{"id":7092,"date":"2019-12-09T18:19:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T18:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7092"},"modified":"2019-12-09T18:19:13","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T18:19:13","slug":"americas-mother-of-the-dramatic-avant-garde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7092","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Mother of the Dramatic Avant-Garde"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Cuban-American avant-garde playwright, Mar\u00eda Irene Forn\u00e9s,\nhas been paradoxically acclaimed as \u2018the greatest yet least known female\ndramatist of our time.\u2019 Such pre-eminent playwrights as Caryl Churchill, Lanford\nWilson and Edward Albee claim her as both an inspiration and influence. From\nthe first, she was always an iconoclast: as Wilson said, \u2018Her work has no\nprecedents, it isn\u2019t derived from anything.\u2019 Each of her plays inhabits its own\nworld; each wholly distinct from the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forn\u00e9s was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1930 and arrived in New\nYork City in 1945. At first she turned to painting and had formal education in\nabstract art. In 1954 she met writer and artist\u2019s model Harriet Sohmes and\nbegan an affair with her. They moved to Paris to further their painting studies\nand it was seeing Beckett\u2019s Waiting for\nGodot <\/em>there that awoke her to the profound impact theatre could have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the relationship with Sohmes withered, Forn\u00e9s moved\nback to New York and soon met and fell into a relationship with Susan Sontag.\nIt was a fortuitous challenge to Sontag that started her writing \u2013 \u2018If I hadn\u2019t\npretended to show Susan how easy it was\u2026\u2019 Still, it wasn\u2019t until the 1960s that\nshe wrote her first proper play, the absurdist two-hander Tango Palace<\/em>. It rocketed her into the avant-garde and experimental\ntheatre circles of New York, headed by such luminaries as Joseph Papp, founder\nof the Public Theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then she has written more than forty plays, won nine\nObie Awards and been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, but her work, though revered, is\nstudied way more that it is performed. Finally there has been a rare revival of\nperhaps her finest work, Fefu and Her\nFriends,<\/em> written back in 1977, at the acclaimed Theatre For A New Audience.\nAs the New York Times<\/em> put it: \u2018Get ready\nfor the masterwork no-one has seen.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As in Tango Palace,<\/em>\nForn\u00e9s is interested in character rather than plot. Indeed, Fefu<\/em> has a gossamer-thin story \u2013 or\nrather, loose framing device \u2013 of eight women meeting in the eponymous character\u2019s\nhouse to plan a school fundraising event. \nIt opens conventionally enough in Fefu\u2019s stylish, circa 1935, drawing\nroom and could simply be a traditional slice-of-life drama.  But we immediately realise it is more than as the\nwords hit us like a barrage of challenging aphorisms. \u2018My husband married me to\nhave a constant reminder of how loathsome women are.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forn\u00e9s herself said she was more concerned with \u2018the\nmechanics of the mind, some kind of spiritual survival, a process of thought.\u2019\nHer plays slice deeply into the psychology of what it is to be human and, more\nspecifically, to be a woman. In Fefu<\/em>,\nthe eight idiosyncratic women interact: loving, despairing, clashing and sparking\noff one another. For the most part, it passes the famous Bechdel test \u2013as to whether\na work of fiction features women who talk to one other about something other\nthan men. The only male presences here are offstage, only mentioned in passing,\nlike Fefu\u2019s husband \u2013 whom she fires a shotgun at in a crackpot game of Russian\nroulette. Was it just a blank.\u2026?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 A radical production<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the dialogue and some of the play\u2019s business are intellectually unsettling, in the middle act the audience is literally unsettled. Split into four colour-coded clans, they are sent on a processional visit to four scenes-behind-the scenes. Lurking in the wings and behind the main set are a study, a kitchen, a croquet lawn, and, most disturbingly, a subterranean bedroom where a crippled character appears entombed deep beneath the Plexiglass stage. Actors move between these settings with split-second timing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This kind of immersive or promenade theatre might now be,\nif not commonplace, hardly novel (think Punch Drunk\u2019s Sleep No More<\/em> or the Marcos musical Here Lies Love<\/em>) but back in 1977 it was highly innovative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third act has the audience settled back in their seats\n\u2013 but no more comfortable in what they are experiencing. The crippled character\nappears able to walk; a lesbian affair may be being rekindled \u2013 and that\nshotgun remains a threateningly suspenseful presence. The closing scenes and the\nfinal tableau of the eight women topple the whole thing into the totally\nsurreal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly Forn\u00e9s died, aged 88, just a year before this\nfaithful \u2013 and powerful – revival.  Such\nis her status in the cannon of playwrights that some divide their lives into BF\nand AF \u2013 before reading a Forn\u00e9s play and after. She is revered as American\ntheatre\u2019s \u2018Mother [of the] Avant Garde\u2019 .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Jeffrey Horowitz, the founder of the Theatre For A New\nAudience, was asked why this play was so rarely performed, he said, \u2018it\u2019s\nbecause she writes about women.\u2019 And, indeed, this play centres wholly on its\neight racially, culturally and intellectually diverse women. One suspects that\nit probably required the #metoo movement to prompt this compelling revival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 1hr 19min documentary on\nthe life and work of Forn\u00e9s, <\/em>The Rest I Make Up,\ndirected by Michelle Memran, was released in May 2018. Click here<\/a> to see a trailer. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some divide their lives into BF and AF \u2013 before reading a Forn\u00e9s play and after.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":7096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,126,71,59],"tags":[246,245],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7092"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7099,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7092\/revisions\/7099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}