The Conduct of Life & The Danube & Mud & Sarita

"...She writes increasingly from a woman's point of view. Women are doing women's things ... Fornes has a near faultless ear for the ruses of egotism and cruelty. Unlike most contemporary dramatists, for whom psychological brutality is the principal, inexhaustible subject, Fornes is never in complicity with the brutality she depicts. She has an increasingly expressive relation to dread, to grief and to passion.... Dread is not just a subjective state, but is attached to history: the psychology of torturers In THE CONDUCT OF LIFE.... 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..." ~ from Susan Sontag's preface

Three men, three women; unit set - Originally produced in New York at Theater for the New City

THE DANUBE
It is impossible to speak about America's most significant playwrights unless Maria Irene Fornes is included. She has worked all over the world, not only as a playwright, but as a director as well

"THE DANUBE [is] one of the most startlingly original and devastating things I can ever remember seeing on a stage" ~ Michael Feingold, The Village Voice

First presented by the Padua Hills Festival, Claremont CA - Three men, one woman; unit set

MUD

"Playwright Maria Irene Fornes' production of her MUD - a stark drama set amid the groping lives of the rural poor that I saw last year--spoke in the steely voice of a writer who knew exactly what she intended with every word, every gesture. MUD's spare, direct poetry was crystal-clear" Scott Rosenberg, San Francisco Examiner

"THE DANUBE and MUD have paved the way for a new language of dramatic realism" ~ Bonnie Marranca, Theaterwritings
Originally produced by the Padua Hills Festival in Claremont CA, and then at Theater for the New City in New York Two men, one woman; single interior/exterior set

SARITA

"Something beautiful: that's clear from the beginning.... Every image, every shadow, is lyrical, evocative, and functional. This is true of the words, the music, the characters" ~ Erika Munk, The Village Voice

"Playwright Maria Irene Fornes...spoke in the steely voice of a writer who knew exactly what she intended with every word, every gesture. [Her] spare direct poetry was crystal-clear. SARITA--a musical about a young Cuban woman in 1940s New York torn between the gentle man she wants to love and the jerk she can't stay away from.... The play is two acts of ten short scenes each, spanning a total of eight years. They're brief flashes of light that show us the formative moments of Sara Fernandez's life--that connect to form a confining pattern that drives her toward madness and violence" ~ Scott Rosenberg, San Francisco Examiner

First produced in New York by INTAR - Cast size is four men, three women