sacred, it is possible, according to

Winnicott, for a subject "at any stage in life to experience

stresses strong enough to inhibit the capacity for play"

(Ruddick 3). Ruddick expands Winnicott’s insight to posit

that gender differences can be traced to differences in the

play experiences and play space of females and males.

Women, according to Ruddick, "are subjected to particular

stresses throughout the life cycle just because they’re

women" (3). Patriarchy violates women’s 'play space’ by,

for example:

prematurely sexualizing little girls, from sexual abuse

to labeling a toddler’s play 'flirtation;' "if your
social play is called flirting, i t ’s not your play any
more.

conditioning women to assume passive/submissive roles

in heterosexual relations and representations; "to be
turned into a sexual object is to be interpreted not as
a creative sexual agent but as a zone across which men
are supposed to play."

4
’Winnicott specifically points out the effects of
sexualizing children’s play: "Bodily excitement in
erotogenic zones constantly threatens playing and therefore
threatens the child’s sense of existing as a person. . . .
In seduction some external agency exploits the child’s
instincts and helps to annihilate the child’s sense of
existing as an autonomous unit, making playing impossible"
(Playing 52).
 73

assigning women to perform undervalued and unshared

childrearing and other public and private affective
work in which they are constantly and "literally the
enablers and protectors of someone else’s transitional
space;" in such cases, the woman's "boundaries are
under seige, and there's no private space that she can
creatively occupy" (Ruddick 4).

Under circumstances such as these, women must struggle to

feel alive inside themselves, to feel their own (self)

creative actions. From this perspective, it is clear that

many programs designed to ‘help’ women (and other oppressed

groups), with 'experts’ who guide and advise but refuse to

protect the clients’ creative space, actually function as

disciplinary or at best palliative practices. Ironically,

Winnicott's psychotherapeutic practice provides a case in

point. In his published notes from his treatment of a pre­

school girl called "The Piggle," after mirroring and

supporting the child’s communicative play, he then gendered

and sexualized her childish insecurities and jealousies by

supplying and insisting upon Oedipal interpretations of her

dreams, behaviors, and feelings.* However, these regressive

*This is an example of Winnicott’s dialogue with "the

Piggle" during a session when she was 3 years, 9 months old:

She made a deliberate search for the little

animals, and when she had found them she put them
in the middle of the courtyard. I made my main
interpretation here, and it seemed to be what she
wanted.

Me: The man is a robber. He robs the mother of

her breasts. He then uses the stolen breast as a
long thing (like the train), a wee-wee, which he
puts into the girl’s baby hole, and in there he
 74

cultural practices underscore the fact that the 'reasons’

for women’s muffled subjectivity are cultural, social,

historical, constructed, and therefore potentially

changeable. The biographies of many 'exceptional’ women,

such as Fornes, reveal that their circumstances afforded

them unusual access to creative play space, encouraging

mentors, and/or inspiring educational/cultural models and

experiences. In addition, Fornes spent her early years as a

playwright developing games to spur her creativity and now

shares these methods with other adults in the 'creative play

space’ of her writing workshops.

I find that Ruddick’s theories resonate with Bourdieu’s

concepts of cultural capital and habitus. The transmission

of the most highly-valued cultural capital often depends

upon the financial resources to 'buy’ time (free from

labor), inspired mentors, and superior learning

opportunities for one’s heirs; upon the leisure of parents

and other caretakers to be such mentors; and upon the

inculcation of respect and desire for highly valued ways of

knowing along with the disposition to 'play’ and to garner

the approbation of others for one’s playing. However, as

plants babies [the toy animals]. So he doesn’t

feel so bad about having been a robber. (Piggle
142-43)

In support of his reading, Winnicott cites Melanie Klein’s

work "on reparation and male potency" (143).
 75

Fornes’ life and works demonstrate, upper and middle class

individuals’ potential advantage may be undercut by

distracted or disabling caretakers and pressures to succeed

in predetermined pursuits while some working class and

bohemian individuals manage to create enabling "play" spaces

for themselves and their loved ones.

Oppressed groups, such as women under patriarchy, are

confined through mechanisms such as habits, roles,

education, and tradition. However, in contrast to

Bourdieu’s rather pessimistic account of habitus’s constraint

of individual subjectivity, Ruddick’s theory implies that a

strong and stable self results from self-generated 'play’

and that an ideal play space provides creative interaction

for both 'learner’ and mentor, with neither participant

effacing herself. This creative practice models egalitarian

relations between differently positioned subjects in which

the resulting centered selves develop the habit and skill to

negotiate 'spaces’ and to 'play’ with new and different

ideas. In other words, Ruddick’s theory of subjective

development provides a basic building block necessary for

the processes of articulation and negotiation that Mouffe

and Laclau have identified as necessary to create a

radically democratic society. Although cultural capital’s

basis in economic capital and the confining tendencies of

habitus militate against the automatic proliferation of

 76

egalitarian play spaces for oppressed groups, this theory

opens up the possibility that subjective and social

structures can be successfully challenged in nurseries, in

consciousness-raising groups, and in the practice of

feminist theatre.

The Sub.iect-in-Practice

Building upon these theories of semiosic agents coming

to consciousness through daily practices, I would like to

close this section by proposing a pragmatic feminist

alternative to Kristeva’s subject-in-process. My proposal

is supported by Judith Kegan Gardiner’s critique of the

political inefficacy of the decentered postmodern subject

and her call for a conception of provisionally stable

identities with "a personal past from which change is

meaningful" (10).

Gardiner contends that postmodernism’s unstable,

fragmented subjectivity, intended to "release us" from

confining representations of the bourgeois ’self,’ may in

fact be complicit "with contemporary consumer capitalism"

(2). She cites Marcuse’s assessment that the seeming

liberation of the 1960’s sexual 'revolution' masked a

{Foucauldian) transformation of sexuality from a private

sphere activity into a public sphere vehicle for purveying

products and new forms of oppression (6). In terms of

contemporary cultural criticism, Gardiner argues that

 77

current resistance to envisioning a more or less

integrated self . . . serves capitalist structures
by ’’liberating" people into a zone where they
cease to think in terms of actual, progressive,
political action and where instead the supposed
subversion of existing structures occurs at the
level of textual .iouissance, or, even more
dangerously, at the level of pseudo-democratic
processes, which may include reading, writing,
teaching, and psychoanalysis. . . .

[These processes] often presume the egalitarianism

that may be [their] goal, and so efface the power
differentials between, for instance, teacher and
student, reader and text, or analyst and
analysand. (2, 7)

The liberatory claim of Kristeva's perpetually

struggling subject-in-process and of "language’s resistance

to intelligibility and signification" relies on the

assumption that 'process’ (or change) poses inherently

progressive opposition to an 'unchanging’ status quo,

characterized as "an oppressive totality rather than . . .

particular unjust social relationships" (3, 4).

Furthermore, Gardiner notes that "incessant change makes

change meaningless" (6);

without institutionalized political practices, one

may keep struggles going, theories going, so that
ideas come to seem outmoded before any attempt has
been made to put them into practice or even
without a clear idea as to what that might mean.
(7)

In the realm of politics, postmodernism’s subjective

indeterminacy and lack of vision(s) cannot provide a

platform upon which to build effective coalitions.

 78

Pragmatic feminism provides a stronger basis for social

change by positing a constantly evolving subject-in-practice

who interacts with other provisionally stable subjects and

social institutions--

[an] historically situated, gendered, and embodied

[self] . . . unconsciously shaped by its past
[but] nonetheless consciously responsible for its
decisions, words, and actions. (8)

Pragmatic theories of subjectivity and social change specify

alternative practices (or at least 'first steps’) as well as

means for testing them in order to contribute to

progressive, political goals.

In this context, Fornes may be seen as a working

veteran of the 1960s experimental theatre who 'tests’ her

artistic/political images, ideas, and methods on stage, and

whose plays invite pragmatic interpretation because of their

portrayal of speaking subjects creating and manipulating

tactical spaces despite circumstances powerfully constrained

by habitus and disciplinary regimes. Furthermore, as I will

show throughout this study, Fornes (as well as her

characters) exemplifies Gardiner’s definition of a

"politically and ethically focused self,"

a subject who, while not conforming to the

classical image of the bounded coherent ego, does
possess individuality, a unique personal identity
that acknowledges its temporality and carnality
through both memory and aspiration. (8)
 79

Thus, my term 'pragmatic feminism’ indicates an

activist, theoretical/practical approach to social change in

a world characterized by struggles over the distribution of

'good’s, in which social relations (between language and

subjects, society and groups/individuals, and competing

groups and/or ideas) are seen to be mutually constitutive

and contestory. As I have argued throughout this chapter,

this perspective is based upon the propositions that

progressive social change is possible, that language,

consciousness, and group habitus condition and are

conditioned by individual agents as well as by larger social

forces, and that theories and practices are most effective

when they are mutually informing and correcting. In the

remainder of this study, I use this pragmatic feminist

perspective to contextualize Fornes and to examine the

political implications of her re-presentations of the

complicated intersections of class and gender.

 CHAPTER THREE

CONTEXTUALIZING FORNES:

Familial, Cultural, and Religious Roots

She is a Cuban who begins her day with matzoh

ball soup, an elementary school drop-out who
has been described by various people as the
smartest woman they know, a playwright who
has never read Shakespeare.

Stephanie Harrington - Village Voice

What is admirable about Fornes is that she is

one of the last of the real bohemians among
the writers who came to prominence in the
sixties. She never changed to fit her style
to fashion. She has simply been busy
writing, working.

Bonnie Marranca - Theatrewritings

Maria Irene Fornes, the youngest of six children, was

born into the poor but unconventional Cuban family of Carmen

Hismenia (Collado) and Carlos Luis Fornes on May 14, 1930

(Nasso 243).^ Her family history, considered within the

larger context of Cuban history, offers useful insights into

Fornes' personality, works, and worldview. As with many

After her first published anthology, Promenade and

Other Plays in 1971, Fornes dropped the accents from the
spelling of her name.
 81

contemporary Americans, however, it is difficult to place

Fornes and her family in terms of socio-economic class

0
because of the peculiarities of the Cuban class system,6 the

complications of inter-class marriages, and the effects of

cultural as well as social and economic capital. In the

first portion of this chapter, I trace Fornes’ family

history and her early biography, and explore the

O
interweaving or metissage° of Cuban and US, English and

Spanish, Catholic and Santeria influences. In the second

part, I propose that Fornes may be seen as both a

^Pre-1959 Cuba had four classes: upper (tied

economically and socially to the US and/or Spain), middle
(university-educated dependents on foreign money or
government jobs), working (urban, publicly-educated, and, by
the 1930s, organized), and lower (rural, unskilled,
uneducated, and frequently unemployed) (Schroeder 106-9).

Because upper class status could be bought--with a

high salary, a position of prestige, education and
a cultural life-style--the prerevolutionary
[Cuban] class structure was more fluid than
elsewhere in Latin America, where power, wealth
and status were in the hands of a hereditary and
frequently rural oligarchy, [and protected by
traditional notions of noblesse oblige and the
justness of the social order]. This fluidity
meant more mobility for all Cubans in a relatively
open and modern structure. (107-8)

Metissage refers to the establishment of egalitarian

"cross-cultural relationships" between the colonizers’
formalized languages (Spanish, English, French) and the
fluid, flexible Caribbean dialects "enriched by custom,
usage, and tradition but rarely sanctioned by written or
syntactical rules" (Lionnet 3-4). I use the term in its
broadest sense, i.e. "cultural creolization," to include
images and worldviews as well as words.
 82

bard/jester/trickster figure and as an artistic pragmatist.

When I have alluded to her trickster tactics, Fornes smiles

and suggests some practical reason for making a particular

scene seem "more mysterious." Nonetheless, Fornes

consciously strives to produce theatre that is bcth

"charming and serious," "subtle and devastating,"

"imaginative and [socially] meaningful" (Interview 1/23/93).

Paternal Family

On her father’s side, Fornes can trace her family back

to two Basque brothers named Iznaga— her great-great-great

grandfather, who lived in the old aristocratic town of

Sancti Spiritus in south central Cuba, and his brother who

lived in the nearby coastal city of Trinidad.* An old tower

still standing in Sancti Spiritus attests to their wealth as

well as to their sibling competition to erect the tallest

building in the region. However, according to Fornes, this

ancestor earned a more important place in Cuban history by

organizing other hacendados (sugar plantation owners) in

their drive for independence from Spain, contributing large

sums of money to the cause, and going in person to plead

with Simon Bolivar (the South American "Liberator") to fight

against the Spanish colonial government in Cuba.

*Unless otherwise noted, information about Fornes’

family is based on my 1/23/93 telephone interview with
Fornes.
 Jose Aniceto Iznaga® fits the description of 'Golden

A g e ’ (early 19th century) Cuban plantation owners as the

"largest, hardiest, most prosperous, and most enterprising

class of rural proprietors in Cuban history," but unlike

many of his peers, he did not isolate himself from "the

responsibilities of political leadership" (R.F. Smith,

Background to Revolution 94-5). In contrast to the "rural

hacienda elite of Mexico and other parts of Latin America,"

who concerned themselves only with "the maintenance of self-

sufficient landed estates," C u b a ’s sugar planters were

necessarily more cosmopolitan and "forced to wrestle with a

budding capitalistic enterprise [and] the problems of labor,

technology, transportation, marketing, and finances"

(Suchlicki 57). Iznaga, furthermore, belonged to one of the

earliest groups of "radical landowners who, for mainly

economic reasons, revolted" against Spain’s increasingly

repressive mercantilist policies (Hennessy 21).b In fact,

Iznaga was a key figure in the 1823 conspiracy of educated

criolles (native-born Cubans) against tightening control by

Spain and her Cuban agents, an underground movement that

^It is unclear, however, whether this Iznaga is Fornes’

great-great-great grandfather or his brother.

In 1823, Jose Aniceto Iznaga and two of his peers met

with Bolivar in Colombia and worked out a tentative strategy
for the liberation of Cuba (Villafeurte 23), a plan that was
finally quashed by pressure from the United States (Thomas
104-5) .
 84

eventually cost the life of one of his closest friends. It

was Iznaga’s persistent and daring propaganda against

continuing Spanish domination, disseminated through the

criollo Society of Friends of the Country that culminated in

the posting of an infamous placard in Trinidad’s town square

which declared:

Biba la Independencia por la razon o la fuerza,

Senor Ayuntamiento de Trinidad yndependencia o
muerte" (Villafuerte 14; see also, a facsimile in
La Enciclopedia de Cuba 4:276.)

[Long live Independence by reason or by force, The

Town Council of Trinidad. Independence or death.]

Interestingly, the peculiar handwriting and spelling of the

placard were meant to disguise its upper-class authorship

but Villafuerte argues that the forcefulness of this first

open declaration against Spain marks it as a statement by

powerful criolles (14). This dissembling served to deflect

direct retribution by Spanish authorities against the

Society and both to express and to encourage lower-class

resistance to the Spanish regime. However, it must be noted

that while this upper class had already spawned a few

progressive intellectuals, most of these 'revolutionary’

hacendados of the 1820s sought "more equitable taxation,

freer trade," and the expansion of slavery (Suchlicki 60-1).

In the particular case of Fornes’ ancestors, in the mid-18th

century the Iznagas had "accumulated a huge fortune from

[illegal] slaving which they afterwards invested in nine

 85

famous sugar mills" (Thomas 83);^ Fornes' paternal forebears

owned slaves until the Cuban abolition in 1886 (Interview

1/23/93).

By 1823, Iznaga clearly felt 'Cuban1 rather than

European, an identification encouraged by the ban on criolles

holding public office in the colonial bureaucracy and

perhaps by his position as an 'ethnic outsider’ in the

Spanish colony. As the economic interests of the criollo

merchant /hacendado class diverged from those of the wealthy

Spanish-born (or peninsulare) representatives of the Crown,

the criolles became a dominated fraction of the dominant

wealthy class. As Bourdieu would predict, despite

fundamental socio-economic differences, at least some criolles

shared with habaneros (or laborers) the political goal of

Cuban independence.

In many Cuban landowning dynasties, the children

developed expensive tastes, moved to the city, and

squandered their inheritances because they had not learned

to make money (Interview 1/23/93; also Ely 97-99). But,

according to Fornes, at least some of the Iznagas managed to

maintain their fortunes by good management and by marrying

f»
'Thomas also points out that in addition to families
like the Iznagas who made their fortunes directly from the
slave trade, much of the manufacturing, banking, and
insurance industries of the European powers and their
colonies depended upon capital and labor extracted from the
slave trade.
 86

only within the upper class. In Fornes’ family, her great-

great grandmother, Irene Iznaga, married neither criollo nor

peninsulare, choosing instead a new immigrant of good social

standing, an Italian Dr. Bucci, who had come to Cuba to

study yellow fever.

From 1868-78, during the long-term unrest and famine

resulting from the unsuccessful Ten Years War for

independence from Spain, many upper-class families left

Cuba. When Fornes* grandmother was a young girl, her

extended family (her parents and grandparents, her mother’s

brother and their families) re-located to Ocala, Florida.

In order to disrupt their lives as little as possible, her

father rented a motel for the whole entourage including

slaves and cows (to supply 'Cuban’ milk for the children).

As the war dragged on, Fornes’ great-grandfather became an

American consul to Cuba, although he retained his Cuban

citizenship. The family moved to Baltimore when the older

boys were ready for college. Remarkably for the time,

Fornes’ grandmother and great aunt also went to college.

However, this tale of upper-class attainment was

complicated when Fornes’ grandmother fell in love with (and

vowed to marry) a man whose lack of ambition and disdain for

class standing made him unacceptable to her family.

Interestingly, Fornes believes that the family did not mind

that he was rumored to be the illegitimate son of a doctor,

who was in turn the illegitimate son of a priest, since he

was after all a doctor’s son and the sexual double standard

inherent in Cuban machismo made such birthlines commonplace.

Despite being cut off from the family socially and

completely disinherited, her grandmother eloped with her

lover and moved to Tampa where he confirmed the family's low

opinion of him by working (briefly) as a laborer rolling

cigars. Fortunately, in addition to a romantic heart,

Fornes’ grandmother had a good head for business, and so she

put her unusual education to use and opened a school.

Thus while Fornes’ grandmother lost her economic

capital (her dowry and inheritance) and much of her social

capital (the family’s good name and their business and

social connections), she 'capitalized’ upon the cultural and

intellectual assets that her inherited class standing

afforded her. Even more interestingly, however, she used

her teaching skills and business sense to reverse class-

bound Cuban gender codes by supporting her husband and

family. Although a life of leisure was common among upper-

class men in Cuba, upper, middle, and working-class women

were expected "to stay at home, exemplifying chastity and

subservience and to take the lead in domestic and religious

affairs"; only in lower class families were matriarchs

breadwinners and heads of household (Schroeder 119).

 88

Fornes’ grandmother later moved her family to Havana

where she opened a school that became very prestigious

because she taught English and spoke unaccented 'American

English.’ Her daughters, who were also fluent in English

(since, although Cuban-born, they were raised in the US),

taught in the school, while their father led a life of

leisure and contemplation.

Unlike his sisters, Carlos (Fornes1 father) attended

school very little (about 21 days total by his count). At

first his mother placed him in her own school, but since the

school was in their house, he would sit in class for a few

minutes and then wander upstairs to the living quarters or

outside into the yard. His mother tried sending him to

another school, but put his father in charge of taking him

there.

If it was a nice day, my grandfather would say,

"How can I take my boy to this dark school when
i t ’s so beautiful outside and so wonderful and he
wants to play in the park?" So he would take him
to the park. There were times when other people
would take him to school and he would go in the
door and then jump over the wall and come out
again. (Interview 1/23/93)

Instead of attending school, Carlos gained his

education by reading and discussion and by travelling and

observing life. After his family’s move to Cuba when he was

seven, Carlos spent two one-year periods living in the US

 89

with close family friends. He later joined the US army and

hitchhiked around California.

The Maternal Family

The maternal side of Fornes’ family presents quite a

different history. Carmen Collado (Fornes’ mother) was born

in 1891. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was

seven, and her father died when she was nine. Suddenly, at

17, her oldest brother had to care for a family of seven

orphaned children. When the two oldest boys went to New

Orleans to try to make a living, they placed Carmen and her

next oldest sister (age 11) in a convent. The convent,

which ran a school for both day and intern students,

accepted the Collado girls as charity cases. Before leaving

for theUS, Carmen’s brothers, hoping to ensure the

protection of their sisters, left instructions that the nuns

should not let them out under any circumstances.

So my poor mother, who loves to go out, was not

even allowed to look out the window until she was
nineteen . . . eleven years like in a prison. She
was very well-treated, she loved the nuns, but she
just couldn’t stand [being closed in.] , . . They
were not able to crush [my mother’s character].
She was mischievous, but the nuns loved her
because she had the same charm then that she has
now; she is mischievous and playful and people
like her for that and she can get away with a lot.
(Interview 1/23/93)

In Fornes’ description of her mother’s tactics for dealing

with well-intentioned incarceration, I recognize a plausible

source for Fornes' own charming, playful, and mischievous

 90

plays of the 60s in which humor, parody, and adaptations of

familiar music and character types allowed her "to get away

with" pointed social jatire.

Fornes* Immediate Family

After his second visit to the US, seventeen-year-old

Carlos Fornes returned home to find Carmen Collado teaching

in his mother's school. Although she fell in love with him

right away, he joined the US army for a tour of duty. But

two years later, he returned to Cuba and married Carmen.

Like his father, Carlos was "never a money-earner; he

was not interested in career" (Interview 1/23/93). Fornes

describes him as a "natural philosopher" who read

constantly, an autodidact who studied the works of

philosophers such as Krishnamurti and then talked to the

children about them. "He kept a notebook in which he wrote

maxims and his observations on life, on nature, on living,

on the world," an observational process very similar to

Fornes’ jottings of random "messages" (ideas, phrases, or

sentences that she overhears or that pop into her mind) and

her gathering of dramatic images from everyday life.®

Like their father, Fornes and her siblings seldom

attended public school; she went to Havana Escuela Publica

a
“For Fornes’ full account of this aspect of her writing
process, see Fornes, "I Write These Mesages That Come" (TDK
21.4:26-40).
No. 12 for grades 3-6 (Nasso 243). Even though she had

taught elementary school, Carmen agreed with Carlos’ low

estimation of public schools, and since Fornes was a child

during the Depression, there was no money for private

school. Once married, Carmen had stopped teaching in order

to raise their six children, and Carlos was often unemployed

or working as a part-time office-worker, so both parents

spent more time than usual with their children discussing

books and ideas (Harrington 33). Carlos in particular

talked with the children about life and politics. According

to Fornes, "he was like a teacher, only not official . . .

he had this need to read and discuss it further, rather than

just reading and keeping it in" (Interview 1/23/93).

Although neither parent pushed the children toward the arts,

Fornes’ father would hold family contests in which

we would all write a poem and then decide which

one was the best, or we would sing--all kinds of
things. He was very involved but I do n ’t think it
was so much that he was trying to educate us, I
think he just liked to share the things he was
interested in. (Interview)

In Fornes’ description of her father’s 'teaching,’ I find

striking similarities to her own philosophy about

didacticism and education, about dulce and utile, in socially-

conscious theatre.
 92

Political Context

In 1930, the year Fornes was born, Cuba was in the

midst of economic depression and political unrest.

Culminating three decades of politically-manipulated

elections, rampant corruption, opposition uprisings, and US

military intervention, Gerardo Machado was elected president

in 1924 based on his pledge of "honest government and a

single term of office" (Schroeder 44). In 1928, he

abolished the vice-presidency and gave himself an additional

six-year term (44). When the Depression hit Cuba, economic

hardship fueled political opposition which Machado answered

with repression, such as "organizing the porra (literally,

bludgeon), gangs of female thugs who assaulted and

intimidated the families of his opponents" (45). Armed

rebellion against Machado was quickly put down. The

University of Havana and high schools, which had reputedly

fostered leftist opposition, were closed. The "heroism of

students in fighting Machado's police" soon gave way to

counter-terrorism, an extension of political violence that

grew into widespread political gangsterism by the mid-40s

(45) .

In 1930, a general strike and threats of revolt within

the military ranks forced Machado to resign; the US again

intervened and set up a provisional government opposed by

the students. In 1933, army sergeant Fulgencio Batista

masterminded a well-organized revolt in which

"noncommissioned officers arrested their superiors and took

command of the military forces" (46). Batista, principally

an opportunist with some leftist leanings, appointed a

president favored by the students, Ramon Grau San Martin,

but the US (some of whose citizens owned 75% of the Cuban

sugar crop) refused to recognize Grau because of his

nationalist reforms, such as seizing the US-owned Cuban

Electric Company (46, 41). When Cuban businessmen and the

Communist party joined in opposition to Grau San Martin's

policies, Batista forced his resignation. Thus began

Batista’s first decade of political domination of Cuba (46).

In 1935 workers staged a "better organized labor

strike," but the Mendieta-Batista government was "neither

willing to negotiate with labor nor reluctant to suppress

the strike" (Louis Perez 276). Although the strike achieved

the fall of Mendieta’s puppet government, Batista and the

armed forces only tightened control "over every division of

public administration": martial law was declared, unions

were outlawed, and the university occupied (277).

Dissidents who did not flee into exile were arrested,

tortured, and killed (276).

A respite in revolutionary activity settled over

the island, due principally to exhaustion of the
passions and depletion in the ranks. . . .
Revolutionary groups had been battered and
crushed. (277)
 94

After this brutally efficient repression, Batista restored

social tranquility and developed a popular following among

the urban working class and the peasantry by appropriating

and implementing many of the key reformist objectives of

1923-33 (279).

Fornes’ immediate family was not involved in politics,

but they were directly affected by the Depression and

governmental instability. Although historically, political

gangsterism was widespread in Havana during the 40s, Fornes

doesn’t remember being afraid to walk in the streets as she

had been in the 30s. Even as a young child, she was aware

of "torture and shootings" (Interview 1/23/93). In

retrospect, Fornes reasons that violence was more apparent

in the 30s because "there was a strong underground against

Machado," but under Batista, who was actually "more of an

oppressor," dissidents (like Castro) were forced to leave

Cuba and openly declare war rather than working underground

within the country.

Family Life

In the early 30s, a paternal uncle allowed Fornes’

family to live on his orange farm and sell any oranges they

could, but the market was so bad that the fruit lay rotting

on the ground. Fornes’ mother recalls that she and the

children would go out with a knife and sit under a tree, cut

up oranges, and eat them for breakfast. Later (from around

 95

1934-1936), Fornes’ family of eight lived in the unused

servants’ quarters (a maid’s room, servant’s bathroom, and

tiny kitchen) of her aunt's house in Havana while her father

searched unsuccessfully for work. It may have been during

this time that Fornes’ mother sewed beach bags for piecework

wages.

We were OK. My aunt was better off because her

husband had his own business and though the
business was not doing well at a l l , when you had
your own business, you usually made enough to eat.
. . . We ate separately--navy beans for lunch and
dinner day after day after day. It was the
cheapest thing you could get. (Interview 1/23/93)

Once her father found part-time employment, like other

middle and working-class men with positions in the

burgeoning government bureaucracy,^ he made just enough

money for the family to move into their own very cheap

quarters. They rented two little rooms on top of an

apartment building exposed to the tropical sun, with a

kitchen and shower outside at the other end of the roof.

Like many low-income families they moved often; Fornes also

remembers living briefly on the ground floor of a building

with a beautiful ocean view, and then settling in another

As noted in fn 2, US companies and the Cuban

government were the main sources of employment for literate
men in Havana. Thirty years of one corrupt regime after
another had produced thousands of low-paying, unnecessary
‘political’ jobs; by the mid-40s, 11% of the working
population served in active public positions with 30,000
more receiving retirement pensions (Louis Perez 284).
 96

cheaper place around the corner until 1945 when she moved to

New York.

But Fornes’ family differed fundamentally from other

working-class or newly-impoverished middle-class families.

Even before the Depression, her parents had abandoned jobs

(teaching and soldiering) and eschewed careers, in favor of

living in their own way.

There was no such thing as Bohemian life in Havana

[at that time]. Neither my father nor my mother
thought they were living in any special style, but
they were. They were never concerned about
ordinary, everyday, normal things. . . . It
wasn’t that there was a special emphasis on the
arts, no not that at all. But the difference with
my parents--in my parents, iri my parents— was
their thinking, the way they thought about life.
(in Kelly, "Mainstream" A 8 )

They 'taught* their children at home, and her father cooked

every night, an 'unmanly’ avocation in Cuba, while her

mother was both very feminine and yet good at carpentry.

(Fornes still enjoys both carpentry and cooking herself).

Fornes claims that it wasn’t until her family saw the film

You C a n ’t Take It With You that "we could finally identify

ourselves" (Harrington 33).

The freedom and unconventionality of her family

provided a basis for Fornes’ life among the "privileged

poor," such as the many artists and non-mainstream

intellectuals in the US who attend concerts and theatre,

dine out and take overseas vacations, while living without

 97

health insurance, cars, savings, and without investing

themselves in stable 'careers’ {Rapp 7).^® Such people

differ from the members of structurally disadvantaged groups

by virtue of having greater cultural and educational capital

which could theoretically be converted into economic capital

by conforming to mainstream norms.

In addition, this atmosphere of freedom from societal

norms offered Fornes larger latitude for the kind of self-

creating play that, according to objects-relations theory,

creates confidence in one’s own vision and a willingness to

cross boundaries or break rules." Such rearing prepared

Fornes to trust and then expand her creative intuition, to

ride the crest of the 60s avant-garde in New York, and to

plunge into do-it-yourself alternative theatre. Like many

of the most accomplished women in Western history, Fornes'

early homelife countered patriarchal norms by providing her

with non-traditional rearing and schooling as well as

alternative models for interpersonal relations and pursuing

^Ellen Rapp offers numerous anecdotal examples of what

she means by the "privileged poor," who often have middle-
class backgrounds, college or art school educations, support
life styles seemingly beyond their means by making trade­
offs, and often work as "teachers, in publishing, in the
arts, in restaurants,” or attend graduate school.

^For a discussion of ob.ject-relations theories of self-

creating play, see Ruddick section of chapter two.
 98

a life’s work, or, in more theoretical language, by-

providing her with a non-mainstream "habitus."

Emigration to the US

Fornes’ mother had been to the States only once, to New

Orleans for the wedding of her oldest brother in 1939, but

she always wanted to move to the US depicted in Hollywood

movies. As Fornes related:

You know all those Ginger Rogers movies where she

comes to New York to live, and gets a job in the
theatre. . . . [My mother] did n ’t want to be in
theatre, but she liked the idea of being
independent and making her own money, buying her
own clothes, and going out. So she was always
trying to convince my father to come to live in
the United States.

But my father . . . had lived here [i.e., in the

US] throughout his life, his youth, enough to know
it very well. He just didn’t like it. . . . But
then finally my mother insisted so much that he
said that she could go— she and my sister and I
(who were the youngest) could go. [He said,] "If
in a year, you still like it, I ’ll follow you."
He was so sure she was going to hate it, but she
didn’t, she loved it. (Interview 1/23/93)

So Fornes’ mother started the slow process of obtaining

visas in wartime, but during the negotiations, Carlos Fornes

died of a heart attack at 53. In October 1945, their visas

were granted and Carmen and the girls moved to New York.

Their only contact was a distant relative who helped them

find a basement room in the South Bronx. As soon as they

could, they moved to Manhattan and rented a room from this

relative. A year later they found an apartment they could

 99

'buy’ on Columbus and 62nd Street (where Lincoln Center now

stands). As Fornes remembers it,

At that time, you had to buy apartments, because

there was a shortage of apartments like there is
now. You would pretend to be buying the
furniture. You would be buying something that
cost perhaps $200 at the time, but you had to pay
$1500 in small payments. But then you had an
apartment for which you paid very little 'rent.’
(Interview 1/23/93)

Although they had settled in upper Manhattan, Cuban

nuns secured Fornes a scholarship to St. Joseph’s Academy

High School on Washington Square (Harrington 33). True to

her father's inclinations, Fornes attended the school for

only six weeks; long enough to practice spoken English and

hang around the Village. A couple of years later, while

working at a series of unsatisfying factory and office jobs,

she went folk dancing at the New School for Social Research

in Lower Manhattan and "found her environment" (34). She

soon moved down to 16th Street and began studying abstract

painting with Hans Hofmann on 8th Street, eventually

following him to Provincetown. From ages 24 to 27, Fornes

lived in Europe, originally intending to paint; in 1957 she

returned to the US as a textile designer; and in 1960 she

began to write.

In 1945, the year that Fornes arrived in New York,

emigration from Cuba to the US was the highest it had been

since 1927, nearly twice that of the previous year, and

 100

roughly four times the average annual rate from 1940-43

(Schroeder 112). This dramatic rise may be attributed first

to increased civil violence and wartime privations and then

to the easing of visa restrictions with the armistice.

However, despite political unrest and economic hardship,

Fornes and her mother and sister were neither political

exiles nor wealthy emigrees "waiting for an opportune time

to return to the homeland" (Doran 3), as her paternal

grandmother's family had been during the Ten Years War

Having come to the US in a wave of primarily "economic"

11
rather than political migration, Fornes’ mother was more

accurately a 'gender refugee.’ Like other widowed or

"single women in search of new opportunities and a life­

style free of the cultural and family restrictions back

home" (Doran 3), Fornes’ mother came to the US to escape the

I?
“For useful distinctions between the terms "exile,"
"emigre," "refugee," "immigrant," and "migrant," see the
introduction to Doran et al., A Road Well Traveled: Three
Generations of Cuban American Women.
1*1

Silvia Pedraza-Bailey characterizes this period of

Cuban immigration as primarily "economic" (80, 94-5),
although a respondent to her findings points out that the
"world-system” approach to immigration studies usefully
blurs the labels "economic" and "political" by focusing on
"the consequences of capitalism for global inequality" and
examining 'Hispanic’ migration in the context of US and
Latin American "social, economic, and political processes"
(Lisandro Perez 99-100). In the case of Fornes and her
mother, the blurring of economics and politics includes a
necessary widening of these categories to include ethnicity
and gender issues.
 101

restrictive role assigned to women in traditional Cuban

society.

Cultural and Linguistic Roots: US/Cuban; Spanish/English

Although Fornes spent little time in public school,

emigrated at 15, and was reared in a family disengaged from

contemporary Cuban politics, like everyone in Cuba she is

familiar with the poems and essays of the Cuban national

hero, Jose Marti.^ Marti, a lawyer-cum-journalist,

organized and inspired the 1895 Cuban war of independence

and influenced the political attitudes of succeeding

generations of Cubans (Schroeder 37). Fornes seems to share

Marti’s basic political assumptions, which have been

described as "enlightened and humane liberal capitalism"

coupled with reforms such as land re-distribution and racial

equality (37). Like many educated Cubans, Marti was

impressed by the US form of government and standard of

living but he warned against the tendency to place "too much

emphasis on material wealth and on selfish interest"

(Suchlicki 77). From his exile in the US, Marti proclaimed,

The Cubans admire this nation, the greatest ever

built by freedom, but they distrust the evil
conditions that, like worms in the blood, have
begun their work of destruction in this mighty
Republic. . . . They cannot honestly believe that
excess individualism and reverence for wealth are
preparing the United States to be the typical
nation of liberty. (in Suchlicki 77)

^Martx is best known in the US as the lyricist for the

folk song, Guantanamero.
 10 2

Nearly a century later, Fornes’ play, And What of the

Night?, chronicles some of the disastrous consequences of

the economic and social policies that Marti had questioned.

Similar to Fornes’ defense of aesthetic standards for

socially-conscious work, Marti "went beyond the belief in

art for art’s sake, proclaiming 'the moral power and

transcendental purpose of beauty,’ [and reminding] that most

literature should carry a social and ethical message"

(Schroeder 237). This subtle mixture of dulce and utile make

Fornes' and Marti’s writings similarly difficult to

categorize. Like Fornes, whose plays have become

increasingly realistic while constantly pushing the

boundaries of socially-conscious theatre, Marti was both a

quintessential revolutionary romantic and a precursor of the

Latin American modernist movement (237).

However, Fornes does not share Marti’s position as a

Cuban political activist and exile. As a champion of

unfettered creativity, Fornes tends to avoid overtly

political groups because she believes that 'political’

criticism tends to devolve into a strict 'party line’

critique which in turn produces reductive (or even

prescriptive) analyses of subtly-nuanced artistic

presentations. She has explained her reluctance to join

political groups by relating the following anecdote:

 103

I remember shortly after the Castro takeover [in

1959] there was a group of Cuban exile artists.
They wanted me to go to meetings, to have
readings, and they said, "It’s not political." So
I went. Then one day they passed an anti-Castro
manifesto around that we were supposed to sign.
It talked about the Red monster and the language
was extreme. I said, "No, I don’t want to sign."
They were indignant and asked, "Are you in favor
of Castro?" I said, "Not really. I ’m not in
favor of Castro but I ’m not against him either. I
d o n ’t know enough." And they said, "If you’re not
against him, yo u ’re for him." (in Savran 68)

As a naturalized US citizen since 1951 who had spent several

years prior to Castro’s takeover in Europe; as a child of

iconoclastic, apolitical parents growing up amidst the

corruption and political cynicism inherent in Cuban politics

of the 1930s and 40s; and as a new playwright single-

mindedly pursuing her craft— Fornes was not interested in

closely following Cuban politics.

However, Fornes has noted that her Cuban cultural

heritage still influences her aesthetic:

In many ways I still think like a Cuban, or maybe

just a Latin, or maybe like a European. In 1945
Cuba was much closer to Europe than to the United
States--in the sense of values, the order of
things, what you were and were not allowed to do.
I have a strong accent, and I think it's because
there’s a part of me I d o n ’t want to eradicate.
(New Ground 4}

Fornes would attribute the charm that graces her early

satires, and the delicacy and clarity with which she eschews

sensationalism and vulgarity in her more recent exposes of

sexual and social abuse to the vestiges of this "Old World"

 104

sensibility. Although she cites her accented English as

evidence of a retained Cuban sensibility, Fornes thinks and

writes, especially complex ideas, in English. As she

remarks:

I came here when I was 15 and that is precisely

the time you begin to become your own person, when
you are no longer a child. . . . You start
thinking thoughts that you can't share with your
family. So when I started thinking independently
— or rather, when my thinking connected to society
rather than home--it all happened in English. If
I want to talk about simple things, I can do it
equally well in Spanish or English. When I start
talking about thoughts, if I speak Spanish, I have
to translate all the time. (in Savran 63)

Not surprisingly then, Fornes has written relatively few

plays in Spanish (The Widow and Cap-a-Pie) and infrequently

creates specifically Latin characters.^ She seldom

incorporates Spanish words in her plays and, in fact, has

made more extensive use of Hungarian (The Danube) and German

(Springtime). She has adapted Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding,

Virgilio Pinera’s Cold Ai r , and Calderon’s Life is a Dream,

but also works by Ibsen and Chekhov. Fornes is interested

The exceptions are Sarita and, to a lesser extent, The

Conduct of Life. I qualify this assertion with the word
"specifically" because, given the opportunity to work with
an all-Latina/o cast (at San Diego Repertory Theatre in
1990), Fornes directed a 'Spanish' version of Abingdon
Square without translating the English text. Marranca, who
had seen the 1987 production at the The American Place in
New York, describes this re-visioning of the play as a
"counter-reformation," a "more Catholic" play in which
"Fornes is writing about sin, penance, forgiveness, the
power of love" (Marranca, "Grace" 24).
 105

in language differences--not so much the broad contrasts

between, for example, English and Spanish, but rather the

more specific, subtler disparities in language use and

linguistic authority conditioned by the interactions of

class, education, gender, ethnicity, and national and

international politics, as evidenced in her later plays.**®

Fornes’ work is also marked by what she perceives as

her limited English vocabulary. For example, she accounts

for the terse, poetic quality of her distinctive English

with a practical explanation:

It may be that because my knowledge of the

language is limited, I always have to be sure of
what I ’m saying because I have nothing else. I
can’t say, "I’ll put a fancy phrase in here and
cover up," because I don't know how to write a
fancy phrase. So I have to think, What does the
character want to say? What is the reality of
what’s happened? I think more of painting, of a
character painting a picture, getting a picture
clear. (in Savran 64)

In another context, Fornes explained that since she reads

relatively little, she gathers information and tests ideas

by talking, a proclivity that she has found to be unusual in

the US: "It's a very Spanish thing. We d o n ’t do our

thinking reading. We do our thinking talking" (Harrington

33). It was in part this penchant for argument and

discussion rather than bookish meditation that led her to

^Examples include Julia’s prayers in Fefu, Olimpia’s

housework monologue in Conduct. and Helena’s and Ra y ’s
verbal power plays in Night.
 106

abandon early attempts at short story writing in favor of

the more congenial conversational form of drama (34).

As a consequence of her particular multilingual

experience (as a US-Cuban who spent three formative years in

Europe), Fornes produces a subtle kind of linguistic

metissage, or braiding of languages, not at the level of

lexicon but rather at the deeper level of syntax, imagery,

values, and points of view.^ Fornes was alerted to the

peculiarity of her 'Spanish’ way of writing English by an

actor who complained about the difficulty of memorizing her

speeches for The Conduct of Life. Fornes realized that,

In English, you have short sentences that add up

to a thought. In Spanish, many sentences are
linked, so you could have a whole paragraph that
is one sentence, a lot of commas and one period.
I was doing that in English. (in Cummings 56)

Reflecting upon this creolization and revitalization of her

adopted language, Fornes concludes "that i t ’s even more

important than writing in Spanish and writing in English:

what you bring from one language into the other” (56).

Fornes does not foreground her US-Cuban positionality

by always writing about Latina/o subjects or including

17
For an unusually explicit example that revolves around
Cuban expressions and concepts, see the amusing dialogue
between Sarita and Mark, excerpted in the Sarita section of
chapter six. For a more portentous example, note Fornes’
sensitive outsider’s view of the disturbing relationship
between Paul and Eve (and secondarily, between the US and
'second world’ countries, such as Hungary), symbolized and
exemplified by excerpts of language instruction tapes.
 107

Spanish words. Nonetheless, she acknowledges and values the

distinctly Latina/o style of drama that emerges from her

workshops--clear-sighted realism about social conditions and

interpersonal relations combined with a magical-realist’s

|Q
respect for psychic and mystical events. As she notes:

Although I see a lot of interesting writing when I

do workshops in other places, I do find that the
writing coming out of the INTAR workshop is
unique. There's no doubt that it is Hispanic,
that it is different, and that it is interesting.
It is important [for] replenish[ing] the American
theatre. (New Ground 48)

Religious roots: Catholicism and Santeria

Despite a secularization of Cuban government and

education following the 1895 war of independence and "the

establishment and growth of Protestant missions," Roman

Catholicism remained "the dominant religious influence,

although its political outlook changed from conservatism in

the 1920s to reformism in the 1940s" (Schroeder 124).

Notwithstanding an influx of Protestant churches as well as

Ifl
l0The magical realist respect for others’ belief systems
and the acceptance of psychic and supernatural events as
part of everyday reality is usually attributed to a
synthesis of Native American and European worldviews
(Chanady 19-22); but in the case of Cuba, where the Native
population was decimated early while elements of African
(particularly Yoruba) culture survived, magical realism is
based upon a synthesis of African and European perspectives.
Theatrical examples from Fornes’ workshops include the
magical realist conclusion to Milcha Sanchez-Scott’s
Roosters, and depictions of Catholic and Santeria practices
in Fornes’ Sarita. Eduardo Machado’s Floating Islands
trilogy, Migdalia Cruz’ Miriam’s Flowers, and Cherrie
Moraga’s The Shadow of a M an.
 108

a few Jewish synagogues and two Taoist temples, the second

most-recognized religion in Cuba is Santeria, a set of

religious practices resulting from enslaved Yorubas’

preservation of their native religion through syncretizing

(or equating) the African orishas (ancestor/deities) with

the Catholic saints of their Spanish captors (124-6).

Nearly all modern-day practitioners of Santeria

consider themselves Catholics, but since the fall of

Spanish-Catholic rule in 1898, there seems to have been a

shift in the focus of Santeria rituals--away from

syncretized Catholic elements (such as "the use of

chromolithograph and plaster images, candles, holy water,

and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary") and

towards the "distinctive features of African religion" (such

as the sacred stones in which the power of the orishas

resides, the blood of sacrifical animals which "feeds" the

saints, and the herbs which cleanse and prepare individuals

for contact with the divine) (Bascom 114-116). Until the

Castro takeover, Santeria was still "widely practiced,

particularly among the poorer elements of the population,

black and white, but also among the white upper class" and

then brought by emigrating santera/os (religious leaders/

priests) to US cities such as Miami and New York (Suchlicki

140). Even Cubans who do not belong to an "organized cult-

group may be frightened at apparent indications of occult

 109

malice: for example, white chicken feathers unaccountably

discovered in the house . . . [and seek the] countermagic

obtainable from a santero" (Schroeder 127-8).

Although Fornes makes direct and indirect references to

both Catholic and Santeria practices and perspectives in

some of her plays (e.g., Abingdon Square, Sarita, Conduct)

her exposure to both Roman Catholicism and Santeria was more

cultural than truly religious; she is not a practitioner of

either religious system (Interview 1/23/93). Fornes reports

that:

my mother was raised by the nuns [and] thinks she

is a very devout Catholic, but when we were
little, we would go to church, always arrive late
and come in the side door. When mass was over, we
would exit through the main door to meet my uncle
and his wife, because we were invited to lunch at
their house. . . . We knew we weren't going to
make mass, that w e ’d be late, but we knew that we
were going to make lunch. My mother never thought
that this meant that she was any less religious
and devout. (Interview)

Fornes has "never felt right about" making her first

Confession and first Holy Communion without really

understanding either the rituals or their intended spiritual

effects because her mother rushed them into Catechism class

only a few weeks before the ceremonies. Unfortunately, she

picked up just enough doctrine that "when I took Communion I

felt I was committing a mortal sin and was going to go to

hell, because I hadn’t really confessed properly"

{Interview)
 110

Fornes says that she knew only what every Cuban knows

about Santeria--that "it exists and that they call Santa

Barbara Chango, and they use Catholic saints to portray

their African gods" (Interview). In discussing her use of

Santeria rituals, songs, and musical forms in Sarita (in

collaboration with US-Cuban composer Leon Odenz^“), she

pointed out that "Cuban music is very Afro; all of Cuban

music has a strong drum beat" (Interview). This has been

true at least since the 1930s when "an Afro-Cuban tradition

was 'rediscovered’ by composers, writers, painters, and

sculptors and was incorporated into modern forms" (Schroeder

233 ). But in Sarita (her first play to come out of her

INTAR Hispanic writing workshops), Fornes includes a scene

that probes both the acceptance and the ambivalence that

different Cubans feel for this syncretized religion; 'good'

Catholic women are practicing Santeria despite the grumbling

protests of an older US-Cuban man, who nonetheless 'gives

i n ’ and offers his prayers and food to the Virgin/Oshun as

well. More importantly for this chapter, I posit that

Fornes’ reverence for "these messages (and images) that

come" and her strategy of questioning and/or overturning

^Odenz labelled one of his songs for Sarita "nanigo,"

referring to the musical style of the all-male Abakua Afro-
Cuban sect "whose beliefs originated among the Efik of
eastern Nigeria" (Schroeder 125; Thomas 521-22).
 Ill

prevailing theoretical/political assumptions derive in part

from the Yoruba/Santeria influences in Cuban and US-Cuban

culture.

Fornes as a Bard/Jester and Child of Eleggua

As discussed in the introduction, Fornes cannot be

easily pigeonholed as either a political or an aesthetic

playwright. In keeping with her ambiguous and multiple

cultural, linguistic, and religious experiences, she

occupies a usefully liminal {or bridging) position from

which she can satisfy an aesthetic hunger for complex,

challenging work while still speaking to heterogeneous

audiences about controversial social issues. In order to

illuminate Fornes’ provocative braiding of aesthetics and

politics, in the remainder of this chapter I will compare

Fornes’ statements and dramaturgical methods with, on the

one hand, Paul Heinrich’s conception of the "bardic

playwright," and, on the other, with the attributes of

Eleggua, the "trickster" diety who carries messages

concerning one’s fate or destiny between humans and the

divine powers.

Although many of Fornes’ plays emphasize aesthetic

understanding or impact over didactic clarity, she has not

chosen dulce over utile, but rather aesthetics in the service

of, or in tandem with, artistic 'teaching.' In her social

satires of the 60s, Fornes uses off-beat humor, engaging

music, and zany energy to convey her wide-ranging cultural

criticisms, and in her later work, she avoids spelling out

the meanings of her complex scenarios because she believes

that a serious political play must be "very subtle [so that]

the person viewing it or reading it can come to their own

understanding" (Interview 1/23/93). Fornes believes that

art should guide or "educate in a very, very delicate and

profound way" and that an artist guides best "by forgetting

to be a guide, by discovering" and illuminating the images

and ideas that appear spontaneously in their work (Talk/UT-

Austin 10). She discusses two ways in which her art aims to

teach: aesthetically, by inspiring "a charge of

understanding, [a new awareness of] some knowledge you have

in your heart" (Talk/UT-Austin 10); or more didactically,

"by example or by demonstration" (Savran 57). But in

keeping with her belief in a complex, paradoxical reality,

Fornes usually offers negative demonstrations, flawed

protagonists, and cautionary tales rather than heroic or

even positive models. In response to occasional criticism

for allowing her 'underdogs’ to succumb, Fornes responds,

"The work that has most inspired me to action or to freedom

is not work that's saying, "Look, I ’m going to show you how

you too can [make] it" (56), but rather the stories of

characters, who "no matter how terrible things are" struggle

to come to consciousness of their conditions, "find [their]

 113

vitality, and move on" (55). It is within this context that

one may best understand Fornes’ distinction between

theatrical art, which may "reveal" what currently exists,

without "tell[ing] what to do about it," and politics, whose

function is "to indicate what the next step should be" (in

Mael 189).

In order to free socially responsible playwrights from

judgments based on a rigid divide between dulce and utile, and

between art and purpose, Heinrich seeks new standards for

evaluating activist (in his case, Christian) dramatists.

From within his own European and (pre)-Christian traditions,

Heinrich posits that the ancient bards may be seen as

artist/activists who combined aesthetic practice with

teaching and guidance. According to Heinrich, bards served

as oral historians and mythmakers, as seers and advisors,

and as intermediaries between communities and the numinous,

"interpreting and revealing to society what was otherwise

hidden and incomprehensible" (6). As prophets, bards were

known for their inspired teaching and "social awareness of

oppression and injustice” (3). Viewing Fornes as a bard

4U"Bard" is the English term for the poet/prophet/seer/

historians in pre-Christian oral societies; however,
Heinrich bases his concept of the bardic dramatist on the
poet-prophets found in many cultures; such as the Anglo-
Saxon scop, the Icelandic thulr, the Slavic skomorokh, the
Hebrew ro-eh and nav’i, the Arabic kahin and sha-ir, and the
Italian giullare.
 114

would release her from "the trap of individualism and self-

expression as the sole or ultimate meaning of the artist” as

well as from "imprisonment as a pawn of the community,

compelled to pander to the lowest common denominator of

concern or artistic taste" (Heinrich 9-10).

According to Heinrich’s model, bardic dramatists see

themselves as "servants of the work seeking to express

itself," in contrast to political dramatists who tend to

have a "relatively clear idea of what needs to be 'said’

before pen hits paper" (2). Fornes describes herself as a

servant or employee of "the creative system"; her job is to

receive "these messages that come" ("Creative Danger" 15;

"Messages" 26). She translates her perceptions of social

relations into dramatic form for public consideration and

pinpoints suppressed contradictions underlying doxa

(communal 'common’ sense). She neither subscribes to any

organized system of belief nor does she arrogate to herself

the role of genius or chosen one. However, Fornes’ personal

visions bear the marks of her social positions--woman,

avant-garde playwright, Latina, immigrant, "privileged poor"

bohemian--and thus her imagistic insights resonate for many

differently positioned audience members, while confounding

the boundaries set by any doctrine.

For heuristic purposes, Heinrich distinguishes four

primary (and often intermixed) bardic roles: seer,

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historian, poet, and judge (10). Considering Fornes in each

of these roles sheds new light on her mysterious artistic

and political practice. Fornes' emphasis on revelation.

rather than political action, marks her as a seer: one who

divines the significance in unnoticed or enigmatic things.

As in Heinrich's model, she does not strive for "didactic

mastery" over her visions, either in content or form, but is

often "as amazed as [the] audience" at the outcomes of her

creative process (Heinrich 2). Fornes’ intense close-ups of

human interaction magnify and specify broad theoretical

insights, but like a priestess at an oracle, she divulges

and interprets the signs so that others may decide how to

act. For example, in Hunger (the last portion of Night),

Fornes stages her observations of American homelessness.

Images of homelessness are potentially available for anyone

to see, but Fornes’ dramatic framing gives them focus and

significance and places these scenes before people who could

easily avoid seeing. She neither indicates solutions nor

provides cathartic closure but instead pares away softening

or muffling elements. She intends the resulting images to

sear through audience complacency and to irritate their

consciences after they leave the theatre.

Bards function as historians by locating "the community

in a meaningful context of time and place," and by sharing

their "extensive knowledge of geography and history"

 116

(Heinrich 7). Though she seldom presents history as such, I

would argue that Fornes is a consummate historian of human

relations and a geographer of human souls, of love and lust,

of power and greed and fantasy and carnality. Fornes

accomplished her "long and arduous training" (Heinrich 5)

through experimentation with forms and styles during the 60s

and 70s, the more mature fruits of which began to appear

with Fefu and have continued through Night. She hands down

her legacy through her teaching at INTAR and in workshops

around the country.

Her role as historian is mixed with and superceded by

her function as a poet of the theatre: one who stands "in

the place of the individual, giving voice to the praise and

laments of the human spirit" (7). As a poet, Fornes works

"most exclusively within traditional aesthetic [rather than

political] categories, [pursuing] the most personal and

elusive, the most explorative art of the [bardic] office"

(12). She uses experimental or traditional forms as needed;

she does not self-censor plotlines about romance, obsessive

lust, women using men, or the hapless destinies of 'good’

characters. She assiduously avoids the sort of political or

evangelical dramaturgy which tends "to harden into

doctrinaire platitude" (Heinrich 12). Fornes escapes the

solipcism of many Romantic or Modernist poets by accepting

the bardic dramatist’s "responsibilty to the community [or

 117

society] as custodian of its treasures" (10). Perhaps her

awareness of her role as medium or intermediary encourages

her to risk telling audiences "the secrets of their own

heart" and "to speak out, to a make a clean breast" (10).

In plays such as Fefu, Conduct, and Night. she performs the

"difficult, ugly" work of exploring the "monsters" within

and among us, probing the psyches of torturers and victims

in order that we may understand how people currently exist

(in Savran 63).

Fornes’ proclivity for spotlighting the suppressed

knowledge that undermines stereotypes and doctrines and for

disentangling the compressed "yes and no" of reality shows

her to be a quintessential judge/jester. According to

Heinrich, judges mediate "between individuals locked in

conflict and mutual incomprehension" (Heinrich 7). On the

surface, Fornes seems to stir up controversy but on a deeper

level, we can see that by exposing the preconceptions and

simplifications that opposing sides hold of each other, she

opens up a space for real negotiation and the possibility of

coalition and social change. She does not align herself

with either activists or aestheticians, nor does she adopt

the doctrine of any particular tendency of feminism, because

her mission is to reveal the paradoxes in every position, to

clarify our vision of complicated realities. She counters

the moves of the majority, drawing attention to the issues

 118

and perspectives necessarily but dangerously suppressed to

achieve consensus.

As a social ".judge," Fornes most often works as a

satirist or jester, "directing [her] spotlight both within

the community and without" (Heinrich 12). In her early

work, addressed primarily to bohemian Village audiences,

Fornes satirized arts and media presentations of social

relations and offered a comic alternative to the anger and

bitterness she perceived in much avant-garde work (Shepard

32). She willingly embraced the risky, privileged role of

jester within "the revolutionary group" because she feared

that something was missing: "the positive things of

revolution. They know who is the enemy and what to be

against. I think they miss a sense of compassion and

tenderness" (in Shepard 32). In her later work, Fornes

plays the wise fool, using identification and revelation to

remind us that life is more complex than any single theory

can grasp, and that our experiences exceed our ability to

express them with language. Therefore, I would like to

suggest that Fornes’ 'feminist strategy’ is not so much

gestic, characterizing the "entire structure of society"

(Brecht, in Dolan 108), as jestic: questioning assumptions,

overturning social hierarchies, and making visible the

inherent oppositions elided by our pictures of reality.

 119

Given her US-Cuban ethnicity, it is highly unlikely

that Fornes’ dramaturgical style was affected solely by

European or Western influences. As evidenced by Sarita and

The Conduct of Life as well as by her continuing work with

INTAR’s Hispanic Writers-in-Residence program, Fornes is

still in touch with Cuban, Afro-Cuban, and Latin American

culture and aesthetics. Thus, it is probable that Fornes’

reverence for 'received’ messages and images, and her jestic

'political’ tactics are also related to a Yoruba/Santeria

worldview.

Santeria has adapted from its Yoruba roots various

divination systems through which devotees may address the

orishas (deities or forces of nature) in order to ask for

protection and guidance, and to give thanks and praise

(Gonzalez-Wippler, Religion 6). Through this ritualized

questioning, one learns what offerings must be made in order

to maximize one’s inborn ashe, the life-force that created

the universe, the dynamism of which "everything is made" and

through which "everything is possible" (5). Divination is

also used to ascertain each devotee’s personal orisha.

From the moment he learns the name of his orisha,

the practitioner of Santeria petitions that
particular deity [or 'guardian’] constantly and
assiduously for help and guidance in his life. He
considers himself the child of that orisha. (13)

Practitioners of Santeria believe that "every human being

has a ruling orisha, even if that person never learns his

 120

[or her] orisha’s name or practices Santeria" (228).^

According to Migene Gonzalez-Whippier,

it is not difficult to discern the identity of an

individual’s orisha . . . [because] the
individual’s character and personal traits . . .
are invariably similar, in some greater or lesser
degree, to those of his ruling orisha. (228)

Within Santeria then, a bard/jester such as Fornes would be

associated with Eleggua (or the Yoruba Eshu), "the orisha of

the crossroads" who "controls change and destiny" by

carrying messages between humans and the divine (4). Like

Fornes, Eleggua is described as "risque, fun-loving,

playful, outrageous, tricky, smart, unfathomable, and

variable" (226), "a figure of intense activity, of contrasts

and reversals, and apparent contradictions" (Pemberton 25),

and associated with ambiguity, messages, fate, justice, and

the unexpected (Gonzalez-Whippier, Religion 73). Although

she has neither studied nor practiced the "way of the

saints," Fornes includes a Santeria scene in Sarita. a

character in Night just happens to be carrying a statue of

San Martin de Porres (who is syncretized with Eleggua), and

01
After describing Beethoven as a child of Chango
(associated with storms, a fiery, tempestuous nature, and
the number 6), Gonzalez-Whippier designates Mozart "with his
typically playful and childish personality" as a child of
Eleggua and "the exquisite and romantic Chopin . . . [as]
undoubtedly the child of Oshun" (228). In Cuban lore,
Batista and Machado are "sons" of Chango, while Castro is
reputedly a "son" of Eleggua, a formidable warrior as well
as trickster (69).
 121

i-n E^fu, the intervention of Julia’s "guardians" is similar

to the protection of the orishas.

Fornes has devised a receptive writing process akin to

the methods of Eleggua, who "transmits telepathic messages

from one person to another" or from the subconscious to the

conscious level within an individual in order to inform and

thus guide their future actions (Gonzalez-Whippier,

Experience 169-170). Both Eleggua and Fornes present the

resulting new information or ways of thinking through

dramatic demonstrations and cautionary tales intended to

influence social behavior and redirect energy along

constructive channels (72). Like the children of Eleggua

and his African counterpart, Elegbara (which Femi Euba

defines as "tough or problematic encounter"), Fornes is

concerned with the fate of humans struggling against

psychic, social, and political obstacles (Euba 46). In her

early satires, she displays her concern trickster-fashion by

overturning the social order and revealing that randomness

and unpredictability are as fundamental to life as destiny

and order (Murphy 133). In her later plays, she works as an

"agent provocateur' (Pemberton 26), and as "a powerful,

restless observer of the human condition" (Murphy 46) who

tests the boundaries between equality and hierarchy, public

and private, personal and political. As a cultural and

linguistic metisse, Fornes parallels Eleggua’s position as

 122

"an outsider betwixt and between worlds," from which she

disrupts her audience's presumptions about the 'natural

order’ of things (Murphy 133). Such "trickery must not be

seen simply as deceit: it is a power" and holds the

potential to transform social relations and their

representations (Pemberton 26).

Eshu is associated with liminal or marginal places--

markets, the town gates, compound entrances, and crossroads

--places where the unexpected can occur and fortunes can be

reversed (Pemberton 25). Fornes’ theatre functions

similarly to the Yoruba marketplace "as a metaphor for the

welter and diversity of forces for good and ill" and for

"change and transformation that pervade human experience"

(25). Both places heighten one’s "awareness of the

unexpected, of the accidental, and of fate"--the purview of

Eshu (25). Partaking of both Santerla and feminist theory,

Fornes underscores the simultaneous marginality and

centrality of houses and domestic activity in the

maintenance of and/or change in individual destinies, social

formations, and political organization. As in Santerla,

Fornes’ characters come to consciousness of individual and

group destinies, not in the 'public sphere’ but in the

kitchens, bedrooms, and dining rooms of homes, places

usually relegated to the supposedly apolitical 'private

sphere.’
 123

Fornes’ hybridity suits her to the Eshu functions of

messenger and mediator between "the demonic and the

creative," good and evil, wisdom and power, humankind and

the Gods (Pemberton 27), and, in her particular case,

between Western rationality and magical realist

'irrationality.’ In comparing Eshu to the Greek magician

and trickster Hermes, John Pemberton quotes Norman 0.

Brown’s analysis of the divine messenger’s office:

"We think of the herald," Brown writes, "as a sort

of town crier— a job requiring little skill, with
nothing mysterious, magical, or 'tricksterish’
about it . . . [But] the heralds are called
'public workers,’ a term which is applied also to
seers, healers, woodworkers, and bards, and which
connotes a socially useful and respected craft.
The special knowledge they possess is emphasized
in a series of stock epithets meaning 'wise’ or
'knowing.' . . . They are functionaries in sacred
ceremonies, such as sacrifices and the ritual of
divination by lottery." (27)

Fornes gains her peculiar power and 'tricksterish’

changeability by fulfilling the duties of "public worker”

(bard/jester) without owing allegiance to any established

regime or set of doctrines, either religious or political.

Her uncanny social observations and disruptive/disturbing

theatrical images seem to spring from nowhere. However, her

perspective is conditioned by her bohemian upbringing, her

less-than-assimilated view of US life, her 'feminist/

 124

womanist’ adaptations of the Eurocentric avant-garde,^ and

her peculiar 'translation’ of the "uniquely mestizo

expression in [Cuban] literature, art, philosophy, and

music" (Schroeder 101).

00
By 'womanist,’ I refer to Patricia McFadden’s
explanation that

feminism as perceived by African women is not

defined in terms of man-hating . . . [but rather]
in the context of national liberation . . . By
feminism, African women (and Third World women
generally) mean the right to life as a free woman
and as a complete social being. (in Davis & Fido
xi i i )
 CHAPTER FOUR

EARLY PLAYS

Productions, Experimentation, "Learning the Ropes"

I just got this obsessive idea, as if you

have a nightmare . • . Only it was not a
nightmare. It was an obsession that took the
form of a play and I felt I had to write it.

Fornes - in Cummings, Yale Theatre

Maria Irene Fornes . . . helped clear a way

through the claustrophobic landscape of
Broadway vapidity and Off-Broadway ponderous
symbolism by making theatre that was fresh,
adventurous, casual, fantastic, perceptive,
and musical.

Phillip Lopate - New York Herald

Until age 30, Fornes was a student of 'life' and the

visual arts. But after writing her first play in 1960, she

focused on the crafts of theatre production and soon became

an active, eclectic member of the 60s avant-garde, working

with groups ranging from the Method-based Actor’s Studio to

the wildly experimental Judson Poets.

As a new playwright and avid student of theatrical

practice, Fornes experimented with old and new dramatic and

125
performative styles, assimilating elements from such models

as Beckett, Ionesco, and Genet to her already-developed

aesthetic sensibility. While still 'learning the ropes,’

she made significant contributions to teaching and producing

as well as to playwriting, winning two Obies as well a

numerous fellowships and grants (see appendix I). Although

she had only begun writing in 1960, by 1965 she was teaching

playwriting at the Teachers and Writers Collaborative in New

York and at drama festivals and workshops (Kuhn 158). As

soon as she won the right to direct her own new plays, she

incorporated directing into her writing process. After

opportunities to produce new plays began to dry up in New

York in the late 60s, Fornes ran a playwrights’ producing

organization.

In her early plays (1963-68), Fornes experimented with

form and genre, and playfully parodied popular entertainment

and social conventions. Yet she also infused these

otherwise rather generalized satires with a surprising

dramaturgical 'reality': closely observed and denaturalized

representations of small everyday things (objects, dialogue,

actions) and straightforward presentations (almost direct

transmission) of dreams, desire, and fantasy. Even in these

early works, amidst zany situations and campy musical

numbers, Fornes threaded uncanny characterizations of the

injustices and inanities that we tend to naturalize,

 127

rationalize, or turn into innocuous statistics. Fornes

would insist that her quirky presentations are less

abstractions than theatrical explorations of the

"surrealism" of how other people, those "outside our circle

of friends," choose {or are forced) to conduct their lives

(in Marx 8).

In this chapter I chronicle Fornes’ genesis as a

playwright and analyze her published plays from the 60s. I

pay special attention to plays such as The Successful Life

of 3 and Promenade which are often omitted from feminist

reviews of her work because they contain baffling or

possibly sexist images and are difficult to categorize. I

hope to shed light on these early plays by re-placing them

into the context of Fornes’ development as a playwright and

of the venues in which they were created and/or produced.

Although Fornes functions as a bard/jester throughout her

oeuvre by staging contradictions and unsettling assumptions,

in these early plays she is clearly working as a jester/

satirist, pointing up society’s ills and illogic but

refraining from overt recommendations. {In her later work,

she becomes increasingly the jester/judge, warning her

audiences of the interwoven consequences of personal and

social relations.)

* * *
 128

From 1954-1957, Fornes lived in Europe. Originally

intending to paint in an isolated Spanish fishing village,

she moved to Paris after less than a week and from there

made short excursions throughout Europe (Harrington 34).

Although Fornes continued to work at painting, she recalls:

my painting had never really reached a personal

depth for me. Painting, I always had to force
myself to work. I never found that place where
you’re touching on something vital to your own
survival, to your own life. (in Cummings 52)

However, while living in Paris, she chanced to see the

original 1954 Roger Blin production of Waiting for Godot.

She found the play to be "the most powerful thing of all—

not only in theater but in painting, film, everything!" (in

Betsko 155). Even though she "didn’t understand enough

French to know what was being said, [she] understood the

world, the sphere in which it took place. [She] got the

rhythm" (Harrington 34). Seeing the Parisian production of

Endgame confirmed Beckett as a model for her:

Imagine a writer whose theatricality is so amazing

and so important that you could see a play of his,
not understand one word, and be shook up. When I
left the theater I felt that my life was changed,
that I was seeing everything with a different
clarity. (in Cummings 52)

However, she did not immediately begin writing but worked as

a textile designer upon her return to New York in 1957.

In the winter of 1957-58, she saw an adaptation of

James Joyce's Ulysses in Nighttown (directed by Burgess

Meredith with Zero Mostel), which most impressed her because

it was staged in a place on West Houston "not ordinarily

used as a theatre" (in Savran 55). To this day, Fornes’

playwriting and directing reveal her painterly sensitivity

to the deployment of space; she often instructs actors to

hit precise blocking marks at key moments (although

sometimes such directions also allude to and gently parody

familiar movie shots). For example, in Night. she directed

an actor to finish his fall on a precise mark so that when

his scene partner kneels to comfort him, they will be framed

by a romantic "special" (light). But whether film-based or

not, Fornes stages every scene with the care of a designer;

she attends to the symbolic and psychological effects of

positioning, color, and visual weight. Designing images and

directing actors as elements of design are as integral to

her creative process as scripting dialogue.

The formative play-going experiences mentioned above

eased Fornes’ transition from painting to writing by showing

her the communicative power of visual and environmental

aspects in theatre and the immense potential for creating

striking effects by experimenting with these elements.

Although direct references to her art study occasionally

appear in her work, such as the turbulent sky backdrop for

Nadine (1989) inspired by a Hofmann painting, Fornes’

artistic background is more consistently evident in

 130

memorable theatrical images intended to arrest audience

attention, even if they don’t fully understand the import or

allusions of the accompanying text.

Fornes actually began writing in 1960 with a challenge

to then-roommate Susan Sontag, "How silly! If we want to

write, why not sit down and write?" And so they did. They

continued to write regularly, and for about six months,

Fornes and Sontag read and criticized work with a group of

friends (Harrington 34). Although influences between

lifelong associates are difficult to determine, and in this

case we know that Fornes reads very little while Sontag has

kept abreast of Fornes* new work, in the 60s Fornes and

Sontag shared an interest in camp, parody, and popular

culture.^

After struggling as a painter and then trying her hand

at short stories, Fornes found in playwriting a suitable

outlet for her imagistic, conversational creativity

(Harrington 34). Her first finished play, The Widow (1961),

was based on her translation of letters "written to my

great-grandfather from a cousin who lived in Spain" (in

^Fornes says of her early relationship with Sontag:

We exchanged ideas compulsively. I wasn’t a

reader, and culture isn’t something about which
you can say, okay, I ’m going to get some now. So
I couldn’t go to her, she had to come to me. We
were always talking. (in Harrington 34)
 131

Betsko 155). And though this play was produced in New York,

broadcast in Mexico, and won two writing awards, Fornes was

re-working it in 1966 and did not include it in her first

published anthology, Promenade and Other Plays (1971).

Fornes made her avant-garde playwriting debut in 1963

with Tango Palace (originally There! You Died), which

premiered at the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop under the

direction of Herb Blau. She had become pleasurably obsessed

with the writing of Tango Palace:

It came out of nowhere— almost like a dream

. . . . When the idea came to me I stayed home
for 20 days and only left the house to go buy
something to eat . . . . I slept with the
typewriter next to me. (in Harrington 34)

Writing it was the most incredible experience. A

door was opened which was a door to paradise. (in
Savran 55).

Tango Palace charts the existential struggles between

Isidore, an "androgynous" master/teacher, and his/her

earnest young captive Leopold, a reluctant student and

follower. They engage in a series of nasty Beckettian games

during which Leopold is rewarded with blows. Isidore's

seductiveness and cruelty, his/her insistence on master/

slave narratives, and the highly theatrical use of props and

scenarios (such as a tango, a duel, and a bullfight) are

reminiscent of Genet. While the play makes no direct

references to feminism, Fornes’ exploration of seduction and

the entrapment of an unwilling 'object of desire’ would

 132

interest many feminists. Fornesian hallmarks include an

ironic view of interpersonal relations, an interest in

language use, and the portrayal of characters who strive

(often unsuccessfully) to free themselves from oppressive

situations.

Isidore constantly flips cards at the unwilling

‘student’ that contain the sentences and phrases of their

previous dialogue. Isidore insists that if Leopold will

only memorize the cards, he will never hesitate nor be short

of an answer, a question or "a remark, if a remark is more

appropriate" (Tango 134). Through Leopold’s refusal to

"learn that way," Fornes criticizes rote education. This is

also her first play which warns against the deadening effect

that a reliance on set phrases and concepts produces in

speakers, impeding their ability to express themselves and

9
to connect with others.

In Tango Palace, the struggle ceases only when Leopold

kills Isidore rather than emulate his teacher’s

"rottenness," but in the last scene of the play, Isidore

9
In Promenade. a maidservant mocks the inanity and
disconnection of aristocratic chatter, and more trenchantly,
in Night. mentally unbalanced but oddly perspicacious Helena
asserts that when people use

false words which have nothing behind them . . . they

feel a little cheated later, debilitated. If you use
words without meaning, you feel debilitated. (Lust,
13)
 133

reappears as a challenging angel and Leopold, sword in hand,

steps forward to resume their battle on the next plane.

Despite this circular (or perhaps spiraling) 'conclusion,'

Fornes does not expect audiences to be disheartened but

rather energized, as she had been by Franz Kafka’s The Trial

and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Pozzo beats on Lucky and at the end Lucky doesn’t

get free, but it doesn’t matter because I do!
I ’ve never been anybody's slave but when I see
that I understand something. Josef K. may get
guillotined or go to the electric chair but,
rather than saying "I'm doomed," I learn from his
behavior. (in Savran 56)

Likewise, Fornes hopes that audiences will learn something

about themselves and human relations from watching the

trials of her combatants. Their battle resumes on the next

plane, because Fornes sees life as a series of

confrontations which challenge people to make decisions and

to keep struggling.

A number of Fornes’ plays end with frustrated

characters trying to shoot their way out of some sort of

emotional and physical entrapment or dilemma.^ Since Fornes

does not advocate violence as a good solution, it may be

that she wants to examine the conditions under which low

In addition to Tango Palace, Fefu in Fefu and Her

Friends. Leticia in The Conduct of Life. Lloyd in M u d ,
Joseph in Night. and half-seriously 3 in The Successful
Life; while Sarita and Nadine attack their oppressors with a
knife.
 134

power 'victims' become capable of striking out in order to

free themselves. Perhaps then Leopold must confront Isidore

again (though not in the same situation and probably not in

a setting so fully controlled by Isidore) in order to

struggle towards a better understanding of his entanglement

with Isidore (his complicity perhaps) and to find a better

solution. In addition, the seeming imbalance between

Leopold’s entrapment in unfamiliar contexts (which could be

read as a judgment that society and social relations cannot

be changed) is balanced by Fornes’ next play, The Successful

Life of 3 . in which characters are placed in an anarchistic

universe in which they are only constrained to the extent

that they willingly obey social conventions and the wishes

of others.

As Tango Palace begins, Isidore’s domineering behavior

seems extreme, even absurd. But as the play proceeds,

Fornes’ hunch about "the relationship between a mentor of

some sort and a student" (in Betsko 158) evolves into a

psychologically realistic critique of the dynamics of

master-student relations (especially in the arts) during

those years just before widespread student revolt against

educational policies. Like a poet-prophet, Fornes often

pinpoints such tensions and contradictions before they fully

erupt in the society at large. Until recently, she assumed

that her (largely "privileged poor" bohemian and liberal

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middle class) audiences were with her, or at least not far

behind, in their perceptions of social dynamics, an

assumption less and less true the farther she has worked

from the New York avant-garde. This gap or delay between

Fornes1 vision and audience perception may be responsible in

part for the delay of wider acceptance and understanding of

her later plays until several years after they premiere.

Her growing recognition of this problem may in part explain

the more individualized characters and more explicit

rendering of social contexts in her later work.

Tango Palace was a highly successful and personally

rewarding premiere. Fornes was pleased with the directing

and acting of the San Francisco production, and she received

an Office for Advanced Drama Research (OADR) playwriting

grant to polish the script for the second volume of Arthur

Ballet's anthology, Playwrights for Tomorrow. The play also

won her a place in the Prentice-Hall literature anthology,

Concepts of Literature (1966), "among writers like Aristotle

and Shakespeare and you can imagine . . . when you have a

first experience like this, you’re always looking to repeat

it" (in Savran 58).

Under the auspices of the OADR, Fornes wrote and

directed The Successful Life of 3: A Skit for Vaudeville

which was presented on a double bill with Tango Palace in

January 1965 at The Firehouse, an avant-garde venue in

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Minneapolis. As soon as she returned to New York, the Open

Theatre staged The Successful Life as part of its 1964-65

production season at the Sheridan Square Playhouse (Life

163). However, Richard Gilman (theatre critic and Open

Theatre affiliate) as well as most company members "were

unhappy with [Chaikin’s] production of the play," which they

felt had not done "justice to Miss Forn s ’ imagination and

dramatic powers" (Gilman, in Promenade and Other Plays 1).

In his restaging, Gilman presented Fornes as "a kind of

radical parodist" by foregrounding her "sense of the

incongruities and discontinuities of language" (1).

Gilman’s production, which emphasized Fornes’ "fruitfully

illogical" depictions of "social inanity" (1), won Fornes an

Obie; soon after, the play was produced overseas and

published in two anthologies (Nasso 244; see appendix I).

Even though the play premiered in Minnesota, New York

critic Bonnie Marranca claims that The Successful Life of 3

"reflects the early Open Theater approach to drama," because

the play’s "many changes in character, mood, and situation,

and its completely exteriorized (unemotional) and abstract

approach to human behavior" were well-suited to the

"tranforraation" techniques then popular at the Open Theatre

(Marranca, Playwrights 56). However well the play was

eventually served by Open Theatre actors, Marranca’s

implication of one-way influence belies the genesis of the

 137

piece and Fornes’ relationships with several divergent

theatre groups, in particular the Actors Studio, the Open

Theatre, Judson Poets’ Theatre, and New Dramatists.

The Actors Studio, begun in 1949, was a place where

actors could hone their skills under the direction of

"Method" director/teachers, such as Elia Kazan, Robert

Lewis, and (in the 60s) Lee Strasberg, all veterans of the

Group Theatre (Henderson 274). From 1931 to 1941, Group

members sought to emulate the Moscow Art Theatre’s

naturalistic style of acting by living and working together;

their resulting American interpretation of early

Stanislavski technique became known as "the Method" (274).

As disseminated by the Actors Studio, the Method style has

been characterized as "unconventional, deeply felt, and

psychologically detailed," "more impulsive than calculated

and more openly emotional than intellectual" (186). Despite

the obvious stylistic differences between Fornes’ early

experimental works and typical Method vehicles by Arthur

Miller and Tennessee Williams, Fornes shared with Strasberg

a desire to discern and convey psychological truths and to

stage behaviors motivated by impulse and emotion rather than

conscious logic and cool rationality.

In the mid-60s, Fornes observed scenework at the Actors

Studio in order to familiarize herself with actor/director

relationships and the rehearsal process. She also took

 138

Method-based classes at Gene Frankel’s school: beginning

acting, which included sensory exercises, and directing,

"which just means you get the experience of not knowing what

to say to an actor . . . [which] you might as well go

through at school" (52). Although Fornes recognized their

aesthetic differences from the outset and would "completely

ignore" Strasberg’s comments about aesthetics, she was "very

impressed with Strasberg’s work as an actors’ . . . [and]

directors’ technician" (in Cummings 52). Nonetheless,

Fornes’ exposure to Method principles changed her writing

style:

My writing became organic. I stopped being so

manipulative. In Tango Palace. I felt I knew what
needed to happen in a scene and that the writing
was serving me. You can see the moments when a
character is speaking for my benefit rather than
from their own need. . . . I [began] applying the
Method technique for the actor to my writing and
it was bringing something very interesting. (52)

But it was also while working with new directors at the

Actors Studio that Fornes had her first clashes over the

traditional separation between the director's and the play­

wright’s role in producing new plays. Even though she was

invited to rehearsal, she was forced to silently note her

reactions to the acting and direction and discuss them with

the director outside rehearsal (52). Fornes soon came to

agree with Lanford Wilson’s description of the playwright’s

submissive position, in which the playwright is treated

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"like a girl . . . [who has] to be nice to this guy [the

director] who is going to . . . choose the right actors for

ray play because . . . I am very talented, but I d o n ’t really

understand anything" (in Betsko 160). Such rude

introductions to general theatre practice notwithstanding,

Fornes had a more satisfying and fruitful experience with

the 'conventional’ Actors Studio than with one of their most

notable challengers, the Open Theatre.

In 1963, a group of actors and writers dissatisfied

with Method acting, naturalistic plays, and Broadway

commercialism formed the Open Theatre in order to develop a

new, more physical or "external" acting style (Poland lxi,

Henderson 167). Many members had been students of Nola

Chilton, a Method teacher who "had evolved a series of

exercises designed to prepare the actor for performing in

absurdist dramas where the usual techniques of psychological

preparation seemed inappropriate" (Bigsby 98). Joseph

Chaikin, a former Chilton student and Living Theatre actor

who soon dominated the OT, ran a workshop through which he

hoped to "redefine the limits of the stage experience"

(Roberts 503-4). He orchestrated physical and vocal

exercises and improvisations in discussion with observers,

including non-member affiliates such as Gilman, Gordon

Rogoff, Paul Goodman, and Susan Sontag (Fornes’ former

roommate and lifelong colleague) (Malpede 185).

 140

Although Chaikin would have preferred to focus

exclusively on non-performative workshops, at the urging of

Gilman, the Open Theatre performed short plays and improvs

at the end of 1963, and in 1964-65 mounted a season of "ten

plays, from Brecht’s Clown Play and T. S. Eliot’s Sweeney

Agonistes to works by [Jean Claude] Van Itallie and Maria

Irene Fornes" (101). Except for this atypical season,

playwrights who joined the Open Theatre were expected, as

"integral participants in the group experience," to submit

text for improvisation rather than present finished scripts

{Poland lxi).

Fornes joined the OT in late 1963. Although she "found

their work interesting," she had expected to be "much more

active, that Joe would be more interested in [her] ideas

. . . [but she soon] realized that they were interested in

doing whatever it is they were going to do" (Interview

1/23/93). When she made comments about works in progress

"that [she] thought would improve things, they were ignored;

so [she] continued to go and just watch and hang around"

(Interview). For example,

Joe and Jean-Claude Van Itallie [the O T ’s

principal playwright and Chaikin’s companion] were
working on "The Airplane Piece." It was an attack
on the 'Powers that B e ’ . . . i n which a plane
crashes but the people in 1st class are protected.
And I said that the theory may be right in other
things but that in those days airplanes usually
crashed head first and since 1st class is in the
front, it doesn’t work for this thing. And he
just ignored me. He was not interested in being
 141

accurate. How can he be interested in having a

symbol that’s incorrect!

I felt that [at the OT] there was a lot of

principle and a lot of political ideas, but they
were so fuzzy around the edges. I didn’t like
that. Of course, I also didn't like the fact I
was not treated respectfully. (Interview)

Given her feelings about the femininization and

disempowerment of playwrights, Fornes was not satisfied with

Chaikin’s general method of using playwrights’ work like

found text, extracting as little as one sentence or phrase

from a scene or play, sometimes only for its aural rhythm,

and making it the basis for his guided improvisations.

However, she did share Chaikin’s belief that good theatre is

a "controlled experience, that it must transcend privatism,

and that the intuitive must remain subordinated to a central

intelligence provided by the writer and the director"

(Bigsby 103). But in practice they differed sharply because

Chaikin only truly shared the directorial role with Van

Itallie, while Fornes was already beginning to make

directing part of her playwriting process. Like a number of

actors who left the OT to escape Chaikin’s 'necessary

tyranny’ (100), Fornes drifted away from the OT and toward

the more democratic, chaotic, and for her, "heavenly" Judson

Poets' Theatre (Interview).

In relation to The Successful Life of 3 . Fornes

disagreed with both Strasberg's and Chaikin’s belief that

 142

Method techniques were only suited for 'naturalistic'

theatre:

A method actor should be able to work in a play of

O ’Neill as well as Ionesco as well as Shake­
speare. . . . What you need is to be
aesthetically aware, and to understand that
imagination is a part of natural life. (in
Cummings 53)

Given this belief and her particular experiences with the

Actors Studio and the Open Theatre, it is less ironic that

Fornes describes The Successful Life of 3 as the first play

that "was influenced by my understanding of Method" (52).

What one character says to another comes

completely out of his own impulse . . . The other
character’s reply never comes from some sort of
premeditation on my part or even the part of the
character. (52)

Fornes adapted Strasberg’s "moment-to-moment" work (not

anticipating lines and reactions by focusing on the moment

rather than the outcome of the scene or story) in order to

restrain her analytical urges until after she had gained

access to the sort of creative energy that had produced

Tango Palace.

In The Successful Life of 3 , 3, an intensely curious

and randy middle-aged man, worms his way into a permanent

threesome with SHE, a sexy young lady, who handles difficult

questions by stopping to "think with a stupid expression"

and HE, a handsome and disdainful young man to whom SHE is

married for ten of the play’s sixteen years (Life 165).

 143

Serious moral questioning of sexual promiscuity and economic

opportunism as well as narrative links between the cartoon­

like vignettes are suspended in order to highlight the

vagaries of conversational logic, sex and marriage, and

masculine rivalry.

Fornes’ terse scenes with their rapid shifts in inter­

personal dynamics were well-suited to "transformational"

acting techniques in which the character, setting, and tone

of one scene abruptly transforms into an entirely different

emotional and behavioral texture in the next. Yet the

characters in The Successful Life, however erratic and

superficial they seem compared to their naturalistic

counterparts, show more continuity and individual

development than typical transformational characters and the

continuing ’evolution’ of two of her three characters

provides much of the interest in Fornes’ play.

The title of The Successful Life of 3 points up Fornes

double-edged interest in 3 ’s non-conformist method of

succeeding in life. On the one hand, the play celebrates

3 ’s facility for flaunting social strictures and making his

way in the world as it is; on the other hand, this satire

exposes the kind of anarchistic opportunism necessary to

survive in a world in which 'free enterprise,’ aggressive

marketing, and self-promotion carry the day. Most

interesting from a feminist point of view, however, are the

 144

changes in SHE. For the first half of the play, SHE

acquieces in having sex with 3 whenever he mentions it, and

in raising "too many" children and eternally peeling

potatoes as H E ’s wife; in short, doing ‘what women are

supposed to do.’ Later in the play, SHE leaves both HE and

3 to go to the movies and marries the theatre owner only to

return when 3 has made a pile of money. Eventually, she

comes ‘home’ for good, declaring that "I’m too old and tired

and I ’ve had too many men. I ’m just going to sit here and

rest for the rest of my life" (Life 196). Even in this

early comedy, Fornes draws attention to women’s

traditionally constrained freedom of choice and creates a

character who asserts herself in order to improve her life.

Within this 'playing space,’ Fornes manages to broaden

a comic type, the 'dumb sexy broad,’ by moving SHE through a

series of sexual/marital relationships in which (without

stretching the intellectual capabilities of the character)

SHE learns from her experiences and enters middle age

resolutely celibate. Fornes allows SHE to move from object

through constrained agency to an equal partnership with the

men. With pointed irony, Fornes arranges for this journey

from object to agent to be accomplished not by an

exceptional woman, but by an ordinary 'dumb broad.’

In addition, Fornes uses the constant switches in

character and situation to explore differing (power)

 145

relations between women and men. By discarding naturalism's

tendency to reproduce accepted stereotypes of gendered

roles, transformations opened up a possible space for female

characters to act as agents and even to be in situations

where they are equal to or more powerful than male

characters. This 'creative playing' space (in Ruddick's

sense of the term)* was more easily opened up in the

production as well as the writing because actors and

directors (as well as the playwright) were freed from trying

to represent recognizably 'authentic' male and female

characters that a naturalistic linear plot would seem to

require.

By looking at The Successful Life as a series of status

games, it becomes apparent that HE, the young attractive

white male, has most to lose and that SHE, the acquiescent

sex object, has most to gain; from the very beginning 3

establishes himself as an unconventional character who gets

what he needs. From the first scene, paunchy, ordinary-

looking 3 horns in on H E ’s privileged access to desirable

females. HE marries SHE and becomes a "husband and father"

in name only as it is 3 who does "all the screwing and

make[s] all the money" (Life 183). Notably, it is SHE who

is first referred to by a personal name, "Ruth." Only quite

*See Ruddick section of chapter two for a discussion of

the importance of creative play in self-development.
 146

late in the play is 3 referred to as Arthur and in both

cases, he is being scolded, first for being a thief and then

for being mean. HE, the stereotypical leading man and

protagonist, never achieves a personal name, and by adhering

to the most rigid code of acceptable social behavior for his

"role" (chasing desirable women, settling down as a husband

and father, reluctantly getting a job), HE loses out. 3

achieves higher status by questioning assumptions, taking

risks, and going directly for what he wants. SHE gains

highest status in the end by moving from desired object, to

active seeker of her own enjoyment, to setting rules and

limits on her interactions with others.

Fornes returns to this scenario of a 'dumb woman*

living with two equally limited men in her more serious

later play, Mud (1983), in which categorizations of victim

and oppressor, manipulated and manipulator are complicated

by changes in the fortunes of the three characters. The

Successful Life also contains glimpses of interpersonal

dynamics and bits of dialogue that re-appear as late as 1990

in Nadine. Upon re-examining these texts, I believe they

reveal Fornes* persistent interest in familial, economic,

and sexual relations that do not conform to the American

social norm of the monogamous heterosexual middle-class

couple with two children. In fact, many of Fornes’ plays

consider the variety of ways in which people form

 147

households, make a living, speak to one another, and

assimilate elements of popular culture (e.g., movies, social

dancing, bullfights, jokes, and fashion shows). In The

Successful Life, characters, who are themselves living in an

implausible filmic world, frequently view and refer to

movies and movie characters. They live in a menage trois,

work as a store detective, an Alec Guiness-style gangster,

or Zorro and speak in jokes, puns, and non sequiturs.

In this two-dimensional comedy, Fornes points out that

middle-class people are often most noticeably constrained by

their own acceptance of societal mores; or in other words,

that people often participate in their own constraint or

domination. In The Successful Life, no one is forced by

violent action or words or by serious legal compulsion to

submit to the others’ wishes. In fact, the only violent act

is committed by 3, a private citizen against a policeman.

(Once HE and 3 have given up their rivalry and accepted

their triangular relationship with SHE, and the police no

longer serve to remove first one and then the other rival

for SHE’s attention, 3 blithely shoots a policeman whose

entrance threatens to disturb their now-comfortable

threesome.) Early in the play, SHE consents, albeit without

thorough consideration, to perform her 'womanly duties;’ her

life begins to change only when SHE/Ruth leaves, chooses

other partners, refuses menial chores, and sets the

 148

conditions under which she will return to a relationship

with HE and 3, The men do nothing to force or even dissuade

her once she has stated a firm decision. Both 3 and SHE

gain status by taking risks and flaunting social mores, and

though they soon tire of their new ventures, they return

with the experiential knowledge to make new decisions.

The show ends with all three characters singing a paean

to ignorance. "0 let me be wrong, but oh not to know it.”

It is a very knowing ignorance (and certainly not innocence)

that Fornes' characters are promoting. The lyrics might be

paraphrased, 0 let us arrange our affairs in our own

unconventional ways without encountering any compelling

reasons not to proceed according to our perceived needs at

the moment.

Fornes reports that The Successful Life of 3 started

when she heard a conversation in her mind between an actor

she knew and another unfamiliar man. "That caught my

imagination completely. I wrote the play in two weeks"

("Messages" 29). But such spontaneous inspiration could not

always be counted on and Fornes began seeking ways to be

"possessed again" (in Savran 58).

Fornes’ most widely acclaimed play of the 60s, the

campy-satiric musical Promenade (1965, music by A1

Carmines), resulted from a card game she devised to keep her

analytic mind busy and out of the way of her creativity.

 149

She inscribed index cards with character types and settings,

then shuffled the cards and laid out one card for characters

and one for setting. When she dealt "aristocrats" and

"prison" and found this pairing incongruous, she knew right

away that in the first scene of Promenade the prisoners

would dig a hole and escape (in Cummings 29). The

prisoners’ journey to an aristocratic party, the scene of a

car accident, a park, a battlefield, and eventually back to

jail was dictated by the 'hand’ of settings Fornes dealt

herself.

This exercise is reminiscent of composer John Cage’s

and choreographer Merce Cunningham’s aleatory techniques.

For example, Cunningham would set the direction and sequence

of a dance by following the pattern created by throwing

Chinese sticks; he and Cage presented concerts in which

music and dance that had been created independently of each

other were performed at the same time. However, Fornes

introduced chance not so much to replace linear narrative

with abstract form but rather to make way for irrational,

fantastic ideas and images that her conscious mind tended to

censor— a goal Fornes shared with San Francisco

choreographer Ann Halprin, who sought to imbue modern dance

with the "freedom to follow intuition and impulse in

improvisation" (Banes 1983, xvii). In the early 60s, a

group of younger choreographers (who formed the Judson Dance

 150

Theatre collective) extended Cunningham's and Halprin's

experiments by integrating everyday movements, objects, and

costumes with play and random activity. They found a

congenial (and rent-free) place to rehearse and show their

work at Judson Church in Greenwich Village. Fornes shared

the Judson dancers’ view that traditional "methods,

techniques, and definitions that were once avant-garde . . .

[are now raw material] to be sampled, borrowed, criticized,

subverted" (xv). Therefore, it is not surprising that

Promenade also found an audience and an enthusiastic

production team at the Judson Church.

The young Rev. A1 Carmines, resident composer and

advocate for the arts, inspired the congregation at Judson

to make their Washington Square church a place where

artistic experimentation would be unencumbered by "the usual

rules of approval and disapproval" (McDonagh 1970, 97). The

congregation voted to refrain from censoring artistic work

because of language or form; they agreed that all work must

"be allowed to grow and flourish in order that any might

survive" (97). This ethos also produced a community

audience at Judson who took a "passionate, prejudiced, and

proud" interest in all the artists who worked at the Church

and who were remarkably receptive to "the bizarre" (97).

The cross-fertilization between the various arts housed

under one friendly roof resulted in Judson Dance members

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choreographing movement passages for Judson Poets’ Theatre

productions, and in Fornes serving as a resident costume

designer for Judson from 1965-1971. It was also at Judson

that Fornes had enjoyed the sensuous, multi-media Happenings

of Jim Dine and Claus Oldenburg (Harrington 34).

Produced in 1965, Promenade may well have been "the

apotheosis of the Judson style" (Marranca, "Playwrights"

58), with its trenchant wit and obtuse humor, zaniness and

high camp characterizations. Artistic director Carmines

provided a richly melodious score of 32 numbers, ranging

from German cabaret and torch songs to parodies of musical

comedy and operetta, for Fornes’ amusing and sometimes

baffling lyrics and rather slight book. Looking at it from

the aesthetic side (as Marranca does), Fornes’ triumph lies

in entertaining her audience with "an insane wonderful story

that is even moralistic!" (57).

The story follows prisoners 105 and 106 after they

escape from the buffoonish jailer who is too busy exacting

sexual payment from female visitors to notice that the

inmates are digging out. The escapees attend a high class

party during which the idle rich sing paeans to unrequited

love and infidelity, and the ladies jump out of their

dresses in imitation of Miss Cake, the full-bodied consort

of the boorish Mayor/Warden. When the insouciant Servant is

 152

caught mocking these inane pastimes, Mr. S puts her in 'her

place’:

I t ’s sad your career depends on our whim.

On with your work, my dear, or yo u ’ll get thin.
You see, even if you’re here, and w e ’re also here,
You are not near, isn’t that clear? (Promenade
211)

Before leaving the party, 105, 106, and the Servant steal

all the valuables from the drowsing overfed aristocrats.

When the trio comes upon a man injured by a hit-and-run

driver, Fornes gives us a commedia-style lazzo in which the

prisoners put their numbered jackets frontwards and

backwards on the injured man. When the stupid jailer

'finds’ his suspect(s) and carts the injured man off to jail

in their stead, they sing the song "Clothes Make the Man,"

comically inverting the usual snobby implications of the

adage. Next, 105 and 106 encounter their Mother who has

been looking for her infants for years and who doesn't

recognize them as adults. They respond by singing:

I t ’s to age that we owe what we are.

In fact, w e ’re grateful for the passing of time.
(234)

Phyllis Mael is partially right that in Promenade

"social criticism is evident but attenuated by the absurdity

of its presentation" (190). Nevertheless, Fornes’ facility

for imaging social ironies is already evident in these early

plays. In the battlefield scene, badly injured working-

class soldiers discuss how they were conscripted into

 153

serving as cannon fodder. Despite falling bombs, the rich

continue their moveable feast among the carnage. After the

Mayor has called the wounded men to attention for review by

their 'betters,' the party-goers callously unwind the

soldiers’ bandages and proceed to use both gauze and

soldiers in an oblivious Maypole dance, while the Mother

tries unsuccessfully to stop them. After the rich wander

off leaving the waging of the (Vietnam?) war to the lower

classes, the Mother and the Servant cradle the wounded men

in a double pieta.

Having exposed the rich and powerful as social

parasites, Fornes turns our attention to how the oppressed

survive in an unfair world. The newly healed soldiers

persuade the other workers to take advantage of the

aristocrats' free wine and entertainment. The Mother, who

"has been sad ever since [she] pitied a despicable man,"

displays an ambivalent reaction: she distances herself from

the destitute man, thanking God that she "is better than he

is," but also acknowledges that "there are many poor people

in the world, whether you like or not" and wishes that she

could go to a place "where a human being is not a strange

thing" (265). The Servant goes off to think about what she

has learned, having nearly succumbed to the seductions of

material possessions, which she had originally donned in

order to demonstrate that "riches make you dumb" (238-240).

 154

105 and 106 come to the most poignant and frightening

conclusion:

When I was born Iopened my eyes,

And when I looked around I closed them;
And when I saw how people get kicked in the head,
And kicked in the belly, and kicked in thegroin,
I closed them. I closed them.
My eyes are closed but I ’m carefree. (254)

I disagree with Bonnie Marranca’s opinion that the

prisoners, 105 and 106, are "total innocents . . . [who]

turn their backs on the rich and their riches, and the

cruelties of life" and who find "'freedom' in their cells"

and in their "'rich’ inner lives" (Playwrights 56). On the

contrary, Fornes offers for consideration the prospect of

prisoners 'choosing’ willful ignorance to avoid witnessing

the domination and abuse of the poor. In these examples,

Fornes demonstrates how peers influence one another to

conform to their class positions by accepting the

'generosity' of the rich, by setting themselves above and

apart from their 'less fortunate’ neighbors, by aping the

wealthy, or by closing their eyes and "being carefree." In

other words, Fornes exposes some of the workings of habitus

in maintaining and reproducing class divisions.

But since Fornes’ audiences are not comprised primarily

of either the wealthy or the working poor, most of the

lyrics, in the prisoner’s song for example, are aimed at

"privileged-poor" bohemians and the raiddle-classes who

 155

(collectively) have the resources and knowledge to change

social relations. When the prisoners sing "A poor man

doesn’t know where his pain comes from . . . . A poor m a n ’s

life is sour and he doesn’t know who made it so” (253),

Fornes is asking the audience to open their eyes and to

recognize structural social inequalities and the pain and

waste they cause. She appeals to her audience to side with

the poor against the "madmen" who "feel sure" only about

"stupid things . . . money, power, adulation":

I know what madness is

It’s not knowing how another man feels
A madman has never been
In another m a n ’s shoes

Madness is lack of compassion (254).

Here Fornes targets the consciences of her particular

audience--people willing to pay to watch her aesthetically

challenging and politically complicated works. In answer to

David Savran’s suggestion that the 'victims’ in her play,

The Conduct of Life are complicit in their own oppression,

Fornes’ responded that it is not the responsibility of the

most oppressed to bring about social change but of those

like herself, her audiences, and the interviewer, who "have

the knowledge, the intelligence, the perspective . . . [to]

know what’s right and what’s wrong . . . [and] what’s

possible" (in Savran 69). Although I believe that Fornes is

reacting against middle-class complacency and the convenient

 156

notion that fundamental social change can come only from the

roost oppressed classes, at times her statements seem to

betray little faith in the knowledge and capabilities of

oppressed people. Such ambiguity also appears in the lyric

"A poor man doesn’t know where his pain comes from" but as

we will see throughout her oeuvre, Fornes’ depiction of the

strength and striving of extremely limited characters seems

to undercut these hints of condescension. Although

delivered in an easy-to-swallow, if zany, cabaret-style

vehicle, the social and political issues introduced in

Promenade will be revisited in harsher, darker, and subtler

form throughout Fornes’ works into the 1990s.

Promenade returns in the end to its predominantly light

and ironic tone with a full cast lullaby, "All Is Well in

the City":

All is well in the city,

People do what they want.
They can go to the park.
They can sleep all they want.
And for those who have no cake,
There is plenty of bread. (266)

Here, Fornes pokes fun at the anaesthetizing closure of

musical comedies while at the same time exposing for

consideration a singularly American version of the

palliative ascribed to Marie Antoinette, who faced much more

strenuous unrest than most people could discern in the US

when Promenade premiered in 1965.

 157

In this piece, Fornes walks the line between mere

entertainment, avant-garde obscurity, and didacticism, and

does so with bardic aplomb. Readily apparent is her tribute

to and subversion of movies and popular entertainment from

the 20s and 30s: the vaudeville turns, the lazzi of mistaken

identities, the torch songs about cruel-hearted lovers and

unfulfilled desires. Her sympathy for those who must serve

the boorish wealthy and who are disciplined by their

henchmen is easily accessible and perhaps made a bit too

palatable by bright music and comic approach. And like the

Servant, who finds herself dangerously attracted to the

wealth she would eschew, Fornes risks reinvoking the gender

and class stereotypes of the popular forms she satirizes.

When I first saw the illustration of a buxom nude woman

jumping out of a cake which graces the soundtrack record

jacket and listened to the song, "Four Naked Ladies," I was

dismayed (as I imagine other feminists might be). However,

on closer examination, I found Miss Cake to be an intriguing

character, part rebel and part accomplice to the smarmy

Mayor. In her quirky song of seduction,Miss Cake dares the

men to love a full-figured mature woman:

Let the fruit ripen on the tree

For if not the meat will harden.
I ’m the peach of the west.
Chicken is he who does not love me . . .

For there’s more to the cake than the icing.

A morsel I ’m not, I ’m a feast. (217)
 158

I also realized that the women who wished "to be naked too"

were the female version of the discredited aristocrats and

that, just in case the audience missed Fornes' critique, the

Servant refers to their ridiculous behavior in her

subsequent mockery of the rich. Thus, even in these early

"60s" plays, Fornes boldly staged sexuality and questioned

conventional sexual relations while protecting her actors

from gratuitous physical display. Miss Cakeappears in an

ample leotard and tights decorated with feathered fringe

while the "naked ladies" remove only their dresses and

remain in outlandishly decorated teddies, stockings, shoes,

and hats.

Critics have noted that the Mother’s song questions the

conventional nature of Truth (e.g. Mael189):

I have to live with my own truth.

I have to live with it.
You live with your own truth.
I cannot live with it.
I have to live with my own truth whether you like
it or not.

I know everything. Half of it I really know.

The rest I make up. The rest I make up.
Some things I'm sure of, of other things I ’m too
sure, and of others I ’m not sure at all. (265)

But the critics do not connect the Mother’s (and Fornes’)

understanding— that each person must make up from moment to

moment a provisional version of truth and reality--with

Fornes’ call for people to take action, to grow and improve

their lives no matter what their material circumstances.

 159

Although Fornes does not believe that the purpose of her

plays is to persuade people to take a particular course of

action, her plays exhibit low-power characters’ (failed or

successful) attempts to create tactical spaces for change

and resistance. These "demonstrations," coupled with

Fornes’ satirical dislodging of unconsciously held

assumptions about social relations, present the possibility

that elements of her plays may function as (Piercian) signs

and thus affect the "experience" and "habits," or

dispositions, of the audience.

Throughout the remainder of the 60s, Fornes continued

to write light, often comedic social commentaries while

experimenting with varying presentational modes: ritual,

music hall, lecture, and film as well as vaudeville and

musical theatre styles. In 1966, Jerome Robbins (co­

director of the New York City Ballet, Broadway

choreographer, and sometime Judson patron) backed a Broadway

production of Fornes’ The Office, which previewed but never

opened.^ Fornes believes that she "got into trouble" with

this play because she tried to transport characters from

real life into an invented situation, a method of writing

that she found more confusing than useful ("Messages" 28).

^The manuscript is unavailable since Fornes never

finished the script to her satisfaction.
 160

In D r . Kheal (1967), a popular and much performed

comic-didactic 'lecture,’ Fornes combined the idiosyncratic

wit and wordplay of Promenade with the paradoxes and

teacher/student dynamics of Tango Palace. Professor Kheal,

whose name synthesizes 'kill* and 'heal,’ teaches that in

"reality" such seeming opposites actually co-exist:

Don’t you know that you can take a yes and a no

and push them together, squeeze them together,
compress them so they are one? That in fact that
is what reality is? Opposites, contradictions,
compressed so that you don’t know where one stops
and the other begins? (Dr. Kheal 72)

However, Kheal’s ambiguous reality is tempered by balance.

"a state of equilibrium between opposing forces," and by

will:

Does the thing happen, or does one do it? . . .

Through will. . . . Can I make my own life.
Construct my own life? . . . Of course not, you
fool. Of course you can. (64)

Kheal concludes this discussion with a paradox: "Either you

do it, or else it does itself. Life, that is. What other

way is there? None" (65).

By presenting free will and determination as binary

opposites, and having her provocateur handle the resulting

tension by first maintaining that you both can and cannot

construct your own life and then later insisting that either

you do life or life does itself, Fornes wished to question

audience members’ understanding of individual agency in

relation to the power of social forces. It is worth

remembering that during a time when many artists and young

people were holding 'the Establishment’ responsible for both

interpersonal and international ills, Fornes held that

(middle-class) individuals were in great measure responsible

for their own happiness within given circumstances

(Harrington 34). By taking this jestic position within a

"revolutionary" movement (Shepard 32), Fornes seemed to be

pointing toward a clear-eyed and unromanticized conception

of the shifting and contingent power of individuals to

construct a life within networks of social power. D r . Kheal

introduces this and other germinal ideas that will recur

throughout Fornes’ later plays, darker works in which she

continues to investigate 'subjects in practice,’ constantly

evolving subjects interacting with provisionally stable

institutions as well as with other 'subjects in practice.’

Despite her aversion to overtly political groups and

"didactic" drama, Fornes contributed two plays to the

Vietnam War protests: Vietnamese Wedding (1967), a

participatory theatre event for adults in which the audience

was encouraged to humanize the 'enemy’ by enacting a

Vietnamese version of a familiar ritual (detailed in chapter

one); and the disjointed collaboration, Red Burning Light

£
For a discussion of 'subjects in practice,’ see
Gardiner section of chapter two.
 162
tt
(1968, music by John Bauman). This piece combined the 60s

penchant for staging raunchy behavior (scratching, belching,

humping, sticking out tongues, exposing breasts) with music

hall routines, including slapstick comedy, exotic dances,

ballads, chorus lines, and lots of 'sexy* jokes, in an

unfocused attempt to poke fun at US chauvinism, imperialism,

and militarism. In a generous Village Voice review of the

La MaMa production, Robert Pasolli describes The Red Burning

Light of the American Way of Life as a burlesque "ramble

through some military and political adventures" (59). For

Pasolli, the play was less about politics perse than

eroticism and carnality (a frequent Fornes topic) (59). He

praises the piece for subtly making the "point" that

"American imperialism is an incidental form of run-away and

largely impotent sexuality, [that] the proverbial red light

burns at the heart of our national experience" (59). But

Pasolli remarks the "mockingly bad dirty jokes" and the

"parody of Madame Butterfly in a bumps and grinds [sic]

dance" without connecting to them any specific social

commentary or to the Vietnam-era military frame of the

•f
'The original production of The Red Burning Light Or:
Mission XQ3, was directed by Fredric de Boer and
choreographed by James Barbosa for the Open Theatre’s 1968
European tour. By the second production (at La MaMa E.T.C.
in New York), the show had gained three more director/
choreographers including Fornes and Judson colleague Remy
Charlip and a second composer, Richard Peaslee.
 163

story. Near the end of the review, he dedicates two column

inches to the performance of a "perfect dumb stripper,"

praising especially the actress’ "young and attractive body,

which most strippers lack" (59). This sexist and

objectifying perspective was typical for 1969, and perhaps

encouraged by Fornes’ presentation of stereotypical

characters such as "the sexy young lady" and "a bosomy lady

general" (RBL 21). However, Pasolli's superficial reading

falls disappointingly short of his trenchant explications of

Fornes’ other early works, but since Fornes radically

revised the script before publication, I cannot fairly judge

either the effectiveness of the actual performance or

Pasolli's response to it.

Although the erotic dances were cut in the published

version, sexual talk and raunchy behavior still dominate the

text. This otherwise insignificant romp merits attention,

however, for the surprising degree to which Fornes infuses

biting, if inchoate, critiques of the unfounded sense of

supremacy that underlies the sexual double-standard as well

as US assaults on ‘native’ populations through preaching and

tourism as well as military campaigns. Fornesian ideas and

images that will reappear in more polished form abound:

remote bombings produce "small amounts of smoke in various

places" onstage (as in The Danube) (RBL 55); the dangerous

misuse of language such as parroting political double-speak,

 164

euphemisms, and even song lyrics; and the frivolity and

inattention of relatively well-off characters in contrast to

the hard-earned knowledge and striving of the oppressed. In

the published version, two particularly chilling instances

stand out: a young soldier’s naive ballad about the

"strange" transformation of the tropical jungle into a

"flat, gray, brittle and dry" land where "breathing is

rather hard," and the US military’s oblivious repetition of

Kooly-Kooly’s song:

I coom flom li del

To tell woo woo yell pay
Yool skin ill be toln flom yool boly
And yul ees ill be peerce and fol flum
Deil sodet.

And yul lims ill be pooty of blud and bown

As main w e r .
Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.
Yool ill pay, if not heel in lei. (RBL 50)

I come from the dead

To tell you you will pay.
Your skin will be torn from your body,
And your eyes will be peirced,
And fall from their sockets.

And your limbs will be putty of blood and bone.

As mine were.
Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.
You will pay, if not here, in hell. (52)

As in much of Fornes’ work, these songs warn oppressors and

their compliant or complicit followers that they are not

immune from the adverse effects of their destructive,

thoughtless, and chauvinist beliefs and behaviors. Even in

 165

this flawed experimental work, Fornes manages to stir up the

ambivalence and ambiguities that blur the necessarily

contextual boundaries between sexy and sexist, civilization

and barbarism, liberation and re-inscription.

In Molly's Dream (1968, music by Cosmos Savage), a

lonely barmaid falls asleep while reading a romantic

Western. She dreams of encounters between herself and Jim,

a man draped with previous female admirers, and between John

(Wayne) and Shirley Temple-like Alberta. Unwilling to

become part of Jim’s harem, even though "it felt right to be

near him" (Molly 93), Molly adopts a jaded, wiser, and

unhurtable Marlene Dietrich persona. After watching the

other characters try on a series of rigidly-gendered movie

roles--dispassionate macho man, well-hung (with holsters)

gunslinger, Dracula, Superman, baby doll, and perfect bride

and groom— Molly drops the Dietrich and explains to Jim that

"in order to become what we are, we have to go through many

stages" (123 ) .

In Molly’s Dream. Fornes manages to share her

fascination with romance and at the same time critique role-

playing and the movie images that shape and limit

expressions of desire. She parodies naturalized

representations of masculine rivalry and sex appeal and of

females as victims, children, or concubines. Fornes

usefully complicates Molly’s reaction to reading a love

 166

story: rather than simply providing emotional escape from

loneliness and boredom, the story provokes Molly’s psychic

journey from sexual attraction, through heartbreak and

feigned indifference, to acknowledgement and restraint of

this particular desire since its satisfaction would cost her

autonomy and individuality. Perhaps Fornes was ahead of her

time in exploring the complexities of how women identify

with film, theatre, and fiction {key issues for feminist

critics of the late 1980s), for the play was deemed too

"romantic" by some feminist standards in 1968.

Fornes explained this potential contradiction to

interviewer Scott Cummings in the context of some (radical)

feminists’ rejection of (heterosexual) romance.

I remember having what became almost an argument

with a friend of mine who is very political . . .
about Molly’s Dream. She said it was romantic and
meant it as a criticism and I said, "Yes, isn’t
it?" and meant it as a high compliment. I
remember we were in a bar, we were drinking beer,
and I said, "Have you ever been with a person when
just being with them makes you see everything in a
different light. A glass of beer has an amber, a
yellow that yo u ’ve never seen before and it seems
to shine in a manner that is and she said,
"Yes!" and I said, "That is romantic! That is
romance!" and she said, "Well, in that case . . ."
I said, "It is. more beautiful. It isn’t that you
want it to be more beautiful or that you are lying
to yourself. It is.. Your senses are sharpened."
(in Cummings 55).

®A noteworthy exception is Phyllis Mael’s 1981

explication of Molly’s Dream which anticipates post-
structuralist theories about the workings of cinema by
remarking Fornes' exploration of cinema’s (and theatre’s)
influence on people’s dreams and fantasies.
 167

In response to Cummings’ comment that "there is a power in

that feeling that can make a character do things that are

not in his or her own best interest," Fornes replied,

Romance is romance. It’s like intelligence. Now

you can say that some people are so intelligent
that sometimes they become too mental and brainy
and it leads to their destruction. (55)

In these comments, Fornes defends her attempt to separate

for herself and for her audience general concepts from how

they function in particular contexts. As Helene Keyssar

pointed out, in Molly’s Dream Fornes both celebrates Molly’s

enlivened senses and sensibilities and critiques cinematic

depictions of romantic relationships as seen through Molly’s

eyes, that is, from a particular female character’s

perspective.

From an historical perspective, one can see that

Molly’s Dream combines Fornes’ early parodic style with

harbingers of the more serious treatment of gender and other

inegalitarian social relations in her later plays. For

example, the zany filmic context of The Successful Life of 3

with its broadly satiric swipes at two-dimensional B-movie

characters is toned down in Molly; the fictional roles are

separated from the protagonist’s 'real life,’ held up for

scrutiny, and criticized for their negative influence on

gender relations. Molly’s self-discoveries are clearer and

deeper than the muted changes in consciousness exhibited by

 168

SHE, but less profound than the painful and poignant

insights grasped by female characters in Fefu and M ud.

Molly was also the first published Fornes play since The

Widow (1961) to center on a female protagonist; in all her

later plays, the central protagonist(s ) would be female (and

sometimes also male) characters.

Feminist critics in the early 80s who liked the play

tended either to simplify Fornes’ exploration of gender

roles (Keyssar 122) or to assume that because Molly is still

dreaming when Jim comes back that she has missed her chance

for true love (Mael 190). They fail to note, however, that

Jim returns draped with luggage "which resembles in color the

Hanging Women's costumes” (Molly 124). No Prince Charming,

Jim hesitates in the doorway, laden with baggage from old

relationships, while Molly tries on and then discards

conventional (and ultimately unsatisfactory) subject

positions in her dreams. More interesting from a

theoretical point of view is Fornes’ placement of Molly in a

dream state or, to use Lisa Ruddick’s term, a liminal or

"transitional" space (Ruddick 3-4), a time and place

reserved for the playful experimentation necessary to

develop a strong and evolving sense of self, a space usually

denied women by their gendered roles as sex objects and

 169

caregivers.^ Turning her magical realist respect for

psychic events to feminist account, Fornes arranges for

Molly to raise her (feminist) consciousness by making use of

the relative freedom of a subconscious dream state.

Like her protagonists, Fornes used the experimental

venues of the 60s as a "creative play space" in which to

experiment with a range of production (and producing)

styles, and to learn the crafts of theatre by practicing

them. Although Molly's Dream (in 1968) was her last

published play until 1977, Fornes continued to work in the

theatre, as a director and producer as well as playwright.

Playwright/Director

When Molly's Dream was first produced "in an

elaborately directed reading" for a Tanglewood writing

workshop, Fornes wanted to direct her own project. She

reluctantly acquiesced when Robert Lewis (workshop leader

and prestigious Broadway director) insisted that only

"directors will direct" (in Savran 59). Fornes chose Ed

Setrakian as her director because she knew and liked him as

an actor; but when he began "making [the play] too abstract

. . . [and] asking people to do this bizarre behavior," she

complained to Lewis. Rather than being allowed to take over

% o r an introductory discussion of "transitional space"

and "self-creating play," see Ruddick section of chapter
two.
 170

the direction, Fornes was forced to ask the director to do

what she wanted.

So Ed did what I asked and then he said to me, "I

haven’t been able to sleep because of what y o u ’re
doing to me." . . . And I said, "Ed, I ’d rather
you d o n ’t sleep than I do n ’t sleep."

But that situation taught me never again to give

in. I didn’t want to make Ed not sleep. I wanted
to do it myself. If then it doesn’t come out
right, I did it wrong and nobody else has to
suffer. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to
let anyone else direct my work. And I did n ’t care
if it never got done again. (59-60)

Later in 1968, when New Dramatists offered Fornes a second

production of Molly's Dream, she threatened to quit the

playwrights’ organization if they would not support her need

as aplaywright to direct her own work. They made an

exception and from that production on, Fornes has directed

the first and, whenever possible, the second and third

productions of her new scripts.

In retrospect, Fornes recalls

I never saw any difference between writing and

directing. . . . Of course, they are different
things, but they are sequentially and directly
connected. So that to me rehearsing was just the
next step [in writing a play]. To continue
working on it was natural. (in Cummings 52)

However, for a playwright to direct her own plays or for a

woman to direct at all is still not considered "natural" in

professional theatre. In addition to crossing the gender-

marked division between ‘feminine’ playwriting and

‘masculine’ directing, Fornes also challenged producers’

 171

'traditional wisdom’ that women directors could not command

sufficient respect from and control over (predominantly

male) casts and crew. Thus Fornes tends to select artistic

collaborators who already believe in her work (such as Anne

Militello, who has lit more than 10 Fornes productions). In

such a positive atmosphere, Fornes claims that she often

wields "a power that is almost hypnotic" (160). During my

observation of her directing at Trinity Rep in 1989, Fornes

commanded the respect due a seasoned director as well as the

rapt attention due an indisputable authority on the

enigmatic sensibility of her plays.

Since making it a practice to direct her own new plays,

Fornes claims that she has never finished a script prior to

rehearsal. (She began rehearsals for Eyes on the Harem

[1978], which garnered an Obie for direction, with only

three pages of finished dialogue [in Savran 60]). She uses

the rehearsal time to try out preliminary or even "extra”

scenes with actors as part of the writing/editing process.

Fornes’ technique of seeing characters and hearing dialogue

in action before a script is finalized contributes to the

imagistic theatricality of her scripts. Directing also

allows her to strengthen a play’s structure so that it can

withstand the multiple interpretations of directors, actors,

designers, and audiences in subsequent productions (in

Betsko 158). In addition to these aesthetic reasons,

 172

Fornes’ insistence on directing was also the move of a woman

writer taking over the next step in the production of

meaning, as well as the means of production.

Playwright/Producer

By the end of the 60s, the wide-open experimental

theatre environment began to change. Fornes notes

by ’68 already the directors [e.g., Chaikin,

Richard Schechner, and Tom O ’Horgan] had taken
over. Most of the playwrights who were active in
the early years of the off-off-Broadway movement
became sort of outcasts, (in Cummings 53)

Women playwrights, in particular, found that they were

required to make "horrible compromises to get produced" or

that in the hands of some directors their plays were

transformed into "vehicleEs] for feminine violation" (Megan

Terry; Rosalyn Drexler, in Gussow 44). In 1972, Fornes

joined with other avant-garde women playwrights (Terry,

Drexler, Julie Bovasso, Adrienne Kennedy, and Rochelle

Owens) to form the Women's Theatre Council, a cooperative

theatre to produce women’s work. Fornes explained in a New

York Times article about the establishment of the WTC that

"Men are writing out of their dreams. Ours are feminine

dreams. Now we can say yes, we are women" (in Gussow 44).

But no one would fund the Women’s Theatre Council

because they "had no track record" (Terry, in Betsko 385),

even though all six women had been produced and reviewed

throughout the 60s and five had won Obies for playwriting.
Undaunted, they joined forces with a number of male

playwrights, including Ed Bullins and Sam Shepard (Keyssar

21), and formed the New York Theatre Strategy (1972-79),

which Fornes ran (almost single-handedly) for five of its

six years. Theatre Strategy shared the virtues and vices of

60s Off-Off-Broadway venues which allowed playwrights to set

their own pace, to test ideas without inordinate worries

about pleasing the audience, and "to be involved with [their

own] work--and that of others twenty-four hours a day" (Paul

Foster, in Bigsby 26). At the time, running Theatre

Strategy "twenty-four hours a day" suited Fornes’

idiosyncratic, do-it-yourself methods and gave her an

opportunity to learn every aspect of avant-garde theatre on

the job and to work on numerous productions of new plays.

Not until 1977 after directing and producing her own new

play, Fefu and Her Friends, did she hire managerial help and

begin her current prolific period of writing.

Changing Writing Style

The years 1969-1977 were a relatively fallow period for

Fornes as a playwright. Although the heavy production

schedule at the New York Theatre Strategy pre-empted full­

time writing, Fornes also felt that with Aurora

(unpublished, produced 1973), and even with Molly’s Dream,

that she had begun to repeat herself, and so during the

early 70s, she worked to change her writing style, the

 174

hardest and "most important thing for a writer to do" (in

Cummings 54).

Writing Tango Palace had been an exhilarating but "very-

passionate" experience, a spontaneous burst of creativity

that 'took possession’ of Fornes (in Savran 59). This

spontaneity produced a surprisingly good first play but

provided Fornes with no techniques for writing "painful

things without going through the agony [her]self" or for

accessing her creativity at will (in Savran 59). This

explains the rather abrupt change in tone from Tango *s dark

psychological probing to the lighter satire of her other

early plays, "I started to write things that were lighter

because I just didn’t want to suffer" (59). Throughout the

60s, she experimented with games and exercises in order "to

find ways to be possessed again" (58). Sometimes she "found

that it was possible to be caught up in a kind of writing

where the characters take over, [where] it’s fluid and fast

and interesting" (in Savran 58); but at other times, she

procrastinated, re-arranging her silverware, starching her

jeans, doing anything to avoid writing (Fornes, "Messages"

40) .

While managing Theatre Strategy and helping other

playwrights, casts, and directors solve creative problems,

Fornes continued to lead writing workshops for which she

devised yoga- and visualization-based warm-ups and adapted

 175

Method and improvisational acting techniques for use in

writing plays. During this time, she came to believe that

playwrights, like actors, could "gain an enormous depth by

going to the past, to the future, to other times that are

between [those] scenes" actually included in the final

script (in Cummings 53-4). In her own work, Fornes uses the

"extra" scenes produced through this "research" method to

enrich her characters’ often brief appearances onstage and

to 'instantly' revise scripts in rehearsal. (During

rehearsal for Night, I noted that Fornes was able to add,

cut, or rearrange speeches and scenes during the actors’

rest breaks.)

These techniques, in conjunction with staging

preliminary (written) text as part of the writing process

(which allows experimentation with the visual, aural, and

relational dimensions that actors provide), enable Fornes to

identify areas to be clarified and/or text to be pared away.

Watching the script in performance greatly facilitates

Fornes’ aim to circumvent easy catharsis or closure and

allows her to delete lines and actions that undercut her

vision of the contradictory, ambiguous nature of human

realities. From these writing experiments in the 60s and

70s, Fornes developed a two-phase writing process: an

initial 'additive’ stage which invites creativity and admits

irrational ideas and images, followed by a 'subtractive’

 176

phase during which she analyzes and edits (both on paper and

on stage) selections from a rich repository of relevant

material. Fefu and Her Friends (1977) was the first product

of her changing writing/directing process.

By the time Fornes returned to full-time authorship

with Fefu (1977), she had experimented with many forms and

styles in a variety of 60s venues and gained valuable

production experience while managing the New York Theatre

Strategy. As a 'convert’ to theatre at age 30, Fornes set

out to learn all the crafts of her new field, meanwhile

producing significant experimental works. Beginning with

Fefu, Fornes shifted from free-wheeling satires of character

types and forms of entertainment, to studies of rounder

characters in more particularized, real world contexts.

Yet, as we will see, she retained her fascination with the

irrational and the unconscious elements of human experience,

elements to which she maintained access through her

increasingly controllable creative process.

 CHAPTER FIVE

FEFU AND HER CRITICS

If I start writing and am patient enough, I

sooner or later find something which is in
the lower layers of my being, and that is the
thing I should be writing about. These
things are passionate yearnings that activate
my writing and activate me as a person.
Sometimes these things are minute, sometimes
they are puzzling, but if I am patient and a
good observer they will always reveal
themselves to me and uncover the nature of
the work I am doing, like pieces of a larger
mass that crumble and reveal its nature.

Fornes - "Creative Danger"

Once or twice a decade, I suppose, a play or

book or song comes along and so changes the
way you look at the world that theater or
literature or music will never be quite the
same again. Fefu and Her Friends is just
such an experience.

Rob Baker - After Dark

The 1977 production of Fefu and Her Friends marked a

turning point in Fornes’ writing/directing career. With

Fefu. Fornes moved beyond broad social satire and began to

reveal the acuity and complexity of her perception of social

relations. Or as critic Bonnie Marranca stated, "until now,

[Fornes] has only teased us with her intelligence"

177
 178

(Playwrights 62). Furthermore, Fefu showcased 'new’

playwrighting/directing techniques— most notably, Fornes’

staging of four simultaneous scenes in separate rooms, so

that spectators are required to circulate in random order

through each of four settings to witness all of Part II.

However, I attribute Rob Baker’s change in worldview to

Fornes’ jestic employment of innovative, even startling,

textual and performative images in order to expose

suppressed truths about (women’s) social circumstances.

In this chapter, I review the genesis and storyline of

Fefu, Fornes’ most widely-known work, and then present an

argumentative review of the critical literature on this

play* Fefu’s continuing capacity for inciting both

political and aesthetic criticism (as well as the delayed

approbation for many of her later works) supports my

characterization of Fornes as a "bard-prophet,” a seer often

ahead of, or in jestic opposition to, currently accepted

views of social and interpersonal relations. The diversity

of Fefu criticism reflects significant changes in the

(feminist) political and aesthetic theories that inform

theatre criticism. Thus, in addition to enriching the

explication of Fornes’ play, my dialogic engagement with

each interpretation strives to illuminate the advantages and

disadvantages of a particular reading’s theoretical

assumptions. After discussing Fefu from my perspective as

 179

dramaturg for a 1989 production, I conclude the chapter by-

summarizing my interpretation of Fefu ’a disturbing images

and ambiguous actions.

* * *

Fefu and Her Friends (1977) announced Fornes’ renewed

exploration of the darker side of human relations and her

return to more tightly-crafted pieces, such as Tango Palace.

Most of Fornes’ early plays, which had precipitated from

relatively random "messages," were quickly written and

loosely organized; in them she unravelled and exposed the

paradoxes underlying conventional notions of reality. But

for Fefu, Fornes developed a tight interweave of dialogue,

spoken internal monologue, simultaneous scenes, and dense

images. Equipped with her practical experience in producing

experimental theatre for the New York Theatre Strategy (from

1972-77) and the range of dramatic techniques she had

experimented with throughout the 60s, Fornes created for

Fefu a structure complex enough to handle eight distinct

female characters’ attempts to reconcile the unbearable

contradictions inherent in their lives under patriarchy.

This evolution--from stock types to rounder, more

conflicted characters and from general satire of 'society’

to a detailed examination of one day inside a specific

woman’s home in 1935— contributed to Fefu’s inordinately

long (13 year) gestation period. Similar to Fornes' plays

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of the 60s, Fefu began with two unconnected scenes: one

about a woman in a wheelchair and another based on a Mexican

joke about a man who shoots a woman in order to pick her out

of a crowd ("Messages" 30). In typical Fornes-fashion,

however, these 'received messages’ or found materials are

recombined and transformed, so that in the play the woman’s

paralysis resulted from a shooting incident in which she was

not struck by the bullet, and the "joke" is reversed— Fefu

diffuses marital tension by frequently shooting blanks at

her husband.

But these images appeared just when Fornes was turning

her attention to producing new playwrights’ work (with the

formation of the Women’s Theatre Council and later with the

New York Theatre Strategy). However, the play was still on

her mind in 1972 when she announced that her contribution to

the W T C ’s first season would be a new piece entitled Fefu

and Her Friends based in part on the co-founders of the

(short-lived) Council. Even while planning seasons,

negotiating mission statements, and writing grants, Fornes

was 'collecting’ material— in this case gleaning

characterizations and interpersonal dynamics from WTC

meetings, which would later inform the fundraiser rehearsal

scene in Part III of Fefu. These images and ideas remained

dormant however, not only because of Fornes’ production

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activities, but also because she was consciously changing

her writing process.

In late 1976, Fornes forced herself to finish the play

by slating it for production at Theatre Strategy. To

achieve the specificity and concision necessary to write a

script like Fefu. Fornes set up an atmosphere that

discouraged distraction and elicited more focused images and

dialogue. She developed the daily habit of getting "into

that very, very personal, intimate mood to write" by reading

through a folder in which she kept a journal of all her

"personal sufferings" and by listening to recordings of the

passionate Cuban singer, Olga Guillot, whose "voice kept me

oiled" ("Messages" 32, 35).

Fefu and Her Friends, the first product of Fornes’

changed writing methods, offers the audience entree into the

deep and long-standing relationships of eight college-

educated women gathered at Fefu’s country house to plan a

fundraising event. Despite Fefu’s pessimistic statement

that women are not "well together," the play discloses the

conversations and concerns that the women share among

themselves. In Part II, when the audience is divided into

small groups which rotate through four simultaneously

performed scenes, this sense of being privy to the

characters’ (inter)personal musings is intensified.

 182

In these intimate close-ups, Fornes lays bare the

commonality and pervasiveness of women’s dis-ease in society

precisely by showing the characters in separate but

overlapping meditations. In the kitchen, Paula’s

mathematical calculations of a love affair's duration (7

years 3 months) are disturbed by the appearance of her ex­

lover, Cecilia. In the study, Cindy, who has been drinking

steadily since morning, tells Christina of her horrific

dream about being molested by secret police and then pursued

by an enraged doctor. In the middle of a game of croquet,

Fefu confesses to Emma that she is suffering an agony that

is "not physical” and "not sorrow" (reminiscent of Betty

Friedan’s identification of women’s "problem with no name").

And in the bedroom, the audience witnesses Julia’s

hallucinatory struggles with the misogynous Judges, forwhom

she must recite this catechism:

The human being is of the masculine gender . . . .

Everything on earth is for the human being, which
is man . . . . Woman is not a human being.She
is: 1--A mystery. 2— Another species. 3--As yet
undefined. 4--Unpredictable; therefore wicked and
gentle and evil and good which is evil.— If a man
commits an evil act, he must be pitied. The evil
comes from outside him, through him and into the
act. Woman generates the evil herself . . . .

(Her head moves as if slapped.)

D o n ’t hit me. Did n ’t I just say my prayer?

(A smaller slap.)

I believe it. (She lies back.)

 183

They say when I believe the prayer I will forget

the judges. And when I forget the judges I will
believe the prayer. They say both happen at once.
And all women have done it. Why c a n ’t I? {Fefu
35)

When the women come back together in Part III for a

rehearsal, the stage is set for increasingly volatile

encounters. Sue reminds her friends how their college had

employed methods of suppressing bright or outgoing coeds by

labelling them deviant and submitting them to psychiatric

treatment {a gendered account of the sort of educational,

medical, and penal discipline Foucault theorizes). Although

usually mild-mannered, Sue doesn't allow Christina and Emma

to dismiss her point by stereotyping their former classmates

as nymphomaniacs or crazies. Working-class Paula lets slip

her critique of the rich "who make such a mess" of their

advantages and her opinion that "we should teach the poor

and let the rich take care of themselves" (57). Usually

evasive Cecilia responds to this honest outburst by going to

Paula with open arms and a passionate kiss. Isolated Julia

shares with Cindy her belief that "we are constantly

threatened by death" and must be rescued "every moment of

our lives" by guardians who appear in such forms as sunlight

or people who love us (52). But the final showdown occurs

between Fefu and Julia, after Fefu sees (or hallucinates?)

that wheelchair-bound Julia can walk.

 184

Alone at last, Fefu divulges her obsessive dependence

on her husband and asks Julia for advice, but she can see in

Julia’s eyes something of her overwhelming struggle. Feeling

fearful and trapped, Fefu accuses Julia of giving in to

death and demands that Julia get up and fight with her. As

Fefu violently shakes her wheelchair, Julia explains that

she is too exhausted to fight any longer, and blesses Fefu.

When they are discovered by a horrified Christina, Fefu

exits gun in hand. When a shot is heard, blood appears on

Julia’s forehead as she slumps in her chair; the play ends

as Fefu returns with a dead rabbit, saying, "I killed it . .

. I shot . . . and killed it . . . Julia . . . "

* * *

The shocking and enigmatic ending of Fefu, typical of

Fornes’ later work, disallows easy or certain

interpretation. Indeed, the rich ambiguity of the entire

piece has spawned a heterogeneous body of criticism which

can be divided for analytical purposes into two general

periods: 1980-85 (aesthetic and gynocentric criticism) and

1989-90 (feminist literary, post-structuralist, materialist

feminist, and pragmatic feminist criticism). This divide is

marked by the 1986 publication of the later "Mud" plays

(which cast new light on Fefu) as well as by significant

changes in dramatic criticism and feminist theory. In the

earlier period, only one critic (Pevitts) addresses a

 185

primarily university-based audience; while all the later

articles are 'academic,’ they differ in the degree to which

they rely on relatively speculative theories rather than

more sociological or pragmatic ideas. In this review, I

first delineate the critic’s general approach to the play

and highlight their distinctive findings. I then examine

their interpretations of key relationships and scenes in

Fefu, teasing out the textual and theoretical bases of their

particular readings and the implications of their

conclusions for pragmatic/activist feminism. Key issues for

comparing interpretations of Fefu and Her Friends include:

Fornes’ characterization of (particularly educated) women’s

conditions under patriarchy, the impact of audience

response/participation in Part II, critics’ characterization

of Fefu’s and Julia’s relationship, and the significance of

the plays’ final actions. As I argue throughout this study,

critics' theoretical orientations and historical contexts

condition their interpretations and, in many cases, hamper

their readings of Fefu and of its ramifications for

progressive feminist theatre for social change.

Bonnie Marranca, co-editor of Performing Arts Journal

and a supporter of avant-garde American drama, takes a

primarily aesthetic approach in her 1981 review of Fornes’

plays through Fefu. Although Marranca complains about

"feminist dogmatism" and "the trivialities which frequently

 186

pass today as feminist art," she praises Fefu for being

"deeply feminist in its perspective and guiding spirit,"

finding the play to be refreshingly "non-rhetorical and non-

ideological" (Playwrights 61). Marranca was also pleasantly

surprised to find a mysterious plot that "subverts realistic

conventions” and fragmentary characters in this seemingly

realistic play (60).

Marranca appreciates Fornes’ presentation of a "world

of women and how they think about themselves" in which

female characters can "be themselves--not mothers,

daughters, wives, or sisters" (61-62). More strikingly,

Marranca notes that the women characters display "different

personalities reflecting different points of view about

human relations" and posits that "Fornes devised [the

structure of Part II] to isolate the separate realities of

the characters" (60). Although I would add that these

differences are balanced by interconnections and shared

gender oppression (signalled by Fefu’s and Sue's weaving

through more than one Part II scene and by the full-cast

gathering in Part III), the differences between the

characters (other than Fefu and Julia) are seldom noted by

critics, many of whom universalize the characters as ’women’

or as aspects of one woman.

Despite her recognition of the women’s different points

of view, Marranca collapses Julia into a "symbol of

 187

oppression" and concludes that in the end, "Fefu accepts at

last that Julia is 'dead’ to the feminist struggle" (61).

Marranca implies that Julia "gave in" to the reactionary

forces of male-dominated society and fails to associate her

paralysis with the disorders apparent in the other women’s

lives. For example, she makes little of intelligent,

competent Fefu’s resort to anarchistic irony and impulsive

sniping. She describes the scene between Cindy and

Christina as "casual, affectionate moments passed in the

study of French lessons," entirely ignoring Cindy’s account

of her nightmare which mirrors the malaise suffered by other

characters in Part II. Although Marranca liked Fornes’

environmental staging which she felt drew audiences into

"active intimacy with the actors," Marranca confines her

subtle, and non-activist, feminist critique to psychological

rather than social analysis.

In her 1981 entry on Fornes for the Dictionary of

Literary Biography written from a gynocentric feminist

perspective, Phyllis Mael asserts that the play as a whole

contradicts Fefu’s provocative opening statement that men

"are well together, women are not" by showing "women

laughing, relaxing, playing, and caring for one another"

(190). She applauds Fornes for allowing her female

characters to "relate in a way that is relatively new in

theatre" and for acknowledging "an emerging feminist

 188

consciousness" (190). But Ma e l ’s appreciation for Fornes’

depiction of women’s friendships leads her to an overly

optimistic reading of the play’s ’message’:

Women can be wonderful with each other . . . .

All women need to do is recognize each other and
like each other and give strength to each other
and respect their own minds. (190)

Consistent with this interpretation, Mael describes "the

dominant mood of the play [as] the joy of female friendship"

(190); she seems less impressed by the women’s conscious

fears and their subconscious struggles against misogynous

agents in their dreams and hallucinations. It is probable

that Mael’s excitement about Fefu is fueled by the dearth of

strong (or for that matter, positive) portrayals of female

relationships on the contemporary American stage and by the

feminist call for sisterhood and female solidarity current

in the early 1980’s. But it is unclear what she expects

these friendships to accomplish within a larger

(unmentioned) socio-political context: the overthrow of

patriarchy, the cessation of gender-based oppression, or

even dissolution of inequalities based on differences among

women? It must be remembered, however, that this reading

predates the late 1980's problematizing of the unified self

and women’s presumed commonality.

Given Mael’s theoretical orientation and her support

for respectful friendships among women, the distinctions she

 189

draws between Julia, Fefu, and Christina are surprisingly

pointed. She contrasts Julia’s torment ("the suffering that

strong, intelligent women can experience") with Christina’s

conformity, her willingness "to accept the dominant

patriarchal view" of women (191). She suggests that Fefu’s

hallucinations indicate "her growing participation in

Julia’s vision," without either conflating or dichotomizing

Julia and Fefu. Constrained by the limits of a short

article, Mael concludes that Fefu presents "intelligent

women who understand the distortion of women’s personalities

that can occur in a patriarchal world in which women are

strangers about whom horrendous myths are perpetuated"

(191). Although this statement focuses too exclusively on

the psychological level (women's personalities) at the

expense of social critique and seems a bit passive in

repeating the patriarchal construction that "women are

strangers" in a male world, Mael alone among early feminist

critics refuses to blame Julia for her paralysis. Instead,

she juxtaposes Julia’s identification (or empathy) with

nature against the conventional designation of man as hunter

and sometimes despoiler of nature.

In an entry for Women in American Theatre (1981),

Beverly Byers Pevitts uses the most explicitly theoretical

approach of Fefu’s early critics. Through the lens of (US)

gynocentric theory, Pevitts examines the play for the

 190

following feminist hallmarks: an accurate depiction of

women’s experience, friendships among women, transformations

or conversion to feminism, and women’s transcendence of

patriarchal definitions and limitations. She deems Fefu to

be a feminist play because of its sensibility, subject

matter, "universal” female characters, and structure

(Pevitts, "Fefu" 314). However, Pevitts’ very inclusive use

of "feminism," based upon assumed commonalities of

experience among all women, encourages her to overgeneralize

"women’s experience" (in the singular) and to speak for all

female spectators as if they were of one mind.' For

example, Pevitts interprets the simultaneous scene structure

of Part II as a dramatization of the "feminist insight" that

women’s lives are "repetitive and capable of being viewed in

0
any random sequence." Moreover, Pevitts seemingly speaks

for all women in asserting that "even as women we do not

^Cultural or gynocentric feminism tends to

overemphasize commonalities among women and to speak of
women’s culture, lives, experiences, etc, in the singular;
speculative theories in general tend to eschew what they
term "sociological" or "ethnographic" specificity in favor
of abstracted identity positions such as the spectator or
the audience.
p
Assigning origins to this insight is complicated by
the fact that it was Ross Wetzsteon (in a 1977 review of
Fefu in Plays and Players) who concluded that

the meaning [of the Part II structure] . . . is that

women’s lives in a chauvinist society are to a large
degree random and repetitive and can be seen in any
sequence. (in O ’Malley 108-9)
 191

respond negatively to this suggestion [because] in the very

repetition of the four scenes . . . we view intimately

women’s need for women" (314). Elsewhere Pevitts speaks of

discovering "how woman feels about being woman" and of how

"women feel" about commercial images of women created by men

(315, 316).

Despite these problems, Pevitts’ (almost revolutionary)

focus on women as spectators of women onstage conveys the

"kinesthetic experience" of being "enclosed with the

performers within the four walls" in Part II which

encourages (at least some members of) the audience to become

"experientially involved in the play," empathizing with and

bearing witness to the women’s conversations rather than

just "following a linear story" (315). In her 1980

dissertation, Pevitts reflects upon her experience of being

an audience member at more length:

The third part of the play has much more effect on

the audience as we hear the characters discuss
Julia who is in bed, hear the laughter from the
water fight, hear the shot of the gun from the
garden, because we, the audience, have been to
those places and have perceived them kines-
thetically. We perceived them with our bodies as
well as our minds and now we are more acutely
sensitive to the discussion and sound that we hear
from those spaces. We become a part of the women
characters and as involved audience members are
connected to them and to their friendships. (Diss
166)

Like critics before her, Pevitts notes that Fornes’

characters break out of stereotypical roles and are complex

 192

speaking subjects who "discuss woman’s loathsomeness, settle

relationships among themselves, rehearse speeches, and

recount visions" ("Fefu" 315). Nonetheless, Pevitts extends

Marranca’s relegation of Julia to a symbol of women’s

entrapment and subjugation by further reducing this central

character to a position or mindset which must be transcended

in order for women to recognize their own and other women’s

strength. Thus, Julia’s status as a particular individual,

not solely responsible for her paralysis, is lost and

Pevitts concludes that Julia "must be symbolically killed at

the end of the play so that the new image of herself can

emerge" (316-17).

In contrast, I find little support for Julia’s

emergence, and Fefu is hardly a triumphant figure. Fefu

comes back in, perhaps to seek Julia’s approval, but speaks

in broken phrases to now-dead Julia while their shocked

friends gather around the wheelchair, leaving Fefu apart

from the others and in visual tension with the group.

Perhaps Fefu, like other Fornes’ heroines (Sarita and

Leticia) who take impulsive violent actions to break out of

emotional entrapment, has the potential to recover from this

accident and to change her life for the better, but

vulnerable Julia is 'saved' from her torments only by losing

her life--and at the hands of someone she loved, someone who

should have been a guardian for her, someone she had

 193

forgiven in advance. On balance then, I find Pevitts’ 1981

gynocentric reading both too optimistic about women’s

ability to change the world by changing their individual

attitudes and making friends, and too pessimistic in blaming

(and even discarding) victimized characters who are judged

to be ’dead to the feminist struggle.’

For her survey New American Dramatists: 1960-1980, Ruby

Cohn selected playwrights whose bodies of work were readily

available in published editions because she hoped to reach

readers who "will not have seen many contemporary plays

performed" (5). She groups Fornes with playwrights (such as

Jack Gelber, Jean-Claude Van Itallie, and Megan Terry) who

"defied literature to concentrate on performance" (50).

Working from a primarily aesthetic perspective and without

the benefit of knowing the later plays, Cohn includes Fornes

in her judgment that "although [these playwrights] might be

personally political, they dramatized social issues only

obliquely, if at all" (50). Thus, I find it interesting

that Cohn describes Fefu as "subtly feminist" and breaks

from straightforward description to proclaim that "wounded

though she is, Julia triumphs over Fefu whose hesitancies

cast doubt on her ability to kill ’it*" (72). Differing

from other early critics, Cohn compares Julia’s fortitude

with Fefu’s "hesitancies" and focuses on the conflicted

feelings that Fefu tries to resolve by annihilating a symbol

 194

of the misogyny suffusing her friends’ lives, relationships,

and psyches. Cohn reminds that in Fornes’ early plays such

as Tango Palace {discussed in the same chapter), symbolic

killings do not necessarily end internalized personal or

social battles. But returning to aesthetic analysis, Cohn

concludes that "the play is true to Fornes’ own major theme

— the triumph of the irrational" (72). Although I agree

with Cohn that psychic events (in this case, struggles with

internalized oppression) are central in many Fornes’ plays,

I believe Cohn’s interest in "the interpretation and

evaluation of dramatic literature in the conventional sense"

encourages her to discover this non-sexist, but largely de­

politicized, "major theme" (6, 72).

Helene Keyssar includes a brief analysis of Fefu in her

1985 volume Feminist Theatre, a survey of British and

American plays organized by gynocentric concepts of

transformation ("the theatrical manifestation of

metamorphosis of contexts, actions, and most crucially, of

characters") and of recognition (not of a "true" self but

rather "recognition of others and a concomitant

transformation of the self and the world") (xiv). To her

credit, Keyssar identifies Fefu as the most recent in a

series of Fornes’ ambivalent protagonists (including

SHE/Ruth and Molly) who are struggling to alter gender-

stereotyped ways of relating to women as well as men.

 195

However, Keyssar's acknowledgement of Fefu’s struggle is

counterbalanced by her interpretation of "the troubling

figure of Julia . . . [whose] terror— of violence, of men,

and of her own visions— has made her apparently insane"

(124-5). Keyssar grants that Julia is "as aware as Fefu of

the enormity of the struggle women must undertake" (as if

all women’s struggles were identical, an idea that the play

itself undercuts) but then claims that "Julia chooses not to

fight but to yield" (125; emphasis added). Going even

farther than Pevitts, Keyssar praises Fefu for refusing "to

let Julia go" and celebrates Fefu’s move "to the symbolic

terrain [where she] kills the woman-as-victim . . . in her

own terms in order to ignite the explosion of a community of

women" (215) .
* * *

After a five year hiatus in Fornes’ criticism,

interpretations resume. However, in the late 1980s,

aesthetic and gynocentric perspectives were supported or

supplanted by theories adapted from feminist literary study,

feminist sociology, poststructuralism, and pragmatic

feminism.

Keyssar's characterization of Julia as living "the

other side of Fefu’s paradox" anticipates Gayle Austin’s

intriguing but ultimately unsubstantiated reading of Julia

as Fefu’s mad double. In "The Madwoman in the Spotlight"

 196

(1989), Austin adapts feminist literary theory about mad

and/or confined women in novels to illuminate one facet of

Fornes’ later plays.^ Austin identifies Julia as Fornes1

"double" by applying Sandra Gilbert’s and Susan Gubar’s

perception that a madwoman appears in women’s writing "'not

merely, as . . . an antagonist or foil to the heroine,’ but

as 'the author *s double, an image of her own anxiety and

rage’" ("Madwoman" 77). Austin’s designation of Julia as a

spokesperson for Fornes’ "anxiety and rage" is supported by

Fornes’ account of writing Fefu (by getting into a very

personal intimate mood and reading through her journal of

"personal sufferings"). But when Austin literalizes these

theoretical resonances by setting up a series of similitudes

between Jane Eyre/Bertha and Fefu/Julia, her argument forces

her to dichotomize these complexly related characters and to

equate Julia/Fefu with oppositions such as mad/sane,

confined/active, and fearful/courageous.

In a brief synopsis, Austin excerpts Julia’s speeches,

selectively quoting only from her hallucinations and

omitting instances in which Julia disputes the judges,

compassionately listens to her friends’ concerns, and tries

to share some of her painful understandings with them.

0
Austin cites Sandra M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar and Elaine
Showalter and also refers to Helene Cixous and Catherine
Clement.
 197

Guided by her madwoman thesis and perhaps overvaluing overt

action, Austin finds Julia praiseworthy only when she "acts

out the repressed, angry side of Fefu by struggling with the

'guardians’ [sic]" (79)J Having subordinated Julia to

Fefu, Austin then speculates that "perhaps [Julia’s] death

frees Fefu," an interpetation she backs up by quoting

Keyssar and Pevitts. However, in keeping with her secondary

theme about women's confinement, Austin suggests that the

"play must be experienced to be fully comprehended [because]

part of its effect comes from confining the audience [in

Part II] in the same limited space the characters inhabit"

(78) .

Although I d o n ’t agree with Austin's analysis that

Julia is Fefu’s double (all the women in the play are

interconnected in a number of ways), Austin’s discussion of

how Julia differs from 19th century madwomen is insightful.

She notes that in Fefu. Fornes brings her madwoman out of

the attic into the spotlight, where she speaks the truth of

her confined subjectivity within patriarchal culture.

Austin also notes that in Fefu the oppressive male figure

has been "pushed offstage" and thus "his control [has] been

Austin, like other later 'theoretically-informed’

critics, conflates the oppressive, patriarchal "judges" with
Julia’s "guardians," whom Julia identifies as "life," "the
sun," "those things we take pleasure in" as well as the
human immune system and people who give love to each other"
(Fefu 52-3).
 193

lessened by his absence" (80). I might agree with Austin if

she argued that removing Phillip from the stage lessens his

effect on the audience, for Fornes has virtually eliminated

his opportunity to speak for himself and to dominate the

conversation as male characters are wont to do. More

importantly though, Phillip's physical absence from the

world within the play clarifies Fornes’ expos of

structural, culturally-diffused sexism, which would only be

muddied by including one specific ma n ’s appearance,

personality, intentions, and relationships.® This

'subtractive’ method of interrogating sexism rather than one

particular male-female relationship exemplifies the subtlety

with which Fornes’ stages the complex workings of gender

relations.

Lurana O ’Malley’s 1989 exploration of Fornes’

"unashamedly positive" depiction of "women’s work" is based

primarily on sociological treatises about housework and a

wide reading of Fornes’ writings rather than on literary or

discourse theory (103). O'Malley contends that the

repetitive practices of housekeeping may be seen as valuable

meditational rituals which "serve to stem loss" and through

®Ann C. Hall makes the same point:

By removing male characters from the stage in

Fefu, the play demonstrates the persistent effect
men and the patriarchy have upon women. (3)
 199

which "a woman creates herself as she creates order” (109,

104). After positing that the "act of learning" can be

viewed as ”a subset of the repetitive tasks that constitute

housework" (112), O ’Malley finds that studying and (I would

add) schoolteaching fit her description of "women’s work"

that stems losses and creates selves. But she also notes

that formal learning (and professing) have traditionally

been designated "men’s work," and that in Fef u . women such

as Fefu and Julia who 'know too much’ or who challenge the

(gendered) status quo endanger themselves and other women by

seeking "the paths to self-knowledge" traditionally reserved

for men (113, 116).

O ’Malley also describes housekeeping as "a preventive

measure against the intrusions of the natural world" and

asserts that although we d o n ’t see Fefu clean or study, as

hostess she maintains the "the proper balance of inner and

outer in the framework of her house" (112). By substituting

"patriarchal" for "natural" and considering the 'house­

keeping’ and nurturing activities of all the women, it is

possible to extend O ’Malley’s insight to encompass the

concerted striving of Fefu and her friends to balance the

influences of inner and outer in their creation of self and

community. Thus, Fornes subverts conventional domestic

drama, in which women create (for men) havens from the weary

world, by showing female characters struggling to maintain a

 200

temporary and permeable shelter for women within the

patriarchal world.

On the whole, O ’Malley’s article (and Fornes’ plays)

strike a balance between gynocentric revaluing of

traditional women’s work and the liberal feminist tenet that

these chores are (always and in every context) stultifying

entrapments or merely repetitive actions wasted in the

service of men. However, at one point, O ’Malley tips the

balance towards gynocentrism by advancing the following

unsupported and depoliticized generalization in which she

seems to have conflated the situation of the characters with

the dramaturgical strategies of the playwright:

Fefu and her friends are not oppressed by their

invisible male counterparts. Their logic is
merely different; cyclical and not linear, born
from patience, not the obsessive drive to move
forward that is characteristic of most dramatic
structures. (109)

In his 1989 article "Still Playing Games," William

Worthen uses poststructuralist and (neo)gynocentric

ff
theories0 to explicate Fornes’ innovative blend of

aesthetics and politics. By considering Fefu within her

C
°Worthen draws his feminist literary theory from Gender
and Reading, edited by Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio
Schweikart (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986), in which
Schweikart uses Nancy Chodorow’s and Carol Gilligan’s
theories to argue that "men define themselves through
individuation and separation from others, while women have
more flexible ego boundaries and define and experience
themselves in terms of their affiliations and relationships
with others" (in Worthen 179).
 201

entire oeuvre, Worthen is able to discern Fornes'

increasingly pointed strategies for interrogating

conventional performance and ideology. He usefully

distinguishes her "delicate, sometimes rueful, occasionally

explosive irony [and] witty moral toughness . . . [from] the

'heavy, slow, laborious and pedestrian’ didacticism we may

expect of 'ideological' drama" (Worthen 181).

Worthen begins his analysis by defining ideology as

"the ongoing social processes that address us, qualify our

actions with meaning, and so continually constitute and

reconstitute who we are" (168). Worthen’s definition

remains one important step away from the pragmatic

understanding that subjects and social processes are

mutually constitutive. Thus he misses Fornes’ interest in

showing how oppressed characters manipulate tactical spaces

e
within disciplinary regimes of knowledge/power, and more

specifically, how Fefu and her friends embrace or resist

painful, but potentially liberatory, realizations.

Consistent with his focus on the one-way constitution

of subjects, Worthen concedes too much success to

patriarchal realism's attempts to coerce a singular,

masculine spectatorial viewpoint. To illustrate this

n
'For my discussion of de Certeau’s notion of "tactical
spaces" and Foucault’s concept of "disciplinary regimes of
power/knowledge," see chapter two.
 202

perception, Worthen selectively quotes Cecilia’s theory that

we each have our own system of receiving

information, placing it, responsibility to it.
That system can function with such a bias that it
could take any situation and translate it into one
formula. (in Worthen 178; cf. Fefu 43)

Interestingly, Worthen does not note Cecilia’s awareness and

opposition to the efforts of such ’biased’ systems to force

a falsely unified perspective. In fact, his quote omits

Cecilia’s contention that "the main reason for stupidity or

even madness" is the failure to make "distinctions" about a

speaker’s intent, the context of the interaction, and the

listener’s influence on the speaker’s behavior (Fefu 43).

In addition to cutting Cecilia’s main point, Worthen’s quote

deletes the measure of agency and choice that (different)

speakers and listener/interpreters exert in every

communicative exchange.

Given his interest in spectatorship, Worthen derives

much of his interpretation from Part II. Although he

reiterates such truisms as "the realistic audience sees with

a single eye" (180), Worthen claims that

Fornes not only draws the audience into the

performance space, she actively challenges and
suspends the epistemological structure of
realistic vision, predicated as it is on an
invisible, singular, motionless, masculine
interpreter situated outside the field of dramatic
and theatrical activity. (178)

Worthen sets out to show how Fornes replaces the"invisible

[masculine] voyeur . . . with a self-evidently

 203

theatricalized body, an 'audience,' a community sharing

irreconcilable yet interdependent experiences" (177, 180).

Yet he concludes that Fornes’ play "casts us as the speakers

[of Julia’s absent voices], since we enact the role of her

unseen, coercive tormentors" (179; emphasis added).

This claim implies that all spectators necessarily

share Worthen's "complicit" subject position as Julia’s

voyeur/tormentor— a claim contradicted by earlier (female)

critics' descriptions of the audience’s participation in

Part II as "active intimacy," "becoming a part of" and

"connecting with" the women characters. Furthermore,

Worthen contradicts his own earlier assertion that Fefu

"bears little confidence in the adequacy or authority of the

single viewing subject characteristic of both film and

fourth-wall realism" (178), by stating that as a result of

being displaced in Part II, "we [the ’unified’ audience]

return to the auditorium in part 3, to assume the role of

’spectator’ with a fuller sense of the social legitimacy

embodied in that perspective" (180; emphasis added).

He then lauds Fefu’s parallel assumption of a conventionally

powerful (and oppressive) masculine role:

so Fefu finally appropriates the objectifying

"bias" of the unseen man in order to defend
herself--and free Julia— from its oppressive view
. . . [by] cleaning the play’s central "apparatus"
and then assum[ing] the hunter’s part, the "sight"
that subjects the women of the stage. (180)
 204

Thus, Worthen seems to recommend that feminists simply take

up dominant and dominating tools and roles, such as the

objectifying gaze of the spectator. But his reading

(inadvertently?) demonstrates the confused logic and

disastrous consequences that may arise when oppressed people

rashly take up the master’s weapons. In addition, Worthen’s

reading exemplifies the potential for the (mis)appropriation

of 'feminist tools’ (such as gaze theory and re-theorized

gynocentrism) to re-assert women’s hopeless entrapment by

largely autonomous social forces.

Before leaving Worthen’s analysis, I would like to

question his interpretation of the spectator’s invisibility.

In what way do spectators of Fefu remain "unseen?" By

unseating the invisible spectator(s ), Fornes brings them

into the same lighted space with her female characters—

where they may be directly addressed by Julia’s rebellious

asides during her enforced recitation (Isadora Duncan

"wasn’t crazy," Fefu is "still walking!"), where the

audience can witness the smallest nuances of gestural,

vocal, and facial expression, and where the actors can see

the reactions of individual audience members (their empathy,

sympathy, amusement, horror, and/or confusion). It would

seem, even from Worthen’s general perspective, that audience

members in the 'traditional realist’ position (anonymously

watching from the darkened house) might feel more complicity

 205

with Julia’s torturers and/or the social forces that

engendered them.

In post-show discussions, Fornes discovered that

a lot of men looked at the play differently from

the women. They wanted to know where the men in
the play were . . . whether the women were married
. . . . There was a man who thought the play was
about Phillip [who] never appears on stage . . .
("New Voices" 90)

Worthen, too, seems to see the play through "the watchful

eyes" of the off-stage male 'characters,' whose "gaze

constructs, enables and thwarts the women of the stage"

(Worthen 177).

In her 1990 article on "Performative Language as

Gestus" in Fornes’ plays, Deborah Geis adapts Kristeva’s

theory of the speaking subject in order to posit that women

playwrights (such as Fornes) are "drawn to the monologue

form" because the use of monologue "can be . . . a

transgressive or 'deviant' act [which] marks a locus for the

struggle for female subjectivity" (293). Despite

fundamental problems in using Kristevan theory for feminist

performance criticism (noted in chapter one), Geis’

spotlight on Fornes’ monologues illuminates rich material

for examining female characters’ conscious and unconscious

struggles with identity and subjectivity.^

ft
°I would add, however, that feminine and minority
‘preference’ for the monologue form also reflects a long and
continuing history of restricted access to the means of full
theatrical production, a situation Fornes has defied
 206

Although Geis follows materialist feminists in focusing

too narrowly on gender hierarchies (to the exclusion of the

intertwined considerations of class, race, and ethnicity),

she advances a usefully complex understanding of Fefu and

her friends’ relationship to men and tropes of masculinity.

While earlier critics celebrated Fornes for creating

characters who were not encompassed by the roles of mother,

wife, or daughter, Geis concentrates on the characters’

attempts to construct identities "in relationship to (or

more accurately, in contradiction to) their view of men"

(296; emphasis added). Intriguingly, Geis argues that the

women are constructing their identities not in relation to

men or to men’s view of them as women but in relation to the

women’s ideas about what men are like, what it means to be a

man, and by extension, what it means to be a 'woman' and a

'human being.’

Geis notes that in Fefu "the [female] characters have

their language controlled or silenced by the patriarchal

world represented by Fefu’s husband and the other men, who

remain outside the women’s meeting place" (296). But by not

mentioning the women’s resistance or their self-reflection

and 'breaking silence’ with each other about their

constrained speech, Geis invokes a poststructuralist world

throughout her career.

 207

in which the unseen (and thus unchangeable?) male characters

represent a largely autonomous patriarchal power that both

silences and forces the women characters to confess their

'difference.*

Geis astutely identifies Fefu’s line to Cindy and

Christina, "Plumbing is more important than you think," as a

textual gestus, or crux with several levels of meaning: 1)

"Fefu has learned a 'man’s ’ activity and therefore

guaranteed herself a greater degree of autonomy," 2)

plumbing may also refer to the "unmentionable and mysterious

plumbing of the female body, which Fefu has in a sense

reappropriated from the patriarchy by "'learning’ its

workings for herself," and 3) Fefu’s "admonition that it is

'more important than you think’ suggests that women as a

group have been taught . . . to undervalue their femaleness,

their 'plumbing’" (297-8). However, if I add the metaphoric

meaning of "plumbing"— to delve into or scrutinize

underlying meanings— one can recognize moments when Fefu’s

friends also begin to plumb the depths of their psyches and

their relationships to each other, such as Cindy relating

her nightmare, Paula pondering the course of a love affair,

Emma’s dramatic evocation of selves coming to consciousness,

and of course, Julia’s painful struggles with the pervasion

of patriarchal definitions of women.

 Geis posits that Fefu (but curiously, not Julia) is

"cognizant of the challenges involved in acknowledging the

existence of the female body in a society that views it as a

decorative, useless, or inherently loathsome commodity"

(297). Nor does Geis mention Julia’s revelations of the

risks to personal security and sanity that relatively low-

power people (including most women in patriarchal cultures)

face in exposing the underside of things, i.e., the

structural inequalities and hegemonic legitimation backed by

force that maintain the status quo. Geis notes Julia’s

awareness that her 'socialization’ will not be complete

until she internalizes the "prayer" and forgets the judges,

but Geis seems unimpressed by Julia’s resistance and simply

repeats Worthen’s judgment that all "the women of Fefu . . .

share Julia's invisible ‘scar,’ the mark of their paralyzing

subjection to a masculine authority" (297). From Geis'

Kristevan perspective, Julia is a "subject-in-process,"

doomed to the perpetual process of being on trial (in

proc s) and of struggling to become a speaking subject.

From a pragmatic perspective, however, Julia is a subject-

in-practice, a woman stunned by violent encounters with the

machinery of patriarchy and caught between her desire to

protect her friends and to share her dangerous knowledge.

In a surprising (and unsupported) turn away from

Kristevan pessimism, Geis (like Worthen) concludes her

discussion of Fefu by noting that in Part III the audience

shares with the characters a "sense of being a community of

listeners" and further that "such a community is

transgressive" and "capable of generating enormous power"

(298). Despite cautiously inserting Pevitt’s suggestion

that Julia’s death may be a necessary sacrifice,^ Geis

acknowledges that "in view of the odds these characters

face, individual strength in itself is insufficient for the

assertion of identity" (299). Therefore, Geis recommends

the formation of an alternative community "with an awareness

of sexual differences [that] refuses ultimately to

'supervise the memorization of facts’ and resists the

coercion of dominant ideology" (299). In the 1990s, most

feminists are acutely aware of the difficulties in forming

female 'communities’ or coalitions among differently-

positioned women; nonetheless, I find Geis’ suggestion to be

consistent with the sensibility of Fornes’ play, if not with

Geis’ own theoretical framework.

In her 1990 ATHE paper, Ann C. Hall focuses on the

complex view of women and femininity presented in Fornes’

^In fact, Fefu’s impulsive "sacrifice" of her

troublesome friend Julia, might well be seen from a
Kristevan perspective as just the sort of terrorism which
Kristeva hoped to prevent by privileging mothers as
provocative but non-violent dissidents (see Kristeva,
"Women’s Time" 482).
 210

unusual depictions of the domestic sphere— a setting in

which Fornes investigates the values of housework, the

powerful ambivalence of {many) women in heterosexual

relationships, and women’s involvement with mental and

physical domestic violence. Hall celebrates Fornes’

(jestic) strategies which "subtly disturb and disrupt the

systems of representation which seek to codify and stultify

female presence" and which "often thwart conventional and

feminist expectations concerning female behavior" (3).

Guided by Teresa de Lauretis’ call for feminist

discourse that "seeks contradictions, heterogeneity, . . .

division, difference, resistance," Hall argues that both

Julia and Fefu exemplify Fornes’ "complex representations of

women [as] not simply victims or victors" (3, 7). Hall

separates her own (and probably Fornes’) judgment of Julia

from Fefu’s narrower and partisan view, stating that "Fefu,

who envisions a disruptive connection among women cannot

connect with Julia, cannot accept her passive response to

patriarchal oppression" (3). Although I wouldn’t

characterize Julia as "passive," I agree with Hall’s

characterization of Fefu, which includes distinguishing

between Fefu’s laudable activism and the regrettable

consequences of taking rash action. Hall finds Fefu

culpable for not adjusting her tactics for different

 211

contexts and for not listening carefully to those who may be

most affected by her actions:

it is not the patriarchs who kill Julia; it is

Fefu’s shot which simultaneously kills Julia and a
rabbit outside of the house. Fefu may enhance her
relationship with her husband by using such
methods . . . but it does not work with women.
Interconnection, as well as the tools of the
patriarchy, has its responsibilities. (3-4)

Similarly, Northwestern undergraduate students

encountering Fefu for the first time were shocked by the

play’s final action and interpreted it as a warning about

the potential dangers of appropriating the ’master’s

tools. ’1® Citing as evidence Fefu’s espousal of "feeling

like a man" and Christina’s mistaken assumption that it was

Fefu who had fired the shot that originally maimed Julia,

the students saw Fefu’s decision to shoot the rabbit as a

male-identified woman’s desperate resort to an aggressive

masculinist strategy by which Julia is killed and nothing is

solved. Like Hall, the students refrained from providing a

rationalization for the (unintended) elimination of one

woman by another. These readings stand in sharp contrast to

interpretations of Fefu’s action as the necessary

'transcendence of the woman-as-victim (Keyssar, Pevitts) or

^The students, approximately 28 women and 2 men, were

enrolled in Linda Walsh Jenkins' 1989 Theatre/Women’s
Studies course on Women in American Theatre. They were
introduced to Fefu by observing/participating in a cold
reading set in four locations within the classroom building.
 212

as a (metaphoric) appropriation of the masculine prerogative

to 'sight* women through which Fefu successfully "defend[s]

herself— and free[s] Julia" (Worthen 180). Although their

evidence and conclusions vary widely, these divergent

readings demonstrate continuing interest in Fornes*

dramatized questions about the options of low-power people

for combating subjugation, and about the long- and short­

term effects of taking violent action against immediate

representatives of oppression.

* * *

My Pragmatic Perspective as Production Dramaturg. In

1989, after cold-reading the role of Fefu as a teaching

assistant for a Women in Theatre class and seeing Fornes’

production of And What of the Night? at Milwaukee Repertory

Theatre, I had the opportunity to dramaturg a student

production of Fefu at Northwestern (directed by Carolyn

Connelly).^ Working as production dramaturg, rather than

textual critic, gave me the privilege and responsibility to

consider the needs and perspectives of the director,

designers, and all of the actors— a situation rather like

the one Fornes arranges for herself by directing (and

revising) her new scripts during the first few productions.

The director conceived her production as a method of

exposing the workings of internalized misogyny— for both
actors and audience. Rehearsals included participating in a
campus-based "Take Back the Night" march.
 213

Perhaps because feminist drama (or even plays with a number

of challenging women’s roles) are still the exception, the

Northwestern cast of Fefu drew strong actors for all roles.

The performers’ hunger for information about the play, the

author, and the period encouraged me to follow up any leads

or references the script offered. For example, the actor

cast as Julia wanted information and ideas that would help

her to perceive her character as more than a victim and to

capture a sense of the younger Julia who "knew so much" and

was "afraid of nothing" (Fefu 18). Together we explored

Julia’s patience and compassion, her plucky asides during

the "prayer," and her enduring good humor as well as her

confinement to a wheelchair and death at the end of the

play.

As dramaturg, I also investigated Fornes’unusually

specific setting for this play. Fornes claims that sheset

Fefu in 1935 because of her "affection" for the 1930s (the

decade of her childhood) which she characterizes as a

simpler, pre-Freudian time when people were "more wholesome

and trusting" and "accepted each other at face value" (in

Marranca, Interview 109).^ Bonnie Marranca implies that

“Fornes explained to Marranca that she set Fefu in 1935

because, in those days, people

were not constantly interpreting each other or

themselves. Before Freud became popular and
infiltrated our social and emotional lives, ifa
person said, "I love so-and-so," the person
 214

Fornes also wished to pre-date "feminist dogmatism"

(Marranca, Playwrights 61-2). However, in my position as a

35-year-old dramaturg advising a self-consciously feminist

cast and crew in their young 20s, I found it useful to draw

historical parallels between the state of feminism in the

1930s and in the late 1970s:

both were periods of relative retrenchment after

organized feminist activism (the Progressive Era
through the passage of women’s suffrage; the late 60s
and early 70s);

in both periods, many educated women, such as Fornes’

characters and our production team, had taken for
granted the new privileges and choices won by the
previous generation;

however, both groups were also faced with strengthening

counter-feminist backlash which advocated women’s
'return’ to homemaking and family values.

We drew from this temporal parallel a warning about the

dangers of underestimating (continuing) sexism and of the

damage caused by internalizing misogynous messages.

As we worked through the text, we were struck by the

characters’ seeming paradoxes: brassy Fefu’s private agony

listening would believe the statement. Today,

there is an automatic disbelieving of everything
that is said, and an interpreting of it. I t ’s
implied that there’s always some kind of self-
deception about an emotion. (in Marranca, "Real
Life" 109)

^These observations are based in part on the series

"American Women in the Twentieth Century," especially
Dorothy M. Brown, Setting a Course: American Women in the
1920s, (Boston: Twain, 1987); and Susan Ware, Holding Their
Own: American Women in the 1930s. (Boston, Twain, 1982).
 215

and her dependence on Phillip, Christina’s vacillation

between openmindedness and conformity, and paralyzed Julia's

unflinching vision and unselfish protection of others. As a

newly-formed group of a dozen women, we were receptive to

Fornes' portrayal of the differences among the characters

and to the ambivalence, uncertainty, and variety of women's

responses to pervasive sexism. Our sensitivity to the

characters’ differences and to Fornes’ depiction of the

discursive, psychological, and medical coercion of women

were sharpened by our theoretical milieu.

During the 1980s characterizations of power relations

began to shift away from efforts to define the 'category’ or

'nature’ of oppressed groups (in this case 'woman’ or

'women’), and toward a focus on the hegemonic efforts

(apparent in government policies, media representations, and

higher education) to create, disseminate, and naturalize

these confining and polarizing categories. Most graduate

(and many undergraduate) students in the arts and humanities

at Northwestern were exposed to Foucault’s understanding of

power as productive rather than repressive and to his

perceptions of the disciplinary function of medical and

educational institutions. There was also considerable

discussion of Gramsci’s concept of "hegemony" and Bourdieu’s

notion of habitus, which together provide a model of society

in which different groups struggle to control 'common sense’

 216

definitions of the differences among people, definitions

intended to naturalize social division and inequality. In

relation to Fefu, we were interested in Fornes’ polyvocality

and in her exploration of the unsettling (and often

suppressed) contradictions and conflicts experienced by our

would-be heroines. Or to borrow Fefu’s words, these young

artists were willing to "recognize" and to stage that other

"life that is parallel to the one we manifest," a life which

exists "the way worms are underneath the stone" (10).

While dramaturging this production, I discarded a

number of possible reasons for Fornes* characterizations in

Fefu. I came to believe that the characters are not an

assortment of role models to choose among, not a portrait of

women as 'sisters,* not a commenting chorus, nor differing

aspects of one female consciousness. I decided that Fornes,

in keeping with her personal style of 'educational* drama,

is 'demonstrating* how these particular women are making (or

not making) their way in a complex and misogynous world.

Although (in most productions) the characters are all white

and nearly all former schoolmates,^ Fornes underscores their

^Fornes does not specify the race or ethnicity of the

characters in this play primarily concerned with women’s
response to gender and sexual relations, and secondarily,
with class issues. Although it would seem most likely that
the characters are white, several productions have cast
multi-racial ensembles. In a recent production in Oxford,
Ohio, Christina was Japanese and Cecilia was African-
American. At least in these roles and given their use of
'standard* English, their ethnicity was less jarring than
differences in sexual preference and class, and more

importantly, in their varying awareness of women’s

oppression and their individual strategies for mental and

physical survival. Fefu gives voice to misogyny, confronts

her own revulsion/fascination, and acts, if perhaps too

rashly; Christina seeks safety by honoring conventions and

never looking beneath the stone. Paula puzzles out

interpersonal relations; Cecilia studiously avoids

complicating entanglements. Sue leads a helpful, generous,

if staid existence; bohemian Emma marshals artistic means to

reintegrate (women’s) fragmented bodies and spirits. Cindy

dampens her conscious realizations with drink, but listens

to and honors the 'irrational' wisdom that arises from her

dreams and Julia’s visions; Julia, who suffers alone martyr-

fashion, finds ways to divulge her insights to Cindy and

Fefu without endangering them by mentioning the judges. In

this examination of eight multiply-positioned female

subjects devising tactics and maneuvering within constrained

social circumstances, Fornes refrains from romanticizing the

outcomes of their struggles and from recommending any single

path. Despite their differences, Fornes shows Fefu and her

friends coming together in varied ways--wonderfully,

the (inadvertent?) underscoring of Paula’s working class

background— the actor was the only large woman in the cast,
wore shapeless, dowdy clothing, and used a noticeably
working-class dialect (e.g, "yer thangs er still there").
 218

argumentatively, dynamically. In our production, their

interconnections and mirroring of each other’s concerns were

literalized by sound bleeding from one concurrent Part II

scene to another. Paula’s and Julia’s enumerations of body

parts echoed each other, the rapprochement between former

lovers (Cecilia and Paula) was underscored by the strains of

Emma’s ode to (Fefu’s) love and wisdom, and Cindy’s account

of her nightmare was punctuated by muffled outcries from

Julia’s bedroom.

My dramaturgical research also suggested a more

systemic or sociological reading of the play. I discovered

that Voltairine de Cleyre, on whom Fefu had given a

conference paper, was a feminist anarchist who agitated for

women’s and workers' rights and for the creation of

alternative schools.^ Coincidentally, she had also survived

(with prolonged suffering) an assassin’s bullet.

Descriptions of de Cleyre as an idealistand adventurer and

as ”a being whose selfishness is so large that it takes in

the whole human race" (Fox, in Avrich 1) enriched my

understanding of Fefu, Julia, and Paula. When I followed up

my hunch that Julia’s account of dismemberment and her

blessings were similar to shamanic rituals, I found that

^For a political biography of Voltairine de Cleyre, see

Paul Avrich, An American Anarchist: the Life of Voltairine
de Cleyre (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978).
'hallucinations’ of racked bodies and torture are common

rites of passage which confer upon the would-be shaman

knowledge and healing power over those spirits that have

consumed the novice’s flesh. Julia’s battles could be

fruitfully compared to those of "neophyte shamans [who]

engage in a powerful struggle against the difficult physical

and psychological forces that have previously afflicted

1f
i
their lives" {Halifax 14). I also uncovered newspaper

items from the mid-30s deploring the Depression’s

devastating toll on educational opportunities for poorer

elementary and secondary students as well as academic

articles advancing theories of educating the whole person

(similar to Emma Sheridan Fry’s preface quoted by Emma in

Part III). These discoveries indicated the possibility of

viewing the characters’ differences in relation to social

movements and strategies (of both the 30s and the 70s), such

as anarchism or radical politics, alternative spirituality,

social work, arts in education, philanthropy, educating the

IK
See Joan Halifax, Shamanic Voices: A Survey of
Visionary Narratives (New York: Dutton, 1979).

In an unpublished paper, Melanie Blood proposes that

perhaps Julia is a failed shamanic initiand, (temporarily?)
stuck along the path Fefu is just entering. Perhaps then,
Fefu begins to understand her own imminent danger from the
look in Julia's eyes and reacts by pressing Julia to "fight
with [her]" (Fefu 59-60). Julia, too weary to fight (at
least in Fefu’s way), helps to prepare Fefu by ritually
blessing her hands, eyes, voice, and heart.
 220

whole person, and theorizing social change.

When I told Fornes of my findings, she laughed,

explaining that she had 'chosen’ Voltarine de Cleyre at

random from a stack of discarded books in the hallway of her

apartment building; but later she admitted that after the

first draft, she had gone back to read about de Cleyre and

found her well-suited to the script. As we will see, such

found materials play an increasingly powerful metaphoric

role in amplifying meanings in Fornes’ later plays; in her

aleatory writing/directing process, Fornes seldom refuses

anything that insists on appearing in her plays. My

shamanic research, consonant with Fornes’ personal interest

in the 'irrational’ and with the comfortable inclusion of

spirituality in much Latina writing generally, was

corroborated by Fornes’ addition of Julia’s lines blessing

Fefu in later versions of the script.

To conclude this critical chronology, I would like to

summarize my own analyses of key issues for interpreters of

Fefu and Her Friends:

On Fornes’ characterization of women’s conditions and

their survival strategies under patriarchy. At least since

her eye-opening encounter with Waiting for Godot in 1957,

Fornes has been interested in examining the tactics and

constrained choices of characters under severely limiting

conditions. With Fefu, her dramatic exploration becomes

 221

more 'realistic' and particularized; or as Fornes put it,

more "mysterious and personal" and "more political"

("Creative Danger" 15). In F e f u , Fornes depicts female

characters as subjects-in-practice who condition and are

conditioned by social forces, and who continue to

communicate, to interact, and to struggle despite varying

kinds and degrees of "paralysis." In addition, Fornes

enriches our understanding of (women’s) internalized

oppression and psychological battles by infusing Fefu with a

Latina magic realist perspective from which all psychic

events are seen as important, stageworthy, and real.

I don’t believe that in Fefu Fornes provides any one

generally-applicable model for female survival within sexist

societies, but she does indicate the different strategies

each of her characters employs. In one day at Fefu’s, we

get a progress report on how eight different women are

faring given their varying levels of sensitivity to or

awareness of gender oppression. Fornes’ empathetic scrutiny

of Fefu and all of her friends demonstrates that different

perspectives will inevitably yield different and valuable

understandings of shared problems and alternative solutions.

However, Fornes’ characters only begin the work that

audience members must finish--the tasks of 'breaking

silence’ about seemingly personal problems, and then of

pooling our understandings and resources in order to combat

 222

internalized oppression. To the extent that the play offers

any solution, it may concern balance: the importance of

monitoring and manipulating the shifting balance of power

between "Environment" and self/will (Emma), and of

maintaining a mutually-informing equilibrium between

meditative, psychic strategies (Julia) and active, physical

responses (Fefu) to the oppression of women.

On interpreting audience response/participation in Part

II. I felt privileged to be taken 'backstage* and into the

confidences of the women characters. Admission to their

more intimate conversations seemed to imply that I was (at

least potentially) a sympathetic listener who could

empathize and who might benefit from hearing other women’s

experiences. While I listened to Julia, I considered to

what extent I had taken for granted ridiculous but

nonetheless damaging 'truths’ about women and men. Similar

to Fornes’ exercise during the writing of Fefu. I

reconsidered my own 'sufferings’ as a woman in a misogynous

world. Rather than complicity with Julia’s torturers, I

felt outrage and compassion for women who are more directly

harmed than I am by patriarchal discourse and/or by the

disciplinary power that backs it up.

On dichotomizing Fefu and Julia, supporting one over

the other. The Part II scenes also give the audience a

chance to understand better the different contexts that

conditioned the varying responses of Fefu’s friends to

patriarchal oppression and, in turn, their reactions to

others’ survival tactics. These additional insights into

the characters’ personal struggles and aspirations make it

more difficult to contrast or categorize the women as either

passive or active, conformists or rebels; we are shown a

wide spectrum of individual experiences and ways of coping

with interpersonal and social problems. In addition, the

effectiveness of the characters’ coping skills differs not

only between but within individuals. For example, Paula,

who had half-seriously turned to a 'ladies’ magazine-style

checklist in order to make sense of her love life, makes

penetrating observations about differential access to

education in a class-stratified society. Once privy to the

intimate Part II scenes, I was neither able nor interested

in focusing on Fefu and Julia to the exclusion of the other

characters or in finding the heroine of the play.

On the significance of the play’s final actions. As I

have indicated throughout this critical survey, I see Fefu

as a dramatic 'case study’ examining the diverse and

intertwined lives of eight women laboring under patriarchal

oppression. It is obvious from the outset that for Fefu and

Julia the battle has reached a crisis. Thus, in retrospect,

it is less surprising that their eventual encounter with

each other and their mutual acknowledgement of the

 224

'injuries’ they have sustained, provokes decisive, if

desperate action from Fefu and a final 'letting-go’ from

Julia. I found the sparse ambiguity of the ending as well

as my privileged access to each of the characters’ more

intimate thoughts in Part II discouraged any urge to condemn

their ways of coping. Nonetheless, I read Fefu as a

cautionary tale about carefully considering how to defend

ourselves and others, and as a warning to sharpen our

awareness of misogyny and the toll it takes, because, in

Fefu’swords, "If you d o n ’t recognize it . .. ( Whispering.)

it eats you" (Fefu 10).

Since her earliest plays, Fornes has written

surprising, often shocking, endings to her dramatic

"demonstrations" of the (often unsuccessful) tactics of

characters struggling against overpowering social

circumstances. From her 'aesthetic1 playwriting

perspective, Fornes reflects,

often the violent moment has to do with the

violence of ending the work. . . . It could be
that i t ’s so violent for me that I transfer it to
the stage. But to a member of the audience who
doesn’t have the same sense of loss when it ’s
over, it’s a shock, right? You say it is
startling. I experience M a e ’s death, for
instance, as a natural thing. I don’t see how
they could possibly let her go. (in Savran 57)

Her 'political’ strategy is to provide just enough

fragmentary 'evidence’ and to follow the lives of her

characters just long enough to unsettle the audiences’

 225

presumptions and hopefully to instigate further discussion

after the play is over. With Fefu, Fornes seems to have

succeeded— for, as we have seen, the unusual characters and

enigmatic ending continue to spark critical debate.^

* * *

Fefu is a pivotal play, in which Fornes returns to

situations and conceptions (such as economic inequality and

unrequited love) that she treated more satirically, even

playfully in the 60s. However, Fefu also introduces a

number of situations, themes, and dramatic strategies that

will reappear in Fornes’ later plays. These hallmarks

(discussed further in chapter six) include 'trapped’ women

and guns, complex multi-positioned characters rather than

types, relatively realistic contexts, images which

concretize theoretical and intuitive insights, the

interpenetration of public and private spheres, and the

danger of relying on rote language and set phrases instead

of challenging taken-for-granted 'truths’ and improvising

specific ways of (inter)acting in new situations. In the

latter case, Fornes seems to have heeded her own advice--in

*The 2/94 Oxford production of Fefu supports this: a

number of audience members returned for a second viewing;
nearly half of each audience stayed after for talk-backs;
and at least one audience member, disappointed when there
was no talk-back after the Sunday matinee, planned to
organize a separate discussion session after the play had
closed.
 226

changing her writing style for Fefu, she improvised an

intriguing dramatic form through which to selectively

familiarize or defamiliarize everyday (misogynous) truths

and to re-assess their insidious effects on even well-

educated and relatively-privileged women.

 CHAPTER SIX

THE ‘MUD’ PLAYS

It is precisely at a time in my life when my

work is following its most mysterious and
personal course that it has become more
political.

Maria Irene Fornes - "Creative Danger"

Fornes’ work has always been intelligent,

often funny, never vulgar or cynical; both
delicate and visceral. Now it is something
more. . . . The plays have always been about
wisdom; what it means to be wise. They are
getting wiser.

Susan Sontag - Preface

Maria Irene Fornes: Plays

During the 1980s, Fornes used her newly-honed writing

process to delve into many of the issues touched upon in

Fefu. Despite a relative dearth of 60s-style companies or

spaces in which to develop new plays, Fornes cultivated a

set of working relationships through which she fostered her

own and others’ new works. Thus, Fornes’ contribution to

80s experimental theatre includes her practical production

work as well as her plays, or as Providence arts writer Bill

Marx puts it,

227
 228

By steering away from the commercial stage, Fornes

has become that rarest of rarities in American
theatre, an experimental artist who despite the
pressures of time, money, and fashion offers a
real alternative. (1)

In this chapter, before analyzing each of the 'Mud’ plays, I

describe the venues and circumstances in which Fornes wrote

and directed her darker, more realistic works from the mid-

80s.

* * #

While still running the New York Theatre Strategy,

Fornes began her long-standing association with the Hispanic

American Arts Center, INTAR [International Art Relations].

In 1975, she scripted Cap-a-Pie [Head to Toe], a bilingual

revue based on personal tapes of Latina/o actors, with music

by Jose Raul Bernardo. In 1977, shortly after her

production of Fefu, Fornes produced a second piece at INTAR:

Lolita in the Garden, with music by Richard Weinstock.^

In 1980, INTAR director Max Ferra asked Fornes for

recommendations on setting up a writers’ unit because of her

insistance that

the Hispanic theatre in this country could never

develop, could never be called a serious
institution, unless it had its own playwrights.
No theatre can become strong if it does only
classics or plays from other countries. (Fornes,
in Osborn 47)

*As with Evelyn Brown and Eyes on the Harem, these

productions were highly presentational performances based on
unpolished scripts and thus Fornes is unwilling to release
the prompt scripts for scholarly analysis at this time.
 229

Fornes also maintained that beyond the "enormous pleasure"

of "making something, of discovering new forms," artists

need to feel that their creations "could become important to

people" (47). Therefore, she recommended that participants

be paid a stipend so that playwriting would be perceived

from the outset as a means to "earn a living . . . [as well

as] respect from the community" (47). In addition, she

wanted all writers to "participate in all the readings, not

just come to their own, and [to] have a say in what is done"

(47). Ferra used these ideas as the basis for the pilot

project that eventually became the Hispanic Writers-in-

Residence Laboratory, still directed by Fornes in 1993.

In order to share the fruits of her experiments in how

to "induce inspiration," Fornes arranged "a Buddhist temple

for playwrights," a light, open space similar to a visual

artist’s studio (in Betsko 156). She creates a relaxed,

focused atmosphere by starting each writing session with

yoga-style exercises, encouraging writers to warm up as

actors do. Unlike most writing classes in which

participants write at home and bring their work in for

criticism, at INTAR (and in Fornes’ other workshops and

classes) participants write simultaneously in a common

studio, as in a painting class. Fornes created this

communal place for writers in order to counter the common

 230

belief that writing must be done in isolation. She believes

that traditional writing programs perpetuate the

unnecessarily limiting situation "that of all the people who

could write, and who have time to write, the only ones who

actually do are those who can bear being alone" (156;

emphasis added). This shared work space benefits writers

(including Fornes) by providing focus and encouragement.

Fornes confesses that

At home I would say, "Okay, I ’ll do something and

then I ’ll write." And then I d o n ’t write that
day. I d o n ’t write the next day. After a month
of not writing, I do n ’t know how to write. I
forget. If I write every day, i t ’s like another
kind of existence. (in Savran 59)

After a physical warm-up, Fornes begins each writing

session with a guided visualization in order to stimulate

the writers’ right brain or less ’rational’ ways of

thinking, often by triggering a memory. For example, she

might ask the writers to notice a part of their body which

is either feeling much better after the warm-up or which is

still bothering them, and to think of this body part as a

character. Or she might have the writers describe a

familiar room in great detail including the ceiling and all

ambient sound. After allowing them to write for 10-15

minutes, she may suggest that they look through their

imagined window or doorway and describe an adjacent room or

outdoor setting. At other times, she reads a line of text

 231

from a newspaper or book in order to move their

visualizations away from the purely personal toward "the

imaginary" (in Cummings 54). Some writers incorporate the

line immediately, but more often the suggestion is .jotted in

the margins for later use. Through these methods, Fornes

attempts to circumvent the "completely dull and very pushy"

writing that often results from more "conceptual" methods by

teaching her students how to "listen to the characters," how

to become a bard/seer, and "even how to have a character

appear in front of [them]" (55). Fornes' teaching methods

seem to reflect the unconventional 'home schooling’ provided

by her parents.

Unlike some artists, Fornes does not feel diminished by

her teaching because she writes along with her students.

I like having to do a new exercise every day so I

d o n ’t get lazy. If I ’m really into it, everybody
else [in the workshop] is inspired. Then as they
start writing I become more inspired, too. That’s
where I get my writing done. That’s why I ’ve been
writing so much lately [1985]. The workshop is
the discipline for writing that I d o n ’t have. (in
Cummings 55)

My plays come out of my workshops now. (in Osborn

48 )

In the past ten years, Fornes’ laboratory has also

benefited her students and fostered a younger generation of

Latina/o playwrights, including Migdalia Cruz, Eduardo

Machado, Cherrie Moraga, Milcha Sanchez Scott, and Edit

Villareal. In addition to sharing technical expertise,

 232

Fornes models her interest in all human experiences,

intellectual and corporeal. For instance, Fornes knows that

"it is difficult sometimes for the younger women in the

workshop [to explore] sexual drama [because] they have to

put up with guys saying, 'Hey, baby . . . (in Betsko 162-

63). Therefore she uses her influence and her age, to "set

an example":

Whenever something erotic comes up in my work, I

read it. At first they all go, "Whoo . . . " But
when I read my erotic passages aloud as an
example, as a possibility in writing, at least I
have given my female students permission to be
fully present as writers, even if they choose not
to read that material out loud. (162-63)

Although Fornes does not believe in modeling a "role"

(which she which associates with "faking") (in Savran 57),

she nonetheless functions as a model by virtue of her long

and impressive career in avant-garde theatre and her

enthusiasm for producing new work, especially by women and

Latina/os. She would probably insist that her 'choice* to

work Off-Off-Broadway is not a political statement but

rather an artistic decision with political consequences.

And yet, she admits that she has not been willing to change

her style or subject matter even though it is considered too

"difficult," and thus too financially risky, for mainstream

production (in Kelly, "Mainstream" A8). These disclaimers

only add to Fornes’ reputation as a model for those seeking

a morally responsible career in non-commercial theatre.

 233

By 1980, INTAR had become Fornes’ resident writing

workshop--a place to share her techniques and to maintain

her own daily regimen of exploratory scene writing.^

From these explorations, Fornes selects recurring characters

and situations for development into short experimental

plays, produced as 'works in progress’ at such venues as the

annual Padua Hills Festival in Claremont, California. The

requirements at Padua— short pieces performed in the open

air with natural light--provide an inspiring framework for

Fornes’ aleatory process. The Danube. M u d , The Conduct of

Life. and the Nadine portion of Night all benefited from

early productions at Padua Hills. Back home in New York,

Fornes found with Theatre for the New City an off-off-

Broadway style premiere house where playwrights could

develop full-length work while maintaining artistic control

by producing themselves. Except for Sarita, which presented

a topic of particular interest to INTAR’s Latino-oriented

audience, Fornes reserves the INTAR production slots for

presenting her students’ work.

The Conduct of Life provides a good example of Fornes’

development process during this period. Conduct began at

the INTAR lab with the image of a young mulatto girl

4
‘She has also taught playwriting courses at New York
University and shorter workshops (usually in conjunction
with a production) in cities around the US.
"wearing a little pink slip and a soldier who was wearing an

undershirt, military breeches, and boots" in a hotel room

(in Osborn 48). For the Padua Hills festival, Fornes

expanded this scene into a short play in which the audience

(seated on a rooftop) watched a military officer’s family

dine, while in a field three stories below, a peasant girl

and her boyfriend are married, and then captured by thugs.

In the following scenes, we see the officer’s participation

in the torture of the young couple. This performance worked

in its outdoor setting. But to adapt it for indoor, full-

length production back in New York, Fornes needed the

freedom available at Theatre for the New City to entirely

rewrite the piece--preserving the feeling and many of the

images but little of the original dialogue. Some of Fornes’

productions, such as The Danube. have been picked up later

by more mainstream, developmental venues such as The

American Place in New York, mid-sized regional theatres, or

at the 'second’ or studio spaces of larger regional theatre

3
companies.J

1
JSuch venues include the Organic Theatre in Chicago,
the City Theatre Company in Pittsburgh, the Eureka Theatre
in San Francisco, the Stiemke Theatre at Milwaukee
Repertory, and the Downstairs Theatre at Trinity Repertory
in Providence, RI— in contrast to Lincoln Center, ACT (San
Francisco), the Guthrie (Minneapolis), or the Goodman
(Chicago).
 In contrast to the 60s, when she rarely travelled to

experimental stages outside New York, in the 80s Fornes

began to encounter more 'middle-class' audiences with less

exposure to experimental theatre, performance art, or even

alternative media than her Greenwich Village following. As

part of their new play development programs, many of the

theatres outside the Village that have hosted Fornes hold

mandatory talk-back sessions between directors, playwrights,

and audiences. These audiences seemed to share fewer

assumptions with Fornes than she had previously imagined.

She found their views surprisingly conservative, even naive,

on such issues as American foreign policy in Latin America,

innate versus environmental causes of petty crime,

structural rather than merit-based reasons for disparities

in income {personal conversation 1/90). Thus, by the end of

the 80s, Fornes was beginning to push her own boundary

between 'artistic revelation’ and 'political

recommendation,’ a trajectory most apparent in the more

clearly cautionary tone of her epic parable, And What of the

Night? (analysed in chapter seven).

* * *

Fornes’ second collection of plays is titled simply

Maria Irene Fornes: Plays (1986); however, I refer to these

darker, post-60s pieces as the 'Mud’ plays, extending the

metaphoric title of Mud (1983) to the entire collection

(including The Danube, The Conduct of Life, and Sarita) . By-

setting Mud in an ash-colored wooden room upon a promontory

of soft, red earth, Fornes graphically illustrates her

characters’ circumstances: their social position at 'the

bottom of the heap,’ their geopolitical ’stuckness’ in a

destitute and nearly-forgotten rural area, and their

'earthy' status in all its connotations--bawdy, practical,

coarse, common, sensible, vulgar, realistic, and naive. By

applying an expanded and less literal understanding of

Fornes’ metaphor for the various kinds of 'stuckness’ people

may experience in their lives, I am able to include plays

such as Abingdon Square and, in retrospect, Fefu. Despite

the upper middle-class status of the 'heroines,’ I include

these plays because of their depictions of the realistic,

practical, and sometimes naive ways women deal with the

crude and vulgar dilemmas inherent in gender-based

oppression that reaches across class. To varying degrees,

female and male characters in all of Fornes’ later plays are

impacted by a complicated web of such social hierarchies.

During the 1980s--a decade characterized in the US by

the selfishness and greed of the 'haves,’ the shrinking of

relatively secure working and middle classes, and an

accelerated widening of the income gap between classes—

Fornes chose to investigate the consciousness and tactics of

people with the least power and resources. For those

 237

struggling under these conditions and those who wish to

change them, Fornes' dark expos s provide 'data' and

sometimes inspiration; she hopes that audiences "will

understand something . . . [and that] rather than saying

'I’m doomed,’ [they will] learn from [her characters']

behavior” (in Savran 56). For those who deem themselves to

be above or separate from these struggles, Fornes warns that

many members of the upper and middle classes are nearer the

"mud" than they care to acknowledge.

Each of the 'Mud’ plays, from Fefu through And What of

the Night? could easily support chapter-length exigeses.

However, in order to follow the evolving social change

theories and tactics stranded through Fornes’ published

oeuvre (and its critical reception), I analyze these plays

for their development of issues raised in Fefu and for

examples of Fornes’ mature re-working of concepts,

scenarios, characters, and dramatic strategies first

introduced in her experimental productions of the 60s. At

the risk of demystifying, simplifying, or brightening

Fornes’ later plays, I seek in this chapter to illuminate

her imagistic thinking about social change.

* * *

As noted earlier, with the 'Mud' plays Fornes continued

her exploration of situations, themes, and dramatic

 238

strategies introduced in Fefu. I want to elaborate these

general hallmarks before surveying the individual plays.

'Trapped* women and guns. It comes as no surprise that

the only play Fornes remembers reading before she embarked

on her writing career is Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (which she

adapted and directed in 1987 at Milwaukee Rep). Whether

Hedda directly influenced Fornes or simply addressed a

subject already on her mind, I find it more than

coincidental that nearly all of Fornes’ later plays concern

'trapped’ women (and sometimes men) and end with a violent

death, usually by gunfire. However, in none of Fornes’

plays do women shoot themselves; the only suicide in her

entire oeuvre involves the foiled attempt of a deposed

(male) CEO to escape a humiliating loss of social and

economic power (Night). In Mud and Fefu, female characters

are shot (by characters who do not intend to kill them), and

in contrast to the US norm (in which males predominantly

kill female lovers and family members), in Conduct and

Sarita, female characters kill their abusive male lovers.

Although Fornes is fascinated by the circumstances

which move some (but not other) constrained characters to

commit desperate and often regrettable acts, she does not

necessarily recommend or condone violent solutions to

oppression. Fornes argues that the primary responsibility

for fighting oppressive regimes lies not with her

 239

protagonists, who have relatively limited information and

personal power, but rather with educated middle-class

(North) American audience members who have "the perspective"

to use political means to "bring about social change" (in

Savran 68).

Complex multiply-positioned characters rather than

types. Fornes' later plays are more clearly marked by her

subjectivity and her social positionality, since she had

learned to filter her social observations through an

increasingly personal creative process. By illuminating,

comparing, and contrasting the responses of individuals in

specific contexts, Fornes reveals the interconnections

between subjects’ social positions (based on ethnicity,

class, gender, etc.) and conditioning social forces. Her

methods produce more complex and realistic "demonstrations"

than those advanced by Fornes’ poststructuralist critics

which tend to categorize and universalize precisely where

Fornes wishes to introduce ambiguity, particularity, and

multiplicity.

For example, in Fefu. Fornes disrupts both traditional

and some feminist characterizations of women; they are

neither "all sisters" nor facets of one female personality,

nor are they defined in (sexual) relation to men (as

virgins, whores, or mothers). The audience is asked to see

the world through the eyes of these particularized women

 240

characters and to listen to their perspectives. In these

later plays, Fornes extends this franchise (begun in

Promenade) to servants and other poor and working class

women by staging the voices and desires of servants (Evelyn

Brown. Conduct, Night), women in a Turkish seraglio (Eyes on

the Harem), a farm woman (Mud), and teenage wives (Sarita,

Abingdon Square).

Realistic contexts; interpenetration of public and

private. Paula’s monologue (in Fefu) about economic and

educational inequality, as seen from her working-class

perspective, signals Fornes’ turn away from romping satires

of middle and upper class conventions to sharper depictions

of the effects of current social relations on the

psychological and physical environments of the

disenfranchised— toward grittier investigations of lives in

(or in any case much nearer) the "mud." But Fornes’s main

purpose is not to inform audiences of heinous social

inequalities, for she expects, perhaps too optimistically,

that an educated theatregoing public is already aware of,

for example, US involvement in maintaining Latin American

torture states and of gender inequality and political

oppression generally. Presupposing this basic knowledge,

she rather examines the responses of particular individuals

within these circumstances in order to question the

audiences’ attitudes. For instance, assuming that middle

 241

class audiences have an internalized, taken-for-granted

notion of a split between public and private spheres {coded

male and female), Fornes traces the effects of the

interpenetration of 'public' and 'private' on her

characters’ psyches and daily interactions. Public

discourse and consequent internalized oppression haunt their

dreams and private moments (Julia, Cindy in Fefu), powerful

men abuse and dominate both at work and at home (Conduct.

Night). and homeless women struggle to maintain their (non-

traditional) families in the public streets and government

shelters (Nadine, Reba in Night).

Disturbing images that concretize theory. Two of the

more memorable images of Fefu illustrate otherwise slippery

and discomfiting theoretical or intuitive understandings

about the significance of everyday occurrences. Julia’s

bout with the judges physicalizes the pain and confusion of

the patriarchal brainwashing that women are subjected to

through social practices such as childrearing, education,

entertainment, marriage, and the sexualization of gender

difference. Fefu actualizes (and perhaps diffuses) her

ambivalence toward her husband by shooting at him. Fornes

sharpens this jestic (sometimes gestic) strategy in the

"Mud" plays. In The Conduct of Life, Fornes’ multi-layered

set spatializes the differential positions and non­

solidarity of women affected by multiple systems of

 242

oppression and privilege as well as the structural links

between domestic and political violence and order.

Warnings about reliance on rote language and

conventional 'truths’. When Fornes offers explicitly

political critiques of larger social forces, such as

institutional sexism, structural disparities in income, or

the proliferation of nuclear weapons (Fefu, Night. Danube),

she usually does so in order to alert her (largely middle

income) audience that they are at risk and that by

supporting (and emulating) the rapacious, short-sighted

policies of dominant elites they contribute to their own

demise. More specifically, she targets the increasing

replacement of personal contact with formulaic interactions

determined solely by individuals’ apparent social position

and warns against a dangerous reliance on "set phrases and

concepts," on "linguistic pattern" and "accepted codes, so

that [people] speak a language that doesn’t come from their

brain" (in Marx 8). Fornes is also concerned about the

stereotyping and lack of inventiveness that results from

narrowed reception.

It’s like a computer, you just press a key and you

get a whole sentence. That's how many people use
language. It’s gotten to the point [that] if you
don’t use set paragraphs, people d o n ’t understand
what you’re saying, (in Savran 64)

Fefu» Fornes foregrounded the political functions of rote

language in Julia’s ’catechism’ and by various characters’

 243

(most noticeably Fefu’s) interruptions of small talk with

shocking statements. As we will see, Fornes continues this

investigation of formulaic language, especially in The

Danube and in Night.

Although Fornes critiques rote language and often shows

relatively uneducated people or foreign speakers struggling

to communicate their thoughts and feelings, she does not

subscribe to contemporary theories of language as a

prisonhouse in which human beings (but most especially

members of subordinate groups) are unable to adequately or

accurately express themselves in the dominating, yet

shifting terms offered by conventional languages.

It has become fashionable to say . . . "We are

imprisoned by language"?! . . . Can you imagine?
Language is the greatest gift that we have. W e ’ve
been sitting here talking for two hours. . . .
But it doesn’t substitute for life. People who
try to use it that way are in trouble. They have
to know what experience is. But also they have to
try using this incredible tool to clarify what
they are experiencing. . . . A way of expressing
your awe [in the face of experience] is to say,
"Words fail me." That’s language. (in Savran 64-
65) .

Thus, while other critics have argued that Fornes’ language

is "simple and straightforward, and very poetic" (Savran 65)

or, alternatively, that her characters are "locked outside

the register of language" (e.g. Dolan 109), I am intrigued

and heartened by Fornes’ depictions of the almost

"miraculous" way in which her character's simple, even

 244

stumbling, linguistic efforts produce sometimes evanescent,

sometimes powerfully concrete verbal images of their

emotional, physical, and psychic experiences.

Having set out these guiding concepts, I now turn to

the individual plays.

* * #

Fornes literalized her concern about the use of set

phrases and patterns of interaction in The Danube (1982).

She based the script on "found" language records which

contained simple dialogues about everyday things such as

making introductions, ordering food in a restaurant, and

discussing one’s occupation, family, and the weather. She

used the recorded sentences to begin each of the short

scenes chronicling the acquaintance and eventual marriage of

a well-meaning American working in Budapest (Paul) to a

young Hungarian woman (Eve); a recorded sentence would be

played in English, then Hungarian with a space for practice

during which the line would be repeated "naturally" by the

actors in scene.

Despite her critique of dependence on rote language,

Fornes was charmed by the recorded scenarios:

There was such tenderness in those little scenes,

that when Theatre for the New City asked me to do
an antinuclear piece, I thought of how sorrowful
it would be to lose the simplest pleasures of our
era. (in Wetzsteon 43)
 245

However, Fornes uses these tender little scenes to expose

the woeful inadequacy of leading a decent, genteel life in

the face of widespread radiation sickness and imminent

bombings. Fornes is not condemning middle-class manners as

such, but rather their alliance with an underlying belief in

meritocracy— one aspect of which implies that nothing really

horrible can happen to those who lead a decent life and

associate with nice people. With grim irony, Fornes shows

her characters engaging in polite conversation despite their

increasingly obvious physical deterioration; as the play

proceeds the characters "wear goggles" and clothing dirtied

with "ash dust and strange drippings," their speech becomes

"progressively convoluted," and their skin begins to show

reddish spots" (Danube 58). The relatively impetuous

American, Paul, eventually becomes desperate, first blaming

Eve for his contamination, but then deciding to take her

away to a safe place. Meanwhile, the more staid Hungarians

(including Paul’s doctor) never look beyond themselves for a

cause (or potential solution) for their illness; he responds

to Paul’s symptoms ("thin blood, a white throat, eyes

secret[ing] mucus") by repeating "What you have is common,"

"It's nothing serious," and "Don't worry" (55). As in Fefu,

by the time the characters acknowledge the severity of their

situation, neither Paul's impetuous action nor the

Hungarians’ calm resignation can save anyone. The play ends

 246

with Eve’s poignant farewell to her "sick friend," the

Danube River; a brilliant white flash of light; and then

blackout.

In addition to disturbing the sense of security her

middle class characters find in keeping up 'basic’

conversation, Fornes makes a more nuanced critique of

conventional language and thought in Scene 12:

Paul: It is you who has polluted me. I am

clean of body and mind. . . . It is you
who have caused all the trouble.

Eve: You are losing your brain, Paul. You

are talking like a machine. You are
saying what machines say.

Paul: It must be true if machines say it.

(She screams and hits him repeatedly.) I am
sorry, Eve. I d o n ’t know what made me
say that.

The sexist {and Bible-based) assumptions underlying Pa u l ’s

accusation are reminiscent of Julia's "catechism" ("Evil

comes from outside [man] . . . Woman generates evil herself

. . . [Women’s] sexual feelings . . . corrupt the heavens":

Fefu 35). The scene itself foreruns Fornes* fuller

elaboration in Night of the damage sustained by both parties

when genuine communication (and the possibility of creative

solutions) is short-circuited by resorting to "machine"

language.

The Danube also bears other hallmarks of Fornes’ later

work. For example, Fornes makes powerful use of the

 247

imagistic register of performance. The nuclear

contamination of private living spaces is signified by smoke

issuing from holes in the playing platform. In an early

scene, Eve faints away, presumably out of overwhelming

passion; but we later infer that she (like all the

characters} was already suffering from the effects of

radiation. In the final four scenes, Fornes underscores the

characters’ disparate ways of coping with looming disaster.

In scene 12, Paul uses the dialogue quoted above to

justify his desperate decision to leave Eve as well as

Hungary. But Eve breaks through his illogical panic and

Paul immediately shakes off his paranoia and apologizes.

However, lest this tiny psychological breakthrough rouse

unfounded hopes, we are quickly reminded of the extent of

everyone’s physical deterioration. When E v e ’s father

finally recognizes everyone’s mortal illness and suggests

calling a doctor, Paul "emits a loud and plaintive sound,"

as the lights fade. In the next scene, Fornes literalizes

the characters’ increasing loss of control over their

'private' lives by directing the actors to replay scene 12

by manipulating puppet effigies of themselves. These scenes

might seem to indicate Fornes’ belief that people are

helpless in the face of larger controlling forces, but the

final two scenes of the play reverse this order. First, the

actors use puppets to play a scene in which the young couple

 248

pack their suitcases and say good-bye to Mr. Sandor, who

unaccountably remains behind. But when the actors replay

the final scene without the puppets, there are small but

significant differences which, in typical Fornesian fashion,

show each character's awareness of and response to their

catastrophic dilemma. In addition to his clothing, Paul

also packs a gun, which is powerless to fight their 'enemy'

(nuclear destruction), but which gives Paul the means to

commit suicide, an option annulled by the apocalyptic flash

of light that ends the play.* In this second 'live'

version, Eve's father explains his resignation (while also

undercutting Paul's action): "It doesn’t matter, Eve.

There’s no place to go” (Danube 64). Rather than hurrying

offstage with Paul, Eve moves down center and speaks an

elegy for herself and for her friend, the Danube:

I say good bye. As I die, my last thought is of

you, my sick friend. Here is yourend. Here is
my hand. . . . This is the hour. We die at
last, my Danube. Good bye. (64).

As in Fornes’ other cautionary tales about middle class

characters (Fefu, Abingdon Square, Conduct. and Night). in

The Danube, Paul, Eve, and her father eventually face and at

times try to resist the destructive momentum of

As with Fornes’ re-visions of trapped women and guns

from Hedda Gabler, this action may be a re-vision of the
ending of Beckett's Happy Days. in which existential
resignation is replaced by an anti-nuclear warning.
 249

interpenetrated ’public’ and ’private’ forces, harbingers of

which they had previously (and often willfully) ignored or

accepted as 'facts' of life. In Fornes’ rendering, there is

both a feeling sadness and a clear warning against naive or

willful ignorance of the intertwined social forces

(ecological, economic, military, industrial, political) that

condition the conduct of private lives.

Jester-fashion, Fornes contributes to anti-nuclear

protest by creating a non-didactic play, which never uses

the word "nuclear," but rather focuses on familiar daily

interactions. As with Vietnamese Wedding (an anti-war play

that never refers to war), she hopes to bring home to her

audiences the pervasive and unavoidable effect of public

policy on private life. However, in The Danube. while

Fornes solicits audience empathy for familiar social rituals

and relationships, she also reveals how everyday

interactions mirror and condition larger social forces.

Along this line, she metaphorizes the hegemonic negotiations

integral to "First World-Second World" relations (which

involve attraction and complicity rather than brute force)

through the marriage of Paul and Eve; ironically, Eve

studies English and German, "the languages of the future," a

future jeopardized by the nuclear (and other technological)

temptations that such super-industrialized nations purvey.

In scene 3, the Hungarian waiter rhapsodizes Americans’

brightness, their lighthearted responsibility "to things

that move forward," and their ease in getting rid of

obstacles in contrast to Hungarians’ heavy, dark, and slow

craftsmanship and planning. In The Danube. Fornes deftly

combines the more explicit political intentions and

realistic settings introduced by Fefu with presentational

strategies that extend her experiments from the 60s (puppet­

like characters now manipulate actual puppets, formulaic

language literally originates from tape recordings). The

Danube exemplifies what I have termed pragmatic feminist

drama by its inclusive support of related progressive social

causes (such as the anti-nuclear movement) and by its focus

on the interconnections between 'private’ and 'public’

decisions.

In Mud (1983), Fornes presents the "unsuccessful life

of three" impoverished, multi-positioned characters. Mae,

an uneducated woman who is joyously (if falteringly)

learning to read, rejects her adopted brother/lover Lloyd in

favor of literate Henry, when Lloyd is unwilling to secure

medical treatment for the curable prostatitis that renders

him impotent and unable to work. Mae ostensibly brings

Henry into the house to read Lloyd's prescription, but

Lloyd’s suspicions are confirmed when Henry takes his place

at the table and in M a e ’s bed. Despite his ability to read,

Henry turns out to be petty and stingy ("worse than Lloyd":

 251

Mud 38), whereas Lloyd is kind to Henry, eventually gets

treatment, and even begins to read. But by this time, Mae

is fed up with both of them and leaves their shared house in

the mud, only to be shot down by Lloyd who c a n ’t bear to be

without her.

Even from this short synopsis it should be clear that

all three characters combine good and bad qualities and that

the men differ from each other as much as they differ from

Mae. Fornes insists that her characters cannot be

understood solely in terms of gender difference; within the

narrow confines of Mud, power and status depend on

intentions and upon the ability to carry them out (in Austin

"Playwriting"). Lloyd, though male and sexually demanding,

is easily rebuffed by Mae. He loses value in her eyes not

for his temporary impotence but for failing to understand

her quest for knowledge and for his lethargy in seeking

medical information for himself. Henry drops in Mae’s

esteem more from his own stinginess, dishonesty, and

ungrateful dependency than from the disabilities he

sustained from a head injury. Mae achieves higher status

and satisfaction relative to her male companions by seeking

to fulfull her desires; she works, studies, and chooses her

mates, and when they cannot further her quest, she leaves

them. Although Lloyd kills Mae while trying to keep her,

she gets away spiritually— for in her final monologue she

 252

indicates her willingness to die in order to reach the light

(of knowledge) which "consumes her" (Mud 40). Lloyd, on the

other hand, who has acted unthinkingly and too late, loses

in Mae his lover and only family.

I must disagree with Jill Dolan’s assertion in The

Feminist Spectator as Critic that Mae is "completely

objectified by the man [Henry] who was to grant her entry

into discourse" and that she "remains outside the register

of language" (109). In the play, Mae is already learning to

read at school, Henry is never shown teaching anyone and, in

fact, he cruelly mocks illiterate Lloyd’s attempts to master

phonics. More significantly, Fornes emphasizes the

linguistic flight and spiritual freedom Mae achieves through

her rudimentary reading and allusive comprehensionJ The

play ends with M a e ’s profound metaphor, gleaned from a

child’s biology book:

Like a starfish, I live in the dark and my eyes

see only a faint light. It is faint and yet it
consumes me. I long for it. I thirst for it. I
would die for it. Lloyd, I am dying. (Mud 40)

^My reading is supported by Deborah Geis’ description

of M a e ’s "struggle" to read the starfish passage as a
"gestic monologue" (300).

In fact, it should be the very difficulty with which

she reads that gives her recitation this quality
[of luminousness]. Similarly, Brecht has written
that he found an "almost unreadable 'stumbling'"
translation of Shakespeare preferable to a smooth
one for more aptly expressing the "tussle of
thoughts" in the gestic monologue. (300)
 253

This character’s understandings seem to lie beyond rather

than "outside the register of language;" through reading,

Mae has found a way to express at least part of her

experience of life and death— through reading, Mae has

created the "play space" necessary to create an independent

sense of self or, as Lisa Ruddick argues, a "soul."®

The shots fired at the end of Mud recall the ending of

Fefu. Both Lloyd and Fefu shoot at their estranged spouse

(without meaning to kill) in a desperate attempt to maintain

a disintegrating relationship; and by resorting to weapons,

both lose the person who had most cared about and understood

them. While their recourse to violence has only added loss

(and perhaps grief) to the pressure of their confined

circumstances, they have inadvertently released their

"victims," perhaps Julia as well as Mae, from the mud of

earthbound existence towards the light of the guardians.

From the simple plot of a 'love1 triangle set in a

hovel atop a hill of mud, Fornes brings forth a

sophisticated examination of a woman’s mind coming to

consciousness. Despite limited physical and mental

resources, Mae strives to slake her thirst for knowledge

through reading and to express her ineffable longings in the

small vocabulary available to her. In common with Fefu,

bSee chapter two for my discussion of Ruddick.

 254

Sarita, Abingdon Square, Conduct. and Night, in Mud Fornes

features disadvantaged, 'trapped,’ or socially constrained

female (and sometimes male) characters who take risks in

order to follow their visions and desires. Consistent with

her aversion to role models and her crusade to unsettle a

priori judgments about characters based on single dimensions

(good/bad, female/male, upper/lower class, etc.), Fornes

does not idealize the outcomes of either the tactical or

rash actions taken by her low-power characters.

In 1968, Fornes drew feminist disapproval for her

playful, yet bittersweet investigation of romance and of the

media images that influence wom e n ’s desires (Molly’s Dream).

In 1984, she returned for another, darker look at love and

romance with Sarita. in which a US-Cuban girl’s life is

dominated by sexual passion for her unfaithful boyfriend,

Julio.

Sarita (with music by Leon Odenz) may also be compared

with Promenade; in both musicals the songs intermix and

alternate irony and sincerity. But Promenade’s amusing poke

at upper class fascination with "Unrequited Love" gives way

to life-threatening obsession in Julio’s and Sarita’s duet,

"Here Comes the Night" ("Frozen fingers hold the shadow,

bloodless lips want to smile. Icy eyes look at the shadow

of a love that’s but a ghost"); and maternal concern shifts

from a foolish Mother’s 25-year quest for her "Two Little

 255

Angels" (in Promenade) to Fela’s ballad of fatal

resignation, "A Woman Like Me" (". . . loves a man, only-

one, and he must run away. ... He must betray her. And

he must drink and die alone": Sarita 140, 136).

When 14-year-old Sarita tries to "forget" her faithless

boyfriend by emulating his promiscuous behavior, she becomes

pregnant. She withstands her mother Fela’s initial angry

reaction and refuses to make herself "respectable" by

marrying Fernando, an old man who rooms in their apartment.

Instead, she gives up her now impractical plans to become a

doctor or lawyer and promises that she will work to support

the child. Through her insistence that Fernando and Fela

raise her child, Sarita creates a new (n o n - 'traditional’)

family while avoiding marriage to either a callous young

lover or a partriarchal old man.

However, two years later, Sarita leaves her family

apartment, only to spend her young life waiting for the

philandering Julio to come back to her. After trying to

leave him several times, attempts foiled by his ability to

dissuade her with sex, she leaves him a suicide note. Ready

to jump from the Empire State Building, Sarita is stopped by

Mark, an Anglo soldier, who falls in love with her at first

sight. Eventually, they are married but Julio still haunts

Sarita, dropping by to trade sex for money. After Mark

discovers the continuing relationship, Sarita resists her

 256

desire and Julio's threat of blackmail. When Julio embraces

her against her wishes, she stabs him to death. In the last

scene, Mark comes to visit Sarita on a mental ward; she has

just begun to remember the details of what she has done.

The play ends with Sarita’s question, "What will they do to

me?” as "Mark and Sarita’s hands lock" (132) .

Despite a melodramatic plot, in Sarita Fornes employs

complex characters and culturally nuanced settings to hinder

facile judgments about the relative goodness of Latino and

Anglo characters or their ethnic backgrounds. Unlike the

"Young Woman" in Sophie Treadwell's 1928 feminist drama,

Machinal (1928), Sarita is not immediately tried and

executed for killing Julio, nor is she abandoned by her

family or her loving husband. And unlike in other Fornes

plays, the killing takes place in the penultimate rather

than the final scene. The serious consequences of Sarita’s

instinctual act (her mental instability, her family’s

emotional stress, and the certainty of a trial) are not

brushed aside, but the play ends with hope that Sarita has

broken her own enchantment and is taking hold of a more

realistic and manageable future with the support of her

husband and family.

Notwithstanding, Dolan reads Fornes’ particularized

characters as types or even stereotypes:

The title character of Fornes’ Sari ta (1984) is

caught between her conflicting desires for Julio,
 257

her violent Latin lover, and Mark, a white man who

offers her a ticket out of the oppressions of
class and race. (108)

Dolan concludes her reading by universalizing Sarita’s

obsession as the "hopeless entrapment of women’s desire” (in

the singular) and by implying that faithless Julio, faithful

Mark, and even the old man Fernando represent "controlling

male desire and the legal, social superstructure by which it

is legitimated” (108).

Dolan’s description flattens and polarizes Fornes’

subtle navigation of conflicts, characterizations, and

cultural differences. Julio seduces and abandons women,

avoids work and tries to con or extort money from those

around him; but he is not physically violent. In fact, it

is Mark, the 'nice white g u y , ’ who responds to Julio’s non­

violent provocations with an offer "to step outside"; and

Sarita stabs and kills Julio who is always seen unarmed and

emotionally dispassionate.

In this play about a 'love’ triangle (a relationship

often included in Fornes’ plays) complicated by abuse and

ethnic differences, Fornes does not focus on general causes

or judge characters in terms of good or bad; instead, she

charts the progress of a particular young Cubana’s struggles

for emotional and psychological discipline and freedom from

an obsessive lust/love. Dolan, however, seems to attribute

Sarita’s teen pregnancy as well as neighborhood tensions to

 258

the US-Cuban domestic setting, casting Sarita and Mark in a

culturally-based Cinderella story. In contrast, I found

that Fornes’ balanced and particularized depiction of

Sarita's household successfully counteracted the temptation

to equate Sarita’s ethnic rearing with the 'culture of

poverty’ and thereby account for (and emblematize) her

'problem.’

For example, Fornes spends considerable stage time

(including an extra character and a Santeria song/prayer)

gently exploring the cultural and personal differences in

Sarita’s and Mark’s experiences and expectations. The

Santeria scene also directs our attention to the

African/European hybridity of Cuban culture and differences

among Cubans. For example, Fernando finds it necessary to

"make it clear that I don ’t believe in all this espiritismo

and Santeria. I ’m a Catholic and I do n ’t see why you have

to give food to the Virgin" (Sarita 112). And yet he brings

the food and flower offerings for the orisha Oshun,

syncretized with (represented by) the Virgin of Charity (La

Caridad del Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint). Fernando also

reluctantly accepts Fela’s comparison between bringing

flowers to the Virgin and food to Oshun, and obediently

kneels and joins in singing the (Yoruba) prayers to Oshun.

The Santeria scene also contextualizes Fela’s (and perhaps

Sarita’s and her friend, Yeye’s) sense of fate, especially

 259

in matters of love. The scene shows that within this

worldview, Fela acts by propitiating Oshun (who controls

love, money, children, and pleasure) in order to gain her

power and protection. In other words, Fela responds to her

sense of destiny or fate by taking the appropriate actions

within Santeria to improve her life and that of her ile, her

household.

However, Fornes’ use of Santeria introduces several

ironic elements. Yeye, whose name means "mother" and

connotes wisdom in Yoruba, is an unwed teenage mother and

only plays at divination in the first scene. She perhaps

exemplifies an entire first generation of US-Cubans in the

1930s and 40s who retained only remnants of Santeria (Amira

& Cornelius 9-10). However, she is drawn to the religion

and through Fela may be able to glean more knowledge of the

rituals. (Historically, we know that after the Castro

takeover in 1959 and again in 1980, waves of Cuban

practitioners of Santeria came to the US and reinvigorated

the religion; see Brandon 104.) Fela, a woman "fated" to be

an unwed mother and whose extended household includes two

other deserted mothers, seeks the aid of Oshun, whose

primary powers involve bringing love and children and who is

renowned for stealing the orisha Shango away from his first

wife, ba. Fela— whose nickname "Fe" includes the meanings

"loved, married," and "wish, want, to marry, to have

 260

intercourse with, to love” in Yoruba (Hallgren 113)--perhaps

should have sought balance by asking for the aid of an

orisha like Obatala whose principals include peace and

wisdom.

As in Fefu., Fornes shows the women’s varying responses

to a shared gender-linked predicament without recommending

any of the demonstrated strategies. Yeye, like Fela,

accepts her fate, resigns herself to abandonment, and

focuses her love and attention on her unborn child. Sarita,

like Fefu, wants more and fights against her fate.

Interestingly, at the end of Ye y e ’s fortune-tel1ing, she

sees a "bad" card which she does not interpret for Sarita.

For me, this conjures up scenes such as the repeated

appearance of "la morte" (the death) card in Carmen. but

Fornes reverses the roles so that the Carmen/Sarita

character defends herself and kills Don Jose/Julio.

However, in an ending more like Abingdon Square than Fefu,

Sarita faces the consequences of her desperate actions with

the support of her family and husband. To the extent that

Fornes offers any recommendations, she seems to encourage

women to look for non-traditional partners outside of their

(religious, regional, ethnic, or racial) group if the men of

their group are not supportive. She presents this as a

positive option by showing Sarita’s and Ma r k ’s striving to

 261

build a marriage in the context of the openness and

hospitality of Sarita’s family.

In a lighter treatment of Anglo/Cuban differences,

incorporatingwordplay typical of Fornes’early work, Mark

and Saritabanter about differing dietary "rules'':

Sarita: You can also die if you drink cold beer

ora cold drink after you eat too much
on a hot day. . . .

Mark: And what do you call that?

Sarita: Empacho. . . . I hope you do n ’t catch

an empacho and die.

Mark: We don’t have empacho in this country.

Sarita: You do. You just do n ’t know what it’s

called.

Mark: In English we d o n ’t die if we drink cold

beer after a meal.
{Sarita 125)

My point is that Fornes does not portray Sarita as

culturally or (seriously) economically deprived, nor Mark as

the carrier of superior culture or economic opportunity; she

does, however, show the specificity of these characters

working through severe personal and interpersonal

difficulties across the boundaries of gender, ethnicity,

and, to a lesser degree, economic class.

Abingdon Square. also written in 1984 but set from

1907-1918, presents another case study of the entanglement

of love, romance, and desire that results from the

sexualization and marriage of a very young woman. This play

 262

points up women’s (as well as m e n ’s) irrepressible need for

the kind of self-creating "play space" theorized by Lisa

Ruddick, and the emotional damage caused to a woman and

those around her when her need toexperience and build a

sense of self are denied. In addition, the characters’

journeys from innocence to painful knowledge may be read as

metaphors for the (US) societal journey from self­

preoccupation during the Belle Epoch to international

engagement and interdependence during and after World War

I.7

Unlike spunky street-wise Sarita who refuses a

"respectable" marriage to an old man, "preciously beautiful,

modest," and "obedient" Marion, orphaned at 15, accepts the

gallant (and unthinkingly selfish) marriage proposal of

Juster, a 50-year-old widower who had befriended her when

she was still numb with grief. Feeling grateful and perhaps

unworthy of the love and care of Juster and his 15-year-old

son Michael, Marion asks few questions about her marital

responsibilities. Juster assures her that his housekeeper

will manage the house and that Marion may continue to play

and study ("Indeed Marion, nothing in your life should

change unless you want it to": 3). However, in a delicate,

9
'In the 1984 version of the play, this correspondence
was literalized by Michael’s enlistment for WWI at the end
of Scene 25.
 263

oblique, but nonetheless appalling fashion, Fornes makes it

clear that Juster assumes, without considering Marion’s

tender age or sexual disinterest, that his young wife will

fulfill her sexual duties. In Scene 6, Juster reads aloud

from a gardening text:

Take a pencil and push the pointed end into the

open mouth of the flower and downward toward the
ovary and the honey, just as a bee would thrust in
his tongue. If it is a young flower you have
chosen you will see the two anthers bend down as
if they knew what they were doing . . . If you
wish to see the mechanism by which the anthers are
bent down, cut away the hood until you lay bare
the stamens as far as the point where they are
joined to the corolla. Here you will notice that
they have slender white flying buttresses that
keep them in place. . . . Push your pencil in
again and you can see what happens . . .
(Abingdon 3)

Marion does not complain about this responsibility, but

we never see her give Juster more than a peck on the cheek.

However, as she matures, her fantasy life begins to consume

both her waking and sleeping hours. In a private place in

the stuffy attic, Marion reaches toward the heavens with

outstretched arms while reciting Dante until she faints;

she has also begun keeping a fictional journal chronicling

her romantic adventures with a poetic young man, Frank.

Eventually, the tranquility of the household is disturbed

when Marion finds her "Frank" in a bookstore (never mind

that his name is Jonathan) and they begin a real life

affair. But neither Juster nor "Frank" has touched Marion’s

 264

developing carnality, her physical desire; and one day

Marion, without contemplation or regret, has sex (behind the

living room couch) with a strong, sensual, and tender

workman whom she never sees again. Juster is delighted with

Marion’s resulting pregnancy and assumes that the child is

his.

Just when the affair with "Frank" is beginning to sour,

Juster discovers a rental receipt for their meeting place on

Abingdon Square. After hiding the baby (Thomas), he

threatens that if Marion does not move out immediately, she

will never see Thomas again. She goes, but both Marion and

Juster are driven crazy with jealousy and by the cycle of

Marion’s increasingly desperate attempts to see her child

and Juster’s paranoid efforts to defend himself. Having

come to kill Marion, Juster hesitates when he finally 'sees’

in her mirror, as if for the first time, the difference in

their ages (now 24 and 59). After firing a shot harmlessly

into the floor, Juster collapses from heart failure. In the

final scene, Juster awakes in his bedroom to find Marion

nursing him and banishes her from his sight. She obediently

leaves the room, but Juster follows her; they admit their

mutual love and he once again collapses. The play ends as

his son Michael enters, and Marion cradles Juster in her

arms, crying out, "Michael . . . ! Michael . . . ! He

mustn’t die! He mustn’t die!" (10).

 265

Abingdon Square departs from the grittier settings of

the other 'Mud’ plays but shows that the sexualization of

young women and their confinement by men (well-meaning or

not) occurs across economic class and educational strata,

and that much of middle and upper class women’s confinement

is attributable to their socialization and internalized

strictures on their developing selves; or in other words,

that relatively privileged women are disciplined through the

workings of habitus more often than by naked force. However,

gentle Juster’s quick resort to carrying a gun reminds us

that discursive hegemonic negotiations (at both the personal

and societal level) are routinely backed by (often deadly)

force.

In The Conduct of Life (1985), Fornes brings together

three women of different social positions--Leticia, a

middle-class wife; Olimpia, a working-class house servant;

and Nena, a homeless child/*mistress’--under the domestic

domination of Orlando, an officer in an unspecified (Latin

American) military state. The play consists of a series of

encounters between Orlando, who has free access to all the

simultaneously-visible playing areas, and 'his' women, each

of whom has her 'proper place’--Leticia, the living room and

offstage master bedroom; Olimpia, the kitchen and dining

room; and Nena, a warehouse/prison and the cellar. Orlando

courts his own demise by violating the conventional

 266

separations between fulfilling his role as husband and his

desire for violent sex, between acceptable behavior in his

work (as a torturer) and at home (as husband and head of

household), and between his irrepressible urges and the

demands of his career. As I will discuss later, Fornes’ set

spatializes and metaphorizes the usually hidden connections

between private and public ’places’ in society.

As the lights come up, Orlando is exercising to the

point of exhaustion in an attempt to control his kinky

sexual desire which threatens the discipline necessary for

career advancement as a military torturer. Despite his

mental and physical calisthenics, Orlando repeatedly rapes

and tortures Nena, a 12-year-old street girl, whom he has

secreted in an abandoned warehouse. Other scenes establish

the shakiness of his middle-class household. Orlando is no

longer interested in his doting wife and has begun to

consider discarding her in order to make a new marriage more

advantageous to his career. Leticia’s social power as the

lady of the house is further undercut by the practical

capability and negotiating power of the cook, Olimpia, who

is neither charmed nor cowed by Orlando and who notes the

cruelty and unsteadiness of her employer (as wise servants

must do to survive).

Orlando fails to control his violent and sexual

desires: he jeopardizes his job by 'accidentally' killing a

 267

prisoner under interrogation and then disrupts the domestic

order by moving Nena first into the cellar, and then into

the main house as a scullery maid. At first, Leticia

responds to this encroachment by asking Orlando not to make

Nena scream at night and later she takes a vacation. She

eventually seems to acquiesce to Nena's introduction into

the household, but when Orlando forgets himself to the point

of interrogating Leticia about an alleged love affair and

then physically hurts her, she protects herself

instinctively and surely, shooting him dead. The play ends

as Leticia, at first "disconcerted,” says "Please . . . "

after placing the gun in Nena’s hand; Nena looks at the gun,

"in a state of terror and numb acceptance," as the lights

fade (Conduct 88).

Critics are evenly divided between two readings of this

typically shocking Fornesian ending. Many critics assume

that Leticia is so tied to Orlando that she is asking Nena

to shoot her, while others feel that Leticia is setting up

Nena (her rival and social inferior) to take the rap for the

murder. In either case, Leticia thinks only of herself and

incriminates innocent Nena, in a scenario reminiscent of

countless incidents in which female slaves raped by their

masters are further punished by their scorned mistresses.

What emerges in Fornes’ play is an unambiguous instance (and

gestus) of middle-class women's lack of solidarity with

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their working-class and poor 'sisters’: the middle-class

woman, used to identifying with middle-class males, does not

necessarily turn to other women in the face of common sexist

oppression nor even after a particular male tyrant has been

overthrown. My reading is substantiated by Fornes’ addition

(underlined below) to the final stage directions in a later

version of the script:

Leticia is disconcerted, then puts the revolver in Nena’s

hand, hoping she will take the blame. Leticia steps away from
Nena.

Leticia: Please . . .

(Conduct. in Osborn 72; emphasis added)

By comparing the final action of Conduct with the final

action of Sarita (Sarita and understanding Mark facing an

uncertain future together), we can see Fornes’ focus on her

characters' multiple and conflicted loyalties and identifi­

cations, characterizations which challenge the

overgeneralizing and universalizing tendencies of both

gynocentric and poststructuralist theories about "women.”

By ending Conduct with a disturbing, memorable image of

women’s non-solidarity, Fornes broadcast a prescient (and

thus timely) warning about the fraught relations among women

based on differences in class, race, ethnicity, and

sexuality--differences in perspective and in power that

would rock feminist organizations throughout the 80s. Most

specifically, however, Conduct may be read as a "jestic"

 269

feminist expos of differently positioned women’s responses

to violence against women.

Middle-class but uneducated Leticia, who had ignored

the many signs of her beloved Orlando’s cruelty and

infidelity, blames his increasing neglect and violence on

his job. Dependent on him for social position, sexual

gratification, and financial support, she has a vested

interest in overlooking the costs of her security and

privilege. But when Orlando hurts her, the extent of his

loss of control and her imminent danger come home to her;

and armed with a middle-class sense of indignation and

entitlement, she strikes back, without worrying about the

aftermath.

The servant Olimpia has more power than Nena because of

her usefulness and relative freedom. She perhaps escaped

Orlando’s abuse only because she is older, unattractive, and

unimpressed by him. She is clearer-sighted than Leticia,

for she gains nothing by ignoring her master’s instability.

However, her security is based on the mutual (though

asymmetrical) needs of workers and their employers and thus

she has learned to maintain her self-esteem and pride in

doing a good job, while still despising her masters.

Although she dares not cross them too openly, Olimpia

undercuts their power over her while still serving them

competently, and saves her affection and nurture for Nena.

 270

Abused Nena tries to accomodate being kidnapped and

raped into a tolerable system of belief; she wants to

believe it happens to her because she is strong enough to

handle it:

I should value the things I have. And I should

value all those who are near me. . . . And if
someone should treat me unkindly, I should not
blind myself with rage, but I should see them and
receive them, since maybe they are in worse pain
than me. (Conduct 85)

She has adopted a low-power position which enables her to

endure unbearable tortures without being consumed by

bitterness or losing her mind, but which contributes little

to direct social change. However for middle-class audience

members with wider options, Nena’s philosophical statement

functions much like Julia’s prayer in Fefu; it foregrounds

the containment and exploitation of the masses through

internalized value systems which their masters preach but do

not practice. Nena’s spoken internal monologue also

'familiarizes’ relatively privileged observers with the

daily decisions that poor and disenfranchised people (both

in the US and abroad) make in response to constant abuse:

whether to respond with Christian humility, to rage and risk

being incarcerated and killed, or perhaps to attempt

'escape' through alcohol, drugs, or madness.

Although Conduct may be read for its analysis of

interpersonal and psychological relations, Fornes intended

 271

for audiences to reconsider socio-political relations as

well (in Savran 62-3, 67-9; Osborn 48-9, "Creative Danger"

15). The differences in the female characters’ responses to

domestic oppression can also be read as metaphors for the

positions 'offered’ to citizens living in a torture state:

the middle and upper classes are to support the state

blindly in order to maintain their privileges, workers are

to content themselves with their circumscribed spheres of

influence (on the job, in the house), and the underclass may

either endure (with Christian patience) or futilely rage

against lives of exploitation, torture, and neglect.

Orlando exemplifies the inability of government

functionaries to repress their personal, 'irrational’

desires and to successfully sequester the heartlessness

required by their jobs from their domestic affairs. Like

Marion in Abingdon Square, Orlando tries physical self-

discipline, writing, and subterranean 'romance’ to diffuse

his uncontrollable urges. But unlike Marion and Nena, he

has only the most perverse vestiges of love and empathy for

others with which to counter his own (and others’)

dehumanization. On the social level, Orlando's disastrous

drive for mastery and individual advancement may serve as an

example of the horrible human cost and ultimate failure of

strategies of discipline (and self-discipline) to produce a

maintainable (or governable?) social order, especially when

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such repressive measures are unaccompanied by any bid for

coalition-building (expansive hegemony) or at least efforts

to win popular (passive) consensus ("bastard" hegemony)

(Laclau and Mouffe 182). In particular, Orlando places

himself in mortal danger by undervaluing his wife, thereby

shifting her from middle-class ally to female enemy.

Fornes’ set provides visual support for both the

interpersonal and political levels of the play. The

numerous small playing areas physicalize each characters’

’slot’ in society and the interpenetration of public and

private forces upon the characters. Women are arranged on

the set in relation to darkness and light, their relative

proximity to work areas, and are either kept 'out of sight’

or 'on display.’ For example, before Nena is 'promoted’

from sex object to servant, she is imprisoned in the dark

underground basement; after her 'ascension,' we see her

speaking and working with Olimpia in the upstairs dining

room. The warehouse and cellar (places of rape, torture,

and dominating desire) lie below and behind the main dining

room, serving as the foundation and backdrop for everyday

middle class life.

Before leaving Conduct and the ‘Mu d ’ plays, I want to

examine two Kristevan-based analyses of social relations

inspired by Fornes’ play.®* In the first, Linda Kintz uses

Fornes’ expos of the structural role of misogyny and sexual

assault to illustrate her critique of the gendered ideology

underlying fascist violence. Kintz attributes fascism’s

obsessive fear and brutal suppression of "femininity" to its

idealization of a "purified masculinity" threatened by

"feminine" reminders of human interdependence and mortality.

Combining Klaus Theweleit’s suggestion that "fascism would

seem to be a safety mechanism against . . . the danger in

being-alive itself" with Kristeva’s concept of "the abject:

the remainder, the residue, of an inevitably improper

separation" of "male from female, spirit from matter, one

race from another," Kintz argues that fascism aims to

eradicate the abjected female body (associated with blood,

birth, life, and death) in order to reconstitute the

"dissolved boundaries" of fascism's purified masculine body

(Kintz, "Boundaries" 82-3). From this perspective, Kintz

makes the plausible argument that the waif Nena, who "is

literally a part of the debris or waste of this social

organization" provides the individualized body upon which is

carried out "sadistic sexual torture" driven by "a logic

that phobically and violently fights against its own being-

alive, its own physicality and femininity" (Kintz 80).

d
For my discussion of Julia Kristeva, see chapter one.
 274

However, Kintz’ gendered reading of "specific kinds of

resistances to power" is less satisfactory when extended to

the play as a whole. Due to her reliance on Kristevan

theory, Kintz focuses on 1semiotic’ disruptions of fascist

discourse by the "residue, waste, and trivia . . . of the

speaking body" (Kintz, "Boundaries" 79-80; emphasis added).

Although she notes Olimpia’s use of a long, boring monologue

about her daily chores to indirectly control her mistress

through "active passive resistance" (by "occupying the

dialogue, twisting it, attacking its syntax"), Kintz makes

no mention of the scene in which Olimpia directly attacks

Orlando in Nena’s defense ("Boundaries” 86). When Orlando

tries to rationalize his intimidation of Nena by insisting

that "she’s crazy," Olimpia’s 'speaking body’ responds, not

by "bleeding" or "clotting" nor by threatening Orlando with

engulfment by or separation from the maternal body ("Gender"

95-96), but by punching him repeatedly. Even more

effectively, Olimpia uses 'symbolic’ language to verbalize

the necessarily hidden violence Orlando perpetrates on

others both at work and at home, drawing power from her

secure position within a (female-run) household hierarchy.

You are a bastard! One day I ’m going to kill you

when y o u ’re asleep! I ’m going to open you up and
cut your entrails and feed them to the snakes.
(She tries to strangle him.) I ’m going to tear your
heart out and feed it to the dogs! I ’m going to
cut your head open and have the cats eat your
brain! (Reaching for his fly.) I ’m going to cut your
 275

peepee and hang it on a tree and feed it to the

birds! . . .

Tell the boss! Tell her! She won't get rid of

me! She’ll get rid of you! (Conduct 80-81)

By accepting the poststructuralist notion that women cannot

speak within a single monolithic symbolic order except

through 'semiotic body language,’ critics sometimes miss the

meanings of more obvious speech-acts while searching through

textual residue for glimpses of semiotic disruption. From

my perspective, Olimpia disrupts the nominal order of the

household by engaging Orlando in what Augusto Boal would

describe as a "very clear conversation."

Based on Kristeva’s allegation that all social subjects

are potential oppressors, Deborah Geis asserts that The

Conduct of Life

is set in the more overtly political context of an

unnamed Latin American country where prisoners are
tortured routinely and where those who are victims
of oppression become, in an endless cycle,
oppressors themselves. (Geis 302)

However, the play seems to infer just the opposite: that

oppressors become victims of the oppressive systems they

serve. One of Conduct’s male torturers complains that he is

"sexually impotent [and has] no feelings" while the other is

riven with fears of being tortured himself and by an

uncontrollable sexual sadism that leads to his death. But

setting aside this particular counter-reading, how can Geis

include the female characters in her generalization?

 276

Had Geis directly quoted Kristeva’s notion about the

"potentialities of victim/executioner which characterize

each identity," her statement would have better matched

Fornes’ text; but even then, as Kintz notes, "a woman’s

violence against a man cannot be the 'same’ as his violence

against her, supported as his is by an entire

epistemological and political structure" ("Gender" 99).

Nena is so far from being an oppressor as to border on

masochism. Leticia shoots Orlando swiftly, instinctively,

out of self-defense; she does not speak to him, let alone

torture or oppress him physically or mentally. To include

Olimpia as a potential oppressor, Geis must presumably

allude to the maid’s attack on Orlando, although like Kintz,

Geis does not mention this particular monologue. Given the

disparity between the apparent and actual power structures

within the household, it is unlikely that Olimpia would risk

carrying out her threats against Orlando when her verbal

display of power so effectively establishes her disdain for

him and her 'guardianship’ of Nena. Nor can Olimpia’s

description of torture be ascribed to the 'horrific desires

of a repressed female unconscious,’ for even Orlando’s

devoted wife finally confesses to her friend what "everybody

knows":

He tortures people. I know he does. . . . He says

that people are not being tortured. That that is
questionable. . . . Sometimes you see blood in the
streets. Haven’t you seen it? Why do they leave the
 277

bodies in the street,— how evil, to frighten people?

They tear their fingernails off and their poor hands
are bloody and destroyed. And they mangle their
genitals and expose them and they tear their eyes out
and you can see the empty sockets in the skull.
(Conduct 85)

Although Geis is drawn to Fornes’ depiction of subjects

communicating (and acting) within "repressive environments"

(293), by omitting certain of the female characters’

monologues and by restricting her analysis to psychoanalytic

and discursive theory, Geis’ critical practice seems passive

(or at best reactive) in comparison to Fornes’ unflinching

examination of the conscious and unconscious struggles of

women to change their material as well as symbolic

conditions.

As I argued in my discussion of Sarita, Fornes presents

these demonstrations not to elicit judgments of her Latina/o

characters but rather to raise the question of US

theatregoers’ complicity in US support for such military

regimes (in Savran 68-69). In order to reach this audience,

Fornes foregrounds the inseparability of domestic and state

violence and the horrible social price of maintaining a

comfortable middle-class lifestyle within our stratified

global household (68-69). She believes that it is the

responsibility of North Americans, such as the theatre-going

public, to use their political power to oppose (the more

subtly repressive) regimes at home and their ’ai d ’ to

military torture states around the world.

 CHAPTER SEVEN

AND WHAT OF THE NIGHT?:

FORNES’ APOCALYPTIC VISION OF AMERICAN GREED AND POVERTY

— Watchman, and what of the night?

— The morning cometh, and also the night.

{Isaiah 22:11-12)

I fear for our future. I feel that we are

becoming greedy and heartless. . . . When I
first came to live in this country [in 1945]
I was deeply moved by the spirit of
compassion and concern for the under­
privileged that I found here. Now I ask
myself what has happened to this spirit. In
these plays I ask that we give thought to
what would happen to our civilization if we
don't reverse the course we have taken.

Maria Irene Fornes

Night Program Notes

In And What of the Night? (1990), a cycle of four one-

act plays meant to be performed sequentially in one evening,

Fornes traces the increasingly deleterious effects of

poverty and greed in America from the Great Depression to

1998, a time after nationwide economic collapse. Through

terse scenes of daily interaction (typical of her later

plays), Fornes conveys her perception that poverty and

278
 279

homelessness at the end of the century differ fundamentally

from the 'hard times’ of the 1930s. In the first play

(Nadine), about a single mother struggling to raise 'good’

children without house or husband, Fornes dramatizes her

sense that "during the Depression, people were homeless and

living in the streets, but there was a sense of family,

there was hope" (Marx 8). In the next two plays (Springtime

and Lust), Fornes contrasts the petty crimes that poor

people commit in order to survive with the pervasive social

damage caused by the acquisitive empty lives of the wealthy.

By the time the cycle reaches the fourth play (Hunger), most

people are scavenging through rubble in crime-ridden

streets, gravitating every evening to vast bureaucratized

homeless shelters, outside the armed enclaves of a rich

minority. In Fornes’ epic, "night" comes for all characters

rich and poor; even the most privileged lose their souls,

their children, their self-respect, and their peace of mind.

In this chapter, I set Night within the context of

Fornes’ oeuvre and working process, make an extended

critical analysis of each play, and conclude with a brief

discussion of audience response to productions of the cycle.

With this analysis of Night, I make my fullest reading of a

single Fornes piece for several reasons: 1) there has been

little other criticism of this piece; 2) because I had the

opportunity to observe rehearsals and discuss the production

 280

with Fornes, I feel most comfortable incorporating analyses

of her dramaturgy, direction, and political views into my

interpretation; and 3) Night is Fornes' most historically

inflected and overtly political work to date.

Without relinquishing her magic realist inclusion of

fantasies and dreams or her jestic way of questioning

assumptions, in Night Fornes makes an explicit attempt to

change the attitudes of (especially middle class and

"privileged poor" artist/intellectual) audiences about class

relations and myths of social mobility. Through the

characters of Ray and Birdie, Fornes targets complacent

viewers whose belief in meritocracy 'excuses’ them from

further concern about structural economic inequality.

Moving ever further from the light general satire in her

early plays, Fornes tries to shatter her viewers’ belief

that impoverished individuals can rise to wealth (or at

least middle-class security) through drive and aggressive

self-promotion (survival of the fittest) or through hard

work, persistence, ambition, and by making the most of

opportunities (individual mobility). She tries to build

bridges between the audience and her 'working poor’

characters through appeals to common concerns such as

healthcare costs and underemployment. Fornes also attempts

to break the middle-class tendency to identify 'up the

hierarchy’ with wealthy characters whom they assume to be

 281

more satisfied, if not satisfying, human beings than

themselves. But as we will see, the class-stratifying

workings of habitus are difficult to contravene.

Whereas Fefu referred to class as well as gender

differences, Night underscores the class side of interwoven

class and gender issues. In Fefu, Fornes specified a

largely unexplained temporal setting, whereas Night is

structured by Fornes' perception that there has been a

dramatic lessening in compassion for others in the US since

the Depression. Night’s compilation of four plays seems

less tightly crafted than the individual 'Mud' plays, but by

producing a four-play cycle, Fornes was able to concentrate

on the daily life of a 'working poor1 family and then,

through the succeeding plays, to highlight their

interactions with members of other strata, to investigate

the daily life of an 'upper managerial’ family, and to

examine their intertwined destinies. By weaving a chronicle

of cross-class relations and interdependence, in Night

Fornes strengthens and literalizes her apocalyptic vision of

the fruits of the 1980s.

* * *

And What of the Night? evolved from two separate site-

specific works. For the 1986 Padua Hills Festival, Fornes

developed an outdoor piece called The Mothers (eventually

Nadine) based on a scene that she had written in one of her

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workshops: "a young man distressed about having ruined a

suit he washed and his mother advising him on how to press

it" (Milwaukee program notes 1989). She retained this image

as the opening scene in a deromanticized melodrama about

destitute, resourceful women trying to raise decent children

during the Depression.

Two years later, when she was commissioned to create an

environmental piece for an empty warehouse in New York,

Fornes returned to the subject of homelessness--"not

homeless as in [Nadi_ne] , where there is still a family unit,

but homeless as we see it today in the streets of our major

cities, people without hope" (program notes). The vast

emptiness of the warehouse reminded Fornes of arresting

images of homelessness she had witnessed around the country.

She had been shocked to discover that after midnight, the

queuing areas in the Port Authority bus station were spread

with new standard-issue blankets in a organized way, like

"one large flophouse, like a dream or a set," and that the

underground pedway between Grand Central Station and a

neighboring bank was also an after-midnight flophouse

arranged "like a hospital . . . [but] cheaper than a

shelter" (Personal notes, read-through 12/12/89). While

working on a show in Seattle, Fornes had noted a changing

but seemingly meaningful arrangement of found objects (such

as a rock, a bottle cap, a piece of glass) laid out at a

 283

certain corner. Upon inquiry, she found that homeless

people had developed a system in which these objects marked

their places in line at a soup kitchen, freeing them from

standing in line all day. These images were incorporated

into the resulting play, Hunger.*

While working on the opening dialogue between a man and

a woman in a warehouse/shelter, Fornes realized that the man

was Charlie, Nadine’s son from the earlier play; that the

subject of their discussion was Ray, Charlie’s half-brother

who had been given away for adoption; and that the woman was

Birdie, Charlie’s child bride who had later been R a y ’s

lover. Thus, Nadine and Hunger became the first and last

plays in a cycle which reconnects the changes in US poverty

and homelessness with the widening gap between economic

classes and 1980s idolatry of greed and acquisition.

By the late 1980s, Fornes had set up the conditions

under which she could develop an epic such as And What of

the Night? . Independent scenes and images were developed in

her writing workshops {such as INTAR) and fleshed out at

’new works’ venues (such as Padua Hills). Critical

recognition for her later plays had helped her gain access

to 'second stages’ and mid-sized alternative houses in

^These images exemplify Fornes’ practice of observation

as part of her writing process, a practice she learned from
her father.
 284

various regional theatre centers (for example, Seattle,

Milwaukee, Chicago, Providence). She had managed to develop

a sort of 'homeless' repertory company, a flexible group of

collaborators with whom she was able to work repeatedly over

the years, either by jobbing them in for various projects or

by returning regularly to work with resident companies at

such places as Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and Padua Hills.

For example, by 1989, actor Patricia Mattick had worked with

Fornes in more than seven productions and designer Anne

Millitello had lit at least eleven Fornes shows.

After seeing the premiere of the whole cycle at

Milwaukee Rep’s Stiemke Theatre in March 1989, I obtained

Fornes' permission to observe the entire rehearsal process

for a revised production of Night at Trinity Repertory

Company in Providence, Rhode Island. In addition to

observing Fornes as a director and performative writer, I

wanted access to the explanations and coaching that I

surmised she offered to her actors and designers and I hoped

to witness her incorporation of chance elements. I was not

disappointed.

In the question and answer period following the first

read-through with the Trinity cast and crew, Fornes

mentioned trends that influenced situations and

characterizations in Night, such as her perception of

widespread dissatisfaction with working-class and manual

 285

jobs coupled with a "sinister encouragement to be a star, to

be president" (personal notes 12/12/89). She tied this

breeding of personal and/or job discontent to the

individualism and greed rampant in the 80s. She argued that

too many (particularly middle-class) Americans squander

their energy waiting for a break rather than using their

talents to work with the situations in which they find

themselves. By contrast, in Nadine and Springtime Fornes

shows the willingness and drive of poor characters to work

(even illegally) under the most discouraging conditions.

Fornes also condemned US citizens for willfully

deluding themselves, for not dealing with reality. She

cited as an example the election(s) of Reagan, a man who is

"all image," who "we all know is not qualified to lead the

country, economically or politically, but who is friendly to

big business." She castigated a culture full of con artists

and false doctors, a society in which many people, if

informed that their doctor was a fake, would uphold him for

his bedside manner, his style, and his appearance of

confidence and knowledge (personal notes 12/12/89).

Notwithstanding her candor and vehemence in rehearsal,

in the play Fornes never mentions politics or political

figures. She never quite crosses her own (and most

seer/tricksters’) line between socially responsible "art"

and prescriptive "politics," between revealing a problem or

 286

contradiction and "telling what to do about it [or]

indicat[ing] what the next step should be" (in Mael 189).

Instead she focuses on economic/class differences and their

effects on individuals in varying socio-economic positions—

not by portraying characters with a class analysis, but

rather using her characters to present a class analysis that

may be read by her audiences. For example, she coached

actors cast as poor characters to refrain from playing an

awareness of the unfairness of their situations and to avoid

presenting their characters from an outside or larger

perspective. This was especially hard for the actor playing

Nadine, because many of her speeches are painfully

perceptive. Nonetheless, the actors were to portray their

characters as "smart alecky, alert," and competent to make

day-to-day decisions, but not to 'upstage* the audiences by

allowing the characters to pity themselves or see themselves

as victims.

As a director, Fornes replicates for actors

circumstances similar to her own situation as a writer/

director; that is, she has some fixed elements but is always

adapting the script as she works with the actors onstage.

Although she had recently directed Night, she began blocking

scenes by having the stage manager read the stage directions

aloud as if it were an unfamiliar play and then working out

fresh blocking with the current actors. Working this way,

 287

it turned out that she retained most of the previous

entrances and exits, but that timing and blocking within

scenes changed with the new cast. In an extreme example,

she deftly cut or adjusted actions and the accompanying

dialogue for the Trinity actor cast as Pete in order to

accomodate his slow (and painful) recovery from surgery.

Like her plays, Fornes’ directing style involves

paradox. On one hand, actors were free to ask her questions

about characterization, setting, even the origin of specific

ideas and images. She began every scene with an onstage

read-through and solicited responses, questions, and

comments from those involved in the scene. On the other

hand, each object in her sparse set was meticulously placed

and actors were often asked to adjust their positions by

inches. Using her expertise in design, Fornes arranges

objects and actors to underscore tensions and relationships

or to mesh with other design elements. And while many

phrases and images were fixed, Fornes also incorporated many

expected and unexpected ’accidents.’ For example, having

already jobbed in as many women as she was allowed, Fornes

decided that the best-suited castmember to play Greta was a

male. She did not consciously intend to make a gender

comment, and none of the critics misunderstood her choice.

Although it took some outside coaching for the actor to

adjust his body language (ways of sitting, picking up

 288

objects, etc) to fit his verbal and emotional

characterization of Greta, in performance the actor’s gender

did not comment on Greta’s sexual orientation, even though I

watched for allusions to the "butch aesthetic."

More serendipitously, on her first evening in

residence, Fornes chanced to hear the lead singer of a

rockabilly band playing at Trinity’s company party. Taken

with the singer’s strong, untrained voice and her working

class manner of dress, posture, and diction, Fornes hired

her to perform music which had been taped in the previous

production and to become the compassionate on-stage observer

of the impoverished characters in the first two plays.

In the Trinity Rep production, Fornes also cast the

company regardless of racial identity, producing one of the

more successful examples of blind casting I ’ve seen.

Because she cast the company across four individual plays,

some actors played several characters who differed widely in

terms of socio-economic status. For example, a 60-year-old

African-American actor (Ed Hall), played a small-time

mobster, an aristocratic CEO, and then the bureaucratic

manager of a homeless shelter (whose younger self is played

by a white actor). Except for a German character, actors

used a casual version of standard English; class differences

were indicated more by differing vocabularies than by

dialect. Thus, Hall was just as plausible a Black or white

 289

CEO as he was a shelter administrator; in these plays, race

and ethnicity were overridden by more overt class and gender

differences. For example, when the CEO praises the elegance

of his daughter (played by a white actress), he does not

note her fairness, but remarks that "She is well made. Like

a horse or a piece of art," time-honored similes for women

that cut across race and ethnicity.

* * *

In The Conduct of Life, Fornes both complicated and

clarified her portrayal of the maintenance and consequences

of 'covert’ military and domestic violence by showing the

daily lives of women in different class positions. In And

What of the Night?, she retains her interest in intertwined

gender and class differences but shifts her focus to changes

in structural economic inequality in the US. Throughout the

cycle, Fornes shows the negotiation and resistance of low

power people interacting with local representatives of

economic systems as well as the consequences of maintaining

such repressive systems on members of the upper managerial

class, a group idolized and idealized in the 80s. In

Fornes’ view, by the 1980s, identification with and loyalty

to families and other groups had become dangerously

attenuated, so that most people had grown "greedy and

heartless." While individuals forsook all others to 'look

 290

out for themselves,’ the entire society fragmented and

headed toward dissolution.

And What of the Night? is arguably Fornes’ most bardic

work--in the course of the four plays, she uses a wide range

of strategies to unsettle the assumptions that may blind

audiences to everyday omens of imminent social and economic

disaster. Night is an epic repository for her images and

ideas about the workings (and failings) of gender and class

relations. As a jestic dramatist, she militates against

merely psychological readings of her characters’ actions and

motivations, encouraging audiences to see the systemic

problems that condition and delimit her characters’ choices.

But at the same time, she creates unique individuals acting

and reacting in particular situations to present her

'history’ of US poverty and her prophecies and warnings for

the future.

Before interpreting each play in the cycle, I want to

highlight some of the assumptions that Fornes works to

denaturalize. By interweaving deromanticized depictions of

wealth, greed, and poverty, Fornes undercuts the popular

American belief in meritocracy— that people fall along an

economic scale wherever they truly desire and deserve to be.

She shares her awareness that workers and their families

become homeless because of lost jobs, urban renewal,

evictions, or illness; and that without continued good

 291

fortune, she too could end up on the street. She exposes

the myth of unlimited opportunity for upward mobility,

revealing instead the limited and temporary mobility of a

few individuals, who through chance and opportunism climb

over their fellows, and who nonetheless fall with everyone

else when the crash inevitably comes. Fornes draws an

important (and often overlooked) distinction between the

needs, motivations, and social effects of the petty crimes

of the poor and the overwhelming structural and spiritual

damage wrought by corporate executives and politicians,

without flattening characters or resorting to facile

analyses. By comparing and contrasting the strong family

ties among Nadine's destitute family with the cold, gender-

divided, and monetary-based interactions of Joseph’s wealthy

family, Fornes overturns the commonly held assumption that

the ‘lower classes’ are the spawning ground for the

breakdown of the ‘American family.’

Perhaps most importantly, Fornes questions the middle-

class strategy of identifying up rather than down in an

increasingly bottom-heavy hierarchy. She attributes this

widespread belief to our "education by television," an

‘education’ that "teaches people to strive for wealth [and]

that only monetary rewards matter" (personal notes

12/12/89). Especially through the characters of Ray and

Birdie, Fornes demonstrates the wages of middle-class

 292

complicity with upper class avarice. As she stated on the

first day of rehearsal, "This play is not directed to those

who make mergers, but to those who will lose and d on’t think

they will, who will never join the rich and may find

themselves among the working homeless" (personal notes

12/12/89) .

To accomplish this jestic overturning of cultural

'truisms,’ Fornes employs strategies developed in the 'Mud’

plays. She 'familiarizes’ the daily lives, choices, and

feelings of the poor, hoping to inspire the audience with

empathy and understanding. She 'defamiliarizes1 privileged

possessions and points of view too easily taken for granted,

such as access to nourishing food or the belief that on e ’s

opinions represent 'the truth.’ She concretizes theoretical

insights with shocking images and creates characters who

move across naturalized divisions, characters who seem to

'be’ one kind of person in the context of one play, and a

very different 'kind’ of person in another setting. In

Night. Fornes confronts adult audiences with her visions of

a difficult but relatively compassionate past, a rapacious

present, and an apocalyptic future. Fornes’ cautionary

message was ironically underscored at Trinity Rep since

Night immediately followed A Christmas Carol and opened in

the first days of the 1990s, the decade in which the final

play, Hunger. is set.

 293

In the first play of the cycle, Nadine. we watch the

daily negotiations of a single mother, still destitute in

1938 (9 years after the stock market crash), to maintain her

home and family. When the play opens, Nadine has lost one

child to illness, given up little Ray for adoption, and is

struggling to care for baby Lucille who is seriously ill.

In order to feed her growing family without the aid of a

husband, a 'family wage,’ or even birth control, Nadine has

turned to occasional prostitution. Her 16-year-old son,

Charlie, scavenges clothing and personal effects from drunks

and dead men and sells them to Pete, a small time mobster.

Nine-year-old Rainbow, still too young to help out, comes to

understand that her brother endures Pete’s psychological and

physical abuse to help feed and clothe her. And though

Nadine may console herself that her children do not see what

she does to feed them, of course in their small outdoor

living space, they can hear her. However, it is not true,

as Nadine laments, that she has "nothing to give them or

teach them," for all her children inherit her tenacious will

to survive (Nadine 45). As we will see, Charlie and Rainbow

emulate Nadine’s resourceful (if dangerous and illegal) ways

to take care of loved ones; while Ray, with his middle-class

advantages, retains only his mother’s feverish desire to

thrive.
 294

Interestingly, Fornes explores "the spirit of

compassion and concern for the underpriviledged" that she

fears Americans have lost, not by depicting the charity of

wealthy characters for those less 'fortunate,' but by

exploring how destitute yet hopeful Charlie emulates his

caring mother rather than his heartless boss, Pete. In the

opening pair of French scenes, Fornes shows us one of Pete's

'lessons.’

Guided by his mother's instructions, Charlie is trying

to iron a wool suit that he had damaged by washing it.

Having taken off his one set of everyday clothes in order to

avoid soiling them with perspiration, Charlie stands

ironing, clothed only in his boxer shorts. When Pete walks

into their living space without asking or knocking, Charlie

cordially invites him in and offers him the chair or the

bed. After refusing to return Nadine’s greeting, Pete

reclines on Nadine’s bed with his shoes on and asks Charlie,

gruffly, "Did you get some stuff?" (Nadine 4). Charlie

nervously produces a paper bag of worthless odds and ends;

Pete is dissatisfied and demands to see "the good stuff I

heard you got" (5). But Charlie hesitates to produce the

"good stuff":

Charlie: I thought I could keep some of the

clothes.

Pete: Who said?

Charlie: I thought I could keep them.

 295

Pete: Did anyone say youcould keep them?

Charlie: I thought I could.

Pete: How come you thought that?

When Charlie finally shows Pete the outfit he had hoped to

keep for himself, Pete inventories each item, eventually

asking, "Did you take the underwear?" When Charlie tells

Pete that he left the ma n ’s undershorts to cover his

nakedness, the following 'lesson by interrogation’ ensues.

Charlie: He was naked.

Pete: So what?

Charlie To cover himself.

Pete: So?

Charlie: He was cold.

Pete: You d o n ’t say.

Charlie: I mean that I felt sorry for him.

Pete: For what?

Charlie: To be lying in the street cold and hurt

like that.

Pete: That’s stupid.

(PETE puts the paper bag in the box)

(7-8)

Even after Pete indicates that he is ready to leave,

Charlie continues to explain his compassionate point of

view. Standing dangerously within Pete’s reach and covered

only by his elasticized shorts, Charlie continues:

 296

Charlie: I wouldn’t want it done to me.

Pete: (To the audience) Hey everybody! Listen

to this!

(To CHARLIE) Say it.

Charlie: What?

Pete: That you felt sorry for him and why.

Charlie: (To the audience) Because he was naked.

Pete: And what else?

Charlie: Nothing else.

Pete: That you felt sorry.

Charlie: I felt sorry.

Pete: And what else?

Charlie: Nothing else.

Pete: That you wouldn’t like it done to you.

Say it. That you wouldn’t like to done
to you.

Charlie: (To the audience) That I wouldn’t like it

done to me.

Pete: Hey! Do n ’t leave him here with me! I

don't need this guy.

(PETE takes the box and starts to exit)

Charlie: You didn’t pay me, Pete.

Pete: (As HE exits) You shouldn’t have done

what you did.

Charlie: What?

Pete: Kept the clothes. Y o u ’re lucky you

didn’t get your teeth kicked in! (HE
exits)
(8-9)
 297

Although Pete's address to the audience might plausibly be

understood to be directed to passersby looking into Nadine’s

outdoor living room, as in other Fornes1 plays, actual

audience members are called upon to serve as public

witnesses to private 'negotiations.' Other examples include

Helena’s final monologue in Lust and Julia’s asides during

her hallucinatory torture in Fefu.

Despite such bleak scenarios, there is also humor and

romance in this first play, particularly in Charlie’s

courtship and marriage to Birdie, a streetwise orphan

befriended by Rainbow. We are first acquainted with

Birdie’s and Charlie’s sexual attraction in a nearly silent

scene. Avoiding eye contact and pretending to be unaware of

each other, the adolescents make their approach obliquely,

scurrying in short cartoon-like bursts until they 'happen'

to arrive center-stage at the same moment. Back-to-back,

Birdie sinks onto a chair so that her buttocks are

'accidentally’ within reach of Charlie's outstretched hand.

Their imminent contact is prevented when Rainbow bounces in

to ask them to play dominoes with her.

The teens’ attraction soon blossoms into a romantic

engagement despite their sordid circumstances. Scene 7

opens with Pete lasciviously pursuing Birdie around the

dining room table. Our young hero, Charlie, rushes to the

defense of his intended, shouting, "I’ve had enough of you,

 298

Pete!" Given this chance to show up his young rival, Pete

trips Charlie and then conks him on the head with his pistol

butt, saying "That’s what you get!" Before exiting,

'villainous' Pete turns once more, " shakes his genitals" at

Charlie, yelling "And this!" (Nadine 31). But the scene

ends, as Birdie kneels to cradle tearful Charlie in her

arms. After Birdie kisses Charlie on the cheek, he asks,

"Be my girl . . and she responds, " . . . I am" (32).

She bends down to kiss him again as they are surrounded by

the warm glow of a "special."

In this scene, Fornes both celebrates and parodies

movie romances and their influence on the course of 'real

life’ love affairs. In addition, she presents a sympathetic

portrayal of the resilience of young love, even among

destitute and 'delinquent’ youth— an infatuation which in

this case leads to marriage. By invoking a movie reference

shared by poor and middle-income viewers alike, she provides

a bridge for her audiences to perceive that they share

images and feelings with the characters in Nadine.

Fornes’ darkly comic send-up of saccharine depictions

of the noble poor and their humble circumstances evolves

into parodic melodrama when Nadine finds that Pete is the

only source of money to buy medicine for little Lucille.

Having witnessed Nadine’s failed attempts to reason with

Pete and then to seduce him, we now see Charlie abasing

 299

himself, literally grovelling before Pete, to secure a loan.

When Pete insists that he hasn’t any money, Nadine resorts

to force and threatens him with a knife. Although uninjured

by Nadine, Pete begins to convulse; while he gags and coughs

Nadine removes his gold jewelry. He then produces wads of

money, which she eagerly takes, all the while rebuking him,

"It’s too late, Pete. God’s not going to forgive you" (51).

As Pete continues to gag, Nadine comforts Rainbow and

Charlie saying, "Everything’s going to be alright," even

though we know that Lucille will not be "alright" even if

she recovers from this illness. Fornes closes her melodrama

with Nadine, the suppliant mother turned conquering hero, in

the center of a "happy family" tableau.

In Nadine, Fornes highlights the vestiges of maternal

love and familial connection that Nadine manages to preserve

and to instill in her children. The play also demonstrates

the range of tactics a poor family may use to survive:

Nadine flatters, whores, demands, and finally uses force;

Charlie walks the precarious line between self-assertion and

keeping his job; Rainbow asks questions and learns that it

may be necessary to endure abuse to care for loved ones; and

Birdie works and watches for opportunities to move up in the

world. For the rest of the cycle, Fornes follows the

divergent fortunes of Nadine’s children in order to

emphasize the deeply personal as well as economic

 300

interconnections between people of seemingly separate social

classes.

In Springtime (set in 1958), Fornes focuses on the

intersection of poverty with sexism (and homophobia) in the

sad tale of Rainbow’s love affair with Greta, a German lab

technician. As the strains of "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" [You

Are Beautiful to Me] fade, Rainbow, now working as a janitor

at a medical school, engages Greta in playful banter.

Rainbow cajoles Greta into translating some of their

conversation into German, whereupon Rainbow declares

dreamily, "I love German!" and swoons to the floor. When

Greta contracts tuberculosis,^ Rainbow immediately turns her

tiny room into an infirmary and resorts, almost

automatically, to petty thievery in order to pay for Greta’s

treatments. However, as Greta had feared, Rainbow is soon

caught--by a "nasty" man who makes her agree "to do

something for him" in order to avoid being sent to jail

(Springtime 9).

For a while, things go better for the lovers: Greta

seems to be getting stronger, Rainbow has settled into

working for Ray, and the women reaffirm their love for each

other, pushing aside Ray's growing influence in their lives.

In Scene 5, Rainbow laughs away Greta’s fear that if she

Greta’s illness recalls the deaths of Fornes’ maternal

grandparents and uncle from tuberculosis.
 301

dies, Ray would replace her in Rainbow’s heart. In Scene 6,

Rainbow recounts for Greta R a y ’s "brotherly" advice that she

should "choose to love a man," and her logical defense of

her sexual preference, "It doesn't make a difference to

anyone else, but of course, it makes a difference to me"

(12). Fornes successfully mainstreams this lesbian couple

(regardless of the gender of the actors) by making no

comment and presenting them as 'normal.’ She introduces a

dissenting (and discredited and disembodied) homophobic

voice only after the audience has followed the joys and

trials of the women through five scenes. Fornes ends the

central section of the play with a charming reprise of Scene

1:

Greta: Your life was peccable when you were

working for him. But now that you’ve
paid your debt to him and you do n ’t work
for him anymore your life is impeccable.
It was he who made your life peccable.

(RAINBOW laughs)

Why do you laugh?

Rainbow: How do you say peccable in German?

Greta: Why?
(14)

However, an uneasiness lies beneath the gentle humor.

Rainbow, buoyed by her active love for Greta and proud of

her ability to provide, has become more assertive, while

once dominant Greta has been forced into relative passivity

 302

and helplessness. And even though Rainbow has repaid her

debt, Ray continues to dominate first Rainbow’s, and then

Greta’s, thoughts and conversation.

Their relationship begins to unravel after Greta

discovers photos of Rainbow’s continuing work for Ray--the

seduction of powerful men for blackmail purposes--and Greta

is not consoled by Rainbow’s heartfelt explanation that she

does "that . . . because you [Greta] must have treatment. I

do n ’t mind. It’s for you" (18). The final blow comes when

Rainbow’s feeling that Greta is keeping things from her and

no longer "adores" her is confirmed— when she discovers that

Ray, who had argued against her lesbianism, has been

seducing Greta. The audiences’ knowledge that Ray is

actually Rainbow’s half-brother only adds a further twist to

this m a n ’s rapacious need to insert himself into Rainbow’s

home life and to destroy the women’s relationship.

Like Nadine and Charlie, Rainbow has no ambitions to

advance in the criminal world or to make money for herself.

In these first two plays, Fornes overturns the popular

presumption that people most often turn to crimes such as

prostitution and thievery in order to obtain illicit drugs

to please or perhaps to numb themselves; instead Fornes

shows petty crimes to be a tactic that low power nurturers

employ in an attempt to secure legal, but prohibitively

expensive, prescription drugs (and other treatments) for

 303

loved ones. Along with poverty, tenderhearted Rainbow (and

Charlie) have 'inherited' from Nadine a commitment to others

and an ability to endure personal danger and humiliation for

them. It is tempting to fault Rainbow for her devotion to

love and mutual "adoration," but such judgments are

mitigated by Fornes’ spare yet inescapable rendering of the

multiple pressures that force her characters to endure abuse

and to perform onerous tasks in order to survive emotionally

and physically. However, such dedication loses its value

when the love dies or is destroyed, and since she cannot

love "only halfway," Rainbow leaves Greta to the strains of

"Melancholy Baby." Rainbow’s death (not shown in the cycle)

is foreshadowed in a love letter that Greta discovers after

she has gone. The lights fade on the set, leaving a spot on

the Singer who with sad irony, repeats, "Smile my honey,

dear, as I kiss away each tear. Or else I shall be

melancholy too" (Springtime 26).

Before the mood can be broken by applause, blind

dancing beggars, marching in lockstep formation to "Have You

Ever Been Lonely," clink their tin cups and change the set

in full view of the audience. With this directorial choice,

Fornes upsets even the simplest of formal expectations (that

the first half of the evening should end with applause and

that the stage should be quiet at the beginning of an

intermission). In addition, the uniform, almost programmed,

 304

movements of this platoon of interchangeable beggars serve

as a counterpoint to the personal freedom and individuality

'promised' by the upper-class set they are arranging; this

crowd of 'cheerful,’ homeless workers foreshadows things to

come--both in the play cycle and perhaps in the audience

member’s 'real life.’

In Nadine and Springtime. Fornes examines the

stranglehold of poverty and others’ greed on the lives of

the poor, especially poor women. Wary that her portrayal of

the entangled oppressions of the poor might support middle-

class audiences’ tendency to identify with the wealthy and

to work toward securing a place among the privileged for

themselves and their families, with Lust Fornes focuses on

the downside of avarice for the upper managerial classes,

revealing the corrosion that corporate greed works on the

personal and business lives of the rich--an aspect of the

poverty/greed dichotomy too often left out of social protest

drama. Eschewing didacticism, Fornes exploits and then

subverts popular interest in glamorous representations of

the wealthy, such as television’s Lives of the Rich and

Famous, Dallas. and Dynasty. I find it no accident that

Lust’s setting "from 1968 to 1983" parallels shifts in US

concerns: from social change in the 60s, through personal

change in the 70s, to personal gain in the 80s; or in more

theoretical terms, a retrenchment from a late 60s public

 305

focus on group equality and structural inequalities back to

narrower support for the liberty and freedom of the

individual.

In twelve terse, enigmatic scenes and an extended dream

sequence, Fornes uses both realist and surrealist techniques

to present the demise of a dynasty and the dehumanizing cost

of greed and exclusion, of insatiable desire and killing

competitiveness. More than simple expose or social protest,

Lust exemplifies Fornes’ facility for concretizing

theoretical insights in order to fix in our mind’s eyes the

bonds between men of power, the displacement of women, the

devaluation of interpersonal relations, and the

impoverishment of language and feeling by categorization and

habitual dispassion.

As Lust begins, Ray, now an executive, meets with an

older CEO, Joseph. While they discuss Ra y ’s request that

Joseph contribute to the education of a boy Ray has

befriended, Joseph initiates and consummates sex with Ray on

his office divan, never missing a beat in their

negotiations. Ray has to repeat the key words "financial"

and "fund" several times before Joseph deigns to understand

the nature of his request and only agrees to "advise" the

foundation to help the boy after sex has been consummated.

Even then Joseph bases his consent on his trust in R a y ’s

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judgment that a scholarship for the boy "would be a good

investment" (Lust 1-3).

After completing their business, they are interrupted

by Joseph’s daughter, Helena, who seems mentally unbalanced,

perhaps sedated. She stays only long enough to announce

that Ray {and her father) are "wild like earth full of worms

. . . worms that shout" in contrast to her earth which

"doesn't have living creatures in it" {4). In avi action

reminiscent of Julia’s paralysis in Fefu and Rainbow’s swoon

at the beginning of Springtime, Helena falls to the floor,

saying, "It is a bitter thing" {4). She then rises with

R a y ’s assistance and declares with "strange urgency" her

love for her father. Joseph hesitates and then clumsily

kisses her on the cheek. As soon as she has left the

office, Joseph asks Ray to marry her; after a moment of

consideration, Ray accepts.

I was not shocked or offended by Fornes’ discreet but

unmistakable presentation of casual, consensual sex in the

workplace or even her 'familiarization' of 'sodomy.'

Ray: By the way, I enjoyed that very much.

Joseph: I did too. Any time you feel up to it

again, give me a ring. I though it was
quite pleasant. Very natural.

Ray: I thought so too.

(Lust 3 )
The scene remains with me, however, because of Fornes* bold

staging of the exclusively male-male nature of corporate

deals and of the colonization of sex and interpersonal

relations under the rubric of "business." After Joseph has

wrapped an afghan around their waists and positioned Ray in

front of him, Ray asks casually, "Is this ordinary, is this

the way you conduct business?", and Joseph assures him,

"Yes, frequently. This is frequently the way I conduct

business. It doesn't interfere with business" 12). The

homosocial nature of their dealings is only furthered when

Joseph gives his 35-year-old daughter to Ray, almost as

codicil to their previous agreement. When Ray agrees to

marry Helena, Joseph thanks him, for it is apparent that

although Joseph describes Helena as "elegant, like her

mother," "well-made, like a horse or piece of art . . . that

took time and craft and breeding to make" (10), she is

emotionally damaged and totally dependent on "some else’s

earning ability" for her survival (12). Helena functions

not as a prize but rather, like a rickety old estate or

fragile heirloom, as a mark of the family’s distinction

whose maintenance is a burden and responsibility that Ray,

the adopted heir of the aristocratic line, must now

shoulder.

Joseph thus precludes women from active roles in his

business--the exchange of power between male generations.

 308

In producing Ray as his business successor and son-in-law,

Joseph has managed to father a 'son’ and heir without the

aid of a women; but as we will see, Joseph’s consummation

produces "a crazy son," an Oedipal son who will displace the

father by usurping his only love— his business. Ironically,

R a y ’s sole explanation for his restless drive is that he

inherited a fever, an insatiable hunger from Nadine, his

impoverished mother.

As one reviewer rightly noted, Night targets "spiritual

disintegration" rather than capitalist schemes (Marx 8).

From scenes of Ray’s and Helena’s married life, we learn

that Helena’s mother never held her and that her father

"always wished for a son and not a daughter" (47). Her

resulting mental confusion and lack of self-love draw

further humiliation from Ray who compares her unfavorably

with animals who would never "be passive if there was food

anywhere within their reach" (11). When Helena makes the

point that "humans c a n ’t just sniff and find food . . .

[that] food is many steps removed from m a n ’s reach" and that

"for some people, survival is not so clear," Ray dismisses

the truth of her insight with the judgment, "it’s sub-human"

(11- 1 2 ) .

In the next scene, Helena 'dares’ to interrupt R a y ’s

"work" and he responds by grabbing the nape of her neck and

forcing her down to the floor. In this moment, we can

 309

literally see the combined forces of misogyny and class

hatred pressing Helena down. Ray berates her:

I don’t need you for anything whatsoever. I go

home to you each day. But I could go to an empty
apartment as well. . . . I ’ve never said "I love
you." . . . You are like an insect smashing
itself against my windshield. I don’t hear you!
And I d o n ’t see you! And I d o n ’t want to hear
you! Or see you! (11)

As she crawls toward the divan, Ray takes Helena’s previous

insight and turns it against her.

Animals are beautiful and refined and delicate.

. . . They know how to obtain sustenance and
shelter. They not only exercise when they need to
chase after prey or get away from an animal that
gives them chase, but they know when they need
exercise and run and play for no other reason than
to keep in shape. (16-17)

If we understand "keeping in shape" to include mental and

emotional well-being, R a y ’s remark about the need to "run

and play" may inadvertently point to one of the causes of

Helena’s malaise: interference with and devaluation of the

creative "play" necessary for a strong sense of self.^ As

with Fornes’ middle-class characters in Fefu, Abingdon

Square. and Conduct. Helena’s life of relative economic

privilege has provided her with the leisure time for self-

affirming and creative "play," but she has been denied the

necessary encouragement and active engagement of supportive

parents or other mentors. Meanwhile, the knowledge she has

^For my discussion of self-creating play, see Ruddick

discussion in chapter two.
 310

gained from formal education and life experience has been

denied or devalued. With this portrait of Helena, Fornes

debunks the popular conception that wealthy women

necessarily enjoy high status and an easy life, while

showing the damage that gender division and the drive for

monetary gain and business status work on familial

relations. However, Fornes also grants Helena moments of

clarity and self-confidence in her own perceptions.

Having attended the theatre with Ray, Helena criticizes

the play they had seen, despite R a y ’s remark, "You didn’t

[like the play]? . . . That’s odd. ... I liked it" (12-

13). Helena protests the playwright’s use of "false words

which have no thinking behind them" (13), words used only to

categorize and identify others by their social position or

potential business utility. Although Ray defends such words

for practical uses, Helena maintains that "a lot of these

words are a hoax. People feel good using them but they feel

a little cheated later, debilitated." Fornes makes it clear

that Ray is no match for Helena in analyzing language or

interpersonal relations, either onstage or in 'real life.’

After raving to Joseph, just the scene before, against human

addiction to technology and "the new," Ray contradicts

himself by countering Helena’s argument with the lame adage

"new words for new times" (13).

 311

Like his father-in-law, Ray thinks of nothing but work,

taking infrequent vacations only to refresh himself for more

work. We never see Joseph, Ray, or Helena enjoy the fruits

of their amassed wealth. On vacation, Helena sleeps with a

young boy not for her own pleasure but in a futile attempt

to move Ray to jealousy. However, in the sequence entitled

"Ray’s Dream," his single-minded focus on work is belied by

a series of fantasized sexual encounters between Ray and a

young mechanic, his own image in a mirror, a foot fetishist,

and an Edwardian girl. These tabooed sexual fantasies

devolve into a nightmare in which Ray must watch as

stereotypical "Chinese movie" characters burn $100 bills in

an unexplained "religious act" (Lust 30). Even in his

dreams, R a y ’s lust for money overshadows his increasingly

perverse sexual desires.

The only human succor in these empty lives appears when

Birdie is hired "to look after" Helena. Through Birdie, Ray

has made a connection back to his original family and Helena

has finally found a supportive listener and someone for whom

she can also feel compassion.

(HELENA looks down at her dress,

adjusts it and adjusts her hair)

Helena: (To BIRDIE) Am I all right?

Birdie: Yes.

Helena: Do you hate me?

Birdie: No, I d o n ’t hate you at all. (36)

 312

Even when Helena confirms her suspicions that Birdie is part

of R a y ’s extended family and that she is in love with him,

Helena responds with forgiveness and pity for Birdie.

Although Birdie becomes R a y ’s lover, perhaps her

support helps Helena withstand the final dissolution of any

pretense of familial love and support. In the course of

Joseph’s complaint to Helena that Ray (the husband he chose

for her) is taking away his business, Joseph selfishly

confesses, "I’ve never talked to you about the things that

areimportant to me . . . my work. ... I have not loved

anything the way I love my work" (43). Once Ray has entered

and silently confirmed Joseph’s fear that there is nothing

he "can do to prevent [Ray from] taking everything away,"

Joseph projects his own sense of helplessness onto Helena:

Joseph: You are a master of your own .life,

Helena.

(There is a pause. H E waits for a response.)

Exercise your free will. Animals can do

better than you, Helena. . . . Animals
manage to work their way around us even
if it appears that they are dependent on
us. . . . We also do n ’t need to bemoan
our lack of freedom in regard to any
other human being.

(pause)

Haven’t I taught you to love yourself?

Helena: [retaining her composure] No,--father.

 313

By including Birdie as an onlooker in this scene, as a

watchful servant-cum-mistress (of the house), Fornes

underscores the shift of power from old money with its

genteel facade into the hungrier hands of climbers from the

‘lower classes’.* Fornes also portrays the limits of

individual liberty and the social constraints on freedom of

choice— even for males born into relative privilege. Like

Orlando in Conduct. Joseph exacerbated the precariousness of

his position by failing to make his daughter a valuable and

valued class ally. By not exempting her from his prejudice

that women are "another species" and by assuming that Ray

shared his class values, Joseph further divided himself (by

both gender and class) from those nearest him.

In the penultimate scene, after his suicide attempt is

foiled by Ray, we hear Joseph moaning in anguish. He walks

faltering, leaning heavily on Helena’s arm as the set

changes catastrophically: Walls and doorways whirl

unsteadily and disappear, accompanied by wrenching organ

music and swirling light. As Joseph steps away from Helena

into a void, his clothes are torn away by invisible forces,

A similar shift of power from ‘gentlemen’ of business

to 'uncouth yobs’ is well-handled in Caryl Churchill’s
Serious Money. However, I find the play less effective than
Night, perhaps because its exclusive focus on the dangerous,
‘sexy’ dealings of traders and managers allows audiences to
forget the destructive consequences of insider trading for
common people around the world.
 314

leaving his aged body vulnerable, covered only by plain

white boxer shorts. Mo death with dignity here, Joseph ends

his corporate life ignominiously and alone. For her final

monologue, Helena stands center-stage as Ray listens,

sitting silently in a chair down-right. Helena resolutely

faces her father's sexism but also uses his words to put Ray

in his place:

He told me he always wished for a son and not a

daughter. . . . He said he wanted a son just like
me because he loved me. He knew it was possible
that a son could have resembled you instead of me.
. . . That he could be a misfit. A crazy son.
Someone who, like you, is distasteful in every
way. But he said that he still wished I had been
a boy. (47)

Lest anyone think that Fornes has left a loophole for

enterprising adventurers from the 'lower classes’ to replace

a rotting aristocracy, in the fourth play, Hunger (set in

1998), Ray is reduced to a crazy street scavenger, banished

from the fortified Compound in which a few business and

political elites have sequestered themselves. Like most

people in society, Ray must now vie for a sleeping spot in

shelters such as the cavernous warehouse administered by his

now senile half-brother, Charlie.

Fornes’ focus shifts to Birdie, the last of Nadine’s

extended family. Birdie, now solidly middle-class, has been

allowed to leave the Compound to find Ray, who allegedly

took something of value when he left. As Hunger opens,

Charlie is explaining to Birdie that Ray probably won’t meet

her because he spends his days surreptitiously sifting

through rubble looking for things that he can sell. When

Birdie asks Charlie if he remembers who she is, he answers,

"No. Things are very different now. I don't think that

much any more. Not often. . . . It’s different now. The

way a person thinks. The way a person is" (5). We soon see

that Charlie has become the 'perfect’ small-time bureaucrat:

he doesn't remember his past, he enforces rules with only a

vague understanding of their reasons or consequences, and he

is content to work in exchange for goods such as his hand-

me-down suit. His memory serves him only well enough to

feed his pride and wonder that he "ended uphaving a good

position . . . and yet Ray, who went so far when he was

young, is scrambling for a piece of bread" {Hunger 5-6).

Charlie’s former compassion has been buried by his new

officiousness; when Birdie asks him if he ever helps Ray,

Charlie flatly answers, "No. .. . When is he going to

settle down? . . . H e ’s too restless. . . . Sometimes he

comes in the middle of the night and he wakes up everyone"

(7) .

Rather suddenly, in the course of a conversation about

his work, Charlie notices that Birdie talks smells, and

looks different, that she is "of a different time" (9).

After taking her hand and declaring it "an object of art,"

 316

he puts his arm around her waist and draws her to him,

saying, "I knew you’d feel fresh. Like water." Birdie

gently but firmly pushes him away, whereupon Charlie lowers

his head in shame and retreats behind his desk. Unsettled

but not afraid of Charlie's unconscious familiarity with

her, Birdie shows him a picture from their life together.

But this brush with old memories is too much for Charlie,

who takes a nap at his desk while Birdie leaves, promising

to come back later.

In Scene 2, we discover Ray, agitated and mumbling,

chiding his shelter-mate Reba for not cherishing his dreams

as a lover should. When Charlie appears, clipboard in hand,

Ray tries to get approval for his system of personalized

tokens to mark their places in the daily line to get into

the shelter. Without ever understanding R a y ’s idea, Charlie

refuses to consider it further because he doesn’t "have a

form for that" (14). Once Charlie has refused, Reba feels

safe to share her opinion, "I did n ’t think it was going to

work, Ray. . . . Things like that d o n ’t usually work.

. . . You see my arm is broken . . . . And I wondered,

Charlie, if I could get some help" (15). Although Charlie

can write a requisition for medical care that may or may not

be honored, Reba has learned never "to put anything on

paper" and that "if you see something happen say you didn’t

see it," because "if you tell the truth they w o n ’t let you
 317

in through the door. If you tell the truth you end up

arrested" {16) .

When Birdie returns to the bleak Beckettian landscape

of the shelter, Ray and Reba huddle together, their minds on

their separate problems, while Charlie fumes and erases the

form he had begun to fill out for Reba. Birdie is hesitant

about walking among the shelter 'residents' while dressed in

clean expensive clothes, fearing that they will blame her

for her difference and "vent their rage on her" (18). But

they do not see her as inherently different with secure or

inalienable rights; instead they recognize that her

privilege is temporary, constructed, and that she is only

one step away from their condition. Birdie divides the food

she has brought between Ray and Charlie, calmly countering

R a y ’s hysterical accusation that she gave Charlie the larger

portion because "he has a better position" (20). A few

moments later, when Charlie issues Birdie a regulation

blanket, she shrinks away but doesn’t leave the shelter, as

if she has no place left to go. World-weary Reba befriends

Birdie, explaining "A moment ago you felt you were

different. But it won’t take too long before you feel just

like us" (23). Before Birdie can resist, a loud bell tolls,

signalling the delivery of "rations," for which the poor

must show their humble appreciation by kneeling. Dazed by

the realization that she is not fundamentally different from

 318

these poor wretches she sought to aid, Birdie obediently

falls into line, as an automaton-like stone angel proceeds

excruciatingly slowly toward the kneeling supplicants. With

a mechanical twitch, the angel tosses their rations (the

bloody entrails of animals) onto the floor, before

retreating in the same dispassionate, inexorable manner.

Birdie gags and faints while Reba, who is long past self-

assertion, rouses her indignation for Birdie’s plight and

ironically calls after the stony minister of charity,

Next time would you bring her something she can

eat? Something she likes . . . . Bring her some
bread and coffee and some juice and cream! . .
And some fruit! I think fruit is good--when you
feel the way she does--listless. And I think she
should have something hot. Instead of coffee she
should have something more nourishing! Pea soup,
or perhaps chicken soup is more digestible. And
also a little red wine. I understand it’s good to
pick you up.

(And then turning to BIRDIE) Would you like a little

liqueur?
(23-24)

The lights fade, except for a dim pool of light in which

Fornes’ tenderly watchful singer reappears to reprise the

final chorus of "Melancholy Baby" while Ray weeps and howls

over Birdie’s slumped body.

And thus no one escapes Fornes’ apocalyptic vision— all

are connected by love, lust, and economic interdependence;

all will fall if the current system continues. Neither

R a y ’s drive and rapacity, nor Birdie’s slow and steady climb

 319

into the middle-class can save them from the fate of a

society so divided by class and gender, and so socially and

economically irresponsible.

* * *

Even though Milwaukee reviewers failed to note Night’s

foregrounding of class and gender issues, Fornes was further

surprised by the "naivete of Providence audiences" in

comparison to her "small and relatively sophisticated"

following in New York (personal notes 1/9/90, 4). When a

man at a post-show discussion asked her why she would want

to show such repulsive "street people," Fornes thought at

first he must be complaining about her portrayal of

disgustingly "free people," such as Ray and Joseph. She was

comforted slightly by the confession of another man that he

too was repulsed by the characters in Nadine, but that his

feelings changed to qualified empathy by the end of the play

(2). The responses of several acquaintances seemed to

confirm that many middle-aged, middle-class, and

predominantly white theatre-goers did not temper their

judgments of characters’ actions by considering their

limited options and pressing needs. Interestingly, one of

the women, who maintained that Rainbow was just using

Greta's illness to excuse her criminal activities

(proclivities?), was empathetic toward Helena, attributing

her malaise to the workings of the "feminine mystique."

Some of these viewers seemed to agree with R a y ’s assumption

that homeless people are "drunk, unclean, [and] unshaven"

because "they d o n ’t know enough to wash" (Lust 11). I

wondered if they were able to overlook Ra y ’s obvious defects

as a judge of moral behavior because he voiced their own

opinions or if they gave him credence out of class loyalty

(or less consciously because of shared habitus).

In private, Fornes pondered how such viewers could see

Nadine as a whore, Rainbow as retarded, Charlie a

thief, and Birdie a juvenile delinquent headed for
reform school--and not understand that Nadine is
both honorable and must work as a whore to feed
her children? C a n ’t they see the difference
between Nadine and a corrupt woman? (personal
notes 1/9/90, 4)

Despite her dismay at some comments, Fornes was

interested in the audiences’ comments and questions. She

was particularly engaged by one woman’s question about why

the plays presented only male sexuality. Although I felt

that perhaps the woman was construing "sexuality" too

narrowly, Fornes agreed with the woman’s perception, listing

Pete, Ray, and Joseph as overtly sexual characters. She

explained to the questioner that as a playwright and

director she has found herself to be protective of women’s

sexuality, "self-protective and reserved." (2); and that in

contrast to the male characters, "Rainbow's and Greta’s

relationship is spiritual," (indicated perhaps by the narrow

single invalid’s bed and single wooden chair that furnish

 321

their room). By implication it is clear that Birdie

actively pursues sexual liaisons throughout her life (in

particular with young Charlie and with Ray), but Fornes

stages the sensuality of her flirtations and attractions

rather than sexual actsper se.

Later, I mentioned to Fornes my observation that in

Night there is relatively little display of women’s bodies--

even in the various bedroom scenes females are fully clothed

or at least wearing a slip and underwear; and that

conversely, her display of male vulnerability (Charlie and

Joseph in their plain white shorts) and sensual appeal (Ray

sitting up in bed with his shirt off) is rather unusual.

Although she had not consciously considered the implications

of this differential display of male and female bodies, she

agreed that it was meaningful in the cycle and also related

to her protectiveness of female sexuality.

Notwithstanding this protectiveness, we both noted the

semiotic power of Helena’s varying posture and dress. For

example, in a bedroom scene in which Ray is dressing to go

out while Helena lounges on their hotel bed in a slip, she

stretches out comfortably, powerful and seductive, as she

informs Ray that she has slept with a young boy. But when

Ray is unruffled and counters her tactics by insinuating

that she has degraded herself and should be tested for

venereal disease, their change in status is simply

 322

communicated by Helena slumping down into the bed and

covering herself with the sheet. For the final monologue of

Hunger. Helena reclaims her higher (class) status and takes

center stage vocally and visually, clothed in an elegant

black dress.

Although some younger Providence viewers found the play

"powerfully moving," many audience members were simply

exhausted by the length, density, and darkness of a four-

play cycle so packed with characters, plot, ideas, and

images. One viewer told me that she had begun to wonder if

Fornes intended to exhaust viewers so that they would feel

like the characters in Hunger. Newspaper reviews of the

Trinity Rep production followed a general pattern: reviews

ranged from pans and/or confusion in local, non-arts papers

to highly favorable and richly perceptive review articles in

papers with an arts focus or metropolitan rather than

neighborhood readership. Providence arts critic, Bill Marx,

used his considerable knowledge of Fornes’ career and works

to ground an insightful feature story and interview. Kevin

Kelly from The Boston Globe followed up his informative

biographical Sunday feature on Fornes with a chillingly

evocative review, praising the "mesmerizing" performances

and the simple and startling precision with which Trinity’s

Downstairs Theatre was transformed "into a hellish, shallow

pit from which there’s no escape." He was "riveted" by

 323

Fornes* Bosch-like vision and the depiction of "a world as

pitiless and cynical as our own which Fornes has perceived

with the bleak relentlessness of Beckett" (1/13/90, 9, 14).

But Kelly also noted that (at least for audience

members seeing the play cycle only once)

there are moments . . . when Fornes fails to

communicate at all, when motivation behind her
terrors is so cryptically detailed that thepoint
is lost, as in an abortive attempt to translate a
dream.

However, Kelly qualifies this criticism,

But clarity here is not the measure, cohesion not

the focus. "And What of the Night?" is
deliberately scattered, half-irreal, half-
pragmatic, its literary approach itself a metaphor
for the blurred identities and blasted epoch the
play creates. (14)

It seems that And What of the Night? had become an epic

repository for Fornes’ perceptions and prophecies about US

society in the late 20th century. She expressed her desire

to write several more intervening plays in which we would

see, for example, Charlie's and Birdie’s young adult years—

with the understanding that directors would choose 3 or 4

one-acts from the 5-7 possible Night plays for any one

production.

Heinrich identified as a hallmark of the bardic

playwright the creation of such epic "masterworks," pieces

 324

that often baffle critics or draw their disapproval.^ He

cites Shaw’s Back to Methusalah. Strindberg’s Road to

Damascus. and Ibsen’s Brand as historic examples (9). Night

is arguably Fornes’ most bardic play, one of the most

overtly political and prophetic of her works thus far. But,

if Fornes is correct, that the ideas in her plays are often

ahead of their time, perhaps like Fefu and Mud this cycle

will find wider, more appreciative audiences in the not-too-

distant future.

^For my discussion of Heinrich's conception of bardic

playwrights, see chapter three.
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 APPENDIX I

MARIA IRENE FORNES TIMELINE

Bold face titles indicate plays discussed at length in

this study. Bold face is also used to highlight Fornes’
numerous Obie awards.

1930 Born May 14 in Havana, Cuba to Carlos Lu s and

Carmen Hismenia (Collado) Forn s.

1945 Emmigrated with widowed mother and sister to New

York.

1951 Became naturalized US citizen.

1954-57 Lived and painted in Europe. Saw original Roger

Blin production of Waiting for Godot.

1957-60 Worked in New York as a textile designer. Read

Hedda Gabler.

1960 Roomed with Susan Sontag and began writing.

1961 The Widow. [La Viuda]. Translated family letters

into play. Produced NYC, then broadcast at
Universidad de Mexico 9/61; published as "La
Viuda" in Cuatro Autores Cubanos. Casa de las
Americas (Havana) 1961.

1961-62 John Hay Whitney Foundation Award.

1962-63 Centro Mexicano de Escritores residency award.

1963 There. You Died? First completely original work.

Produced Actor’s Workshop, San Francisco,
11/19/63, under revised title, Tango Palace, NYC
1964; Firehouse, Minn. 1/22/65. Published in
Playwrights for Tomorrow (Vol II) Arthur H.
Ballet, U Minn Press, 1966; in Concepts of
Literature. Prentice-Hall, and in Promenade and
Other Plays, Winter House 1971.

337
 338

1963 Joined Actor’s Studio playwriting unit. Also

member of Open Theatre’s playwriting unit.

1965 70 Costume designer for 60s avant-garde theatres, in

particularly Judson Poet’s Theatre, New Dramatists
Committee.

1965 Successful Life of Three Prod: Firehouse, Minn

1/22/65 (dir. Fornes) and Open Theatre 3/65 (dir.
Chaikin, then Gilman), Judson Church 5/67; also
London, Amsterdam, Glasgow, Svalegange, Denmark,
Los Angeles, Cambridge, MA (from 1968-1972). Pub:
in Playwrights for Tomorrow, Eight Plays from Off-
Off Broadway. Bobbs-Merrill, 1966, and in
Promenade and Other Plays.

Promenade♦ With music by A1 Carmines. Prod:

Judson Poets’ 4/9/65, Promenade Theatre 6/4/69.
Pub: in The Bold New Women Fawcett 1966, in The
Underground Theatre Bantam 1968, and in Promenade.

Obie award for distingue ’ '\ywriting. OADR

Award. Taught at Ter< rs Collaborative,
NYC

1966 "The Office." Pro' .y at Henry

Miller, 4/21/66 (t r opened).

1967 A Vietnamese Wedc* igry Arts Week

Washington Squar _so Philadelphia,
Denver. Publish*.

"The Annunciatior: nes) Prod: Judson

Poets 5/67.

D r . Kheal. Prod: New Dramatists 4/15/68, Village

Gate (for Cafe Cino benefit) NYC 4/68, Judson
Poets 5/68, Theatre Genesis NYC 2/73, also London
and Melbourne. Pub: Yale Theatre Review 9/68,
The Best of Off-Off Broadway Dutton 1969, and
Promenade.

Cintas Foundation Award

1968 The Red Burning Light With Remy Charlip et a l .

Produced: Open Theatre Zurich 6/19/68, LaMama
4/12/69. Pub: Promenade.
 339

Molly*s Dream Prod: Boston University Tanglewood

Workshop 7/23/68, New Dramatists 12/68, NY Theatre
Strategy 1973. Pub: Promenade.

Yale University writing fellowship.

Co-founder of Women’s Theatre Council with Megan

Terry, Roslyn Drexler, Rochelle Owens, Julie
Bovasso, and Adrienne Kennedy, which advocated a
"theatre without compromise and sexism." Unable
to get funding.

1969 Promenade remounted Off-Broadway at Promenade

Theatre to wide critical acclaim. Recorded by RCA
Victor.

1971 Rockefeller Foundation grant.

1972 "The Curse of the Langston House." Prod:

Playhouse in the Park, Cinncinnati 10/72.

"Babboon!!!"

Guggenheim fellowship. CAPS grant.

Co-founder and administrator for the New York

Theatre Strategy, an organization to produce male
and female avant-garde and experimental theatre in
New York.

President, New York Theatre Strategy, 1973-79.

1973 "Aurora." Music by John FitzGibbon. Prod: NY

Theatre Strategy 9/74.

1975 "Cap-a-Pie" (Head to Foot). Music by Jose Raul

Bernardo. Prod: INTAR NYC 5/7 5.

1977 Fefu and Her Friends (dir. Fornes) Theatre for the
New City, 5/5/77. American Place Theatre, 1/8/78;
Los Angeles, Spring 1979; Firehouse Theatre,
Minneapolis, Winter 1979.

Obie for writing, direction, and production of

Fefu

"Lolita in the Garden" (in Spanish), INTAR.

1978 "Evelyn Brown (A Diary)"

 340

1979 "Eyes on the Harem" INTAR, 5/79. Obie for

direction.

1981 "The Visit"

1982 The Danube (dir) 5th Padua Hills Festival (titled

"You Can Swim in the Danube--But the Water is Too
Cold" )
Theatre for the New City, 1983 Obie.
The American Place Theatre, NYC 2/29-3/18/84

Obie for Sustained Achievement "for the wit,

imagination, and social outrage she has brought to
off-Broadway for twenty years."

1983 Mud (dir) 6th Padua Hills Festival, 7/83

Theatre of the New City, 1983 Obie.
Omaha Magic Theatre, Omaha & Boston, 1985.

1984 Sarita (dir) INTAR 1/84. Obie. Lorraine

Hansberry Theatre, San Francisco, 1986.

1984 Abingdon Square (dir) Seattle Rep, 1984

The Women’s Project, American Place, 10/8/87.
Published in Womenswork: Five New Plays from the
Women’s Project, edited by Julia Miles (New York:
Applause, 1989)

Conduct of Life (dir) Padua Hills (at Cal Arts)

Theatre for the New City, 2/21/85 Obie.

1986 "The Mothers" (later "Nadine," 1st part of Night)

Padua Hills Festival

"Drowning" (commissioned adaptation of Chekhov, in

Orchards Knopf, 1986)

Lovers and Keepers

1987 "Oscar and Berta"

"Hunger" (later 4th part of Night) Site specific

warehouse production, NYC

1989 And What of the Night? (dir) Milwaukee Rep, 4/89.

Trinity Rep, Providence, 1/90. What of the Night?
published in Women on the Verge: Seven Avant Garde
Plays, edited by Rosette C. Lamont (New York:
Applause, 1993)