Article
Rediscovering the Poetic Genius of María Irene Fornés
Theatre Topics
(2022)
Abstract
I first encountered María Irene Fornés's Fefu and Her Friends in 1997, exactly twenty years after its 1977 off-Broadway premiere. At the time I was a college freshman, and, quite frankly, was not quite sure what to make of it. I was utterly intrigued by the irreverence of Fornés's dialogue. "Do you think about genitals all the time?" asks Emma as she is gardening with Fefu. At age 19, I was not yet able to grasp the depth and invention of the human condition that Fornés exposed with her dialogue. My play library and theatrical vocabulary was limited to playwrights of the popular realm. I had not yet dug into genres beyond realism and naturalism. What I wasn't aware of at that time but what is not lost on me now is that a seed of curiosity was planted for Fornés in that first read. On the surface, the play seems like a simple relationship play written in the same vein as other popular 1970s kitchen-sink dramedies. The play centers on Fefu Beckman and seven of her friends who gather at her New England country home to rehearse a program for an educational society fundraiser in the late 1930s. Yet as the dialogue unfolds, it becomes clear how profound and nuanced the plot and these women really are. Weaving together the lives of these housewives and philanthropists, Fornés delves into themes of conformity, patriarchal oppression, and the feminine mystique without compromising the unique yet familiar relationships among the women. Writing about a production of Fefu and Her Friends at the American Conservatory Theatre in April 2022, theatre critic Jim Munson observed: "The other thing that makes this play's reputation is Fornés' writing style, which is grounded in realism, but occasionally includes poetry and other flights of fancy. This is also what makes the work so hard to describe." Although the play was intriguing to this young woman, a deeper understanding would only come with age (fig. 1).
Disciplines
Publication Date
November, 2022
DOI
10.1353/tt.2022.0028
Citation Information
Erin J Schmidt. "Rediscovering the Poetic Genius of María Irene Fornés" Theatre Topics Vol. 32 Iss. 3 (2022) p. 149 - 154 ISSN: 1086-3346 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/erin-schmidt/46/