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I was extremely blessed to work with Irene on several productions. I first met Irene following a staged play reading I performed under the direction of Tom O'Horgan, whom I had recently worked with at La Mama in the 30th anniversary restaging of Futz in 1991. She telephoned me the next morning and asked me to rehearse a reading she was presenting that very evening! Not long after she invited me to rehearse Terra Incognita, this was 1992, as she readied it for the Dionysian Festival in Sienna, Italy. At the time it was not a musical piece, as I had read on your site that it later became. She continued to write and rewrite the play throughout the rehearsal period in a studio at Theater for the New City, and later in Sienna, making changes until the day before performing. This was before the advent of a laptop computer with little access in the Tuscan countryside to Xeroxing, and so she wrote her notes and made her changes by hand on and around the printed page. Irene also asserted a clear and precise vision on costume, lighting and design elements. Although there were lighting and costume departments with technical directors, Irene did design and direct all these aspects, being very particular about even the slightest differences in cut or color of a skirt. The play was presented on two evenings only in the outdoor yet enclosed courtyard of the old clock tower on the main piazza in Sienna. The production was received extremely well especially by the international playwrights and performers in attendance who truly recognized Irene's artistry. A year later, Irene invited the original cast to stage this in another outdoor venue at the Padua Hills Festival in Los Angeles. For Padua Hills, Shawna was not available, she was, I believe, already working on another production for a playwright at the same festival. Irene recast the role with an actress from Texas named Jennifer. Irene had just previously worked on a production in Texas in which she had cast Jennifer and then invited her to join us in Padua Hills. The production remained non-musical and, I do not want to slight any designer, as I have no record to consult, but as a witness, it appeared that Irene designed the lighting, costume and production with her vision being carried out by assistants or directors in those departments. This was a longer run, I believe two weeks, and was also well received. In this version too, the only hand shaping the event was Irene's. In between these two productions, Irene directed what was the first presentation of |
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Mary Forcade interviewed Interview granted when Mary Forcade spoke with Mala Renganathan in New York, Mala Renanathan: I'm just trying to understand more about Irene's method of directing the actor. Mary Forcade: Irene's directing is extremely specific with the blocking ... extremely. She blocks minutely so that not only where you go, how you walk, how your head is turned, how your shoulders move, how you sit down, how you move up, is all very, very specific. And in consent with the other actors everything is so specific and detailed. MR: My question is this: there's freedom for the actor? Right? You block the movements and then Irene expects this particular movement or she just improves on it? |
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MF: In terms of Oscar and Bertha we rehearsed in Irene's tiny living room. And she said 'Could you fall down? Like, hit that lamp, and then that knocks you somewhere else over to the sofa and from that sofa, that knocks you somewhere else.' So I have a physical background and am not afraid of being hurt so I went for it so to speak. And I would bounce off things as if I were ricocheting and she'd say 'Ya, like that, like that.' (laughs). So she gave me the idea of the ricochet and then I did it. |
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In 'Any Place But Here', what I mean about her directing being specific is that, she spends the majority of time in the framing, the design, the architecture, the structure of the actors moving through the whole space. What the actor is free to do is, to find inside, why they'd do that. You see, she wants a very specific look. Or like architecture, it's very formal, in a way and could be called stylized, in a way. And then what the actor is free to do is to find the inner life that would give credence to that movement, that would give substance to standing up in that way or holding a pose of that long ... MR: I know Irene's productions are very pictorial, very specific and quite physical. Now, I'm just putting a situation to you like this. Suppose you're asked to do a role and say, you don't find it convincing or you have some difficulty in doing it, how do you overcome it? Do you do any exercise or does Irene find some kind of a method to put you into it? MF: Yes. Irene works a great deal with imagery, which can have absolutely nothing to do with what you're talking about, but something more abstract. Or it could be something not at all abstract but very specific but that has nothing to do with that moment in the play, but a quality that she wants [could be] a quality like that of a complete greyness, complete hopelessness. She, for instance, might use the imagery of walking into a room that is completely devoid of anything. It's like an emptiness ... may be not a room, may be, you know, that of walking up to a mountain and looking out and not being able to seeing anything - a void, walking to the edge of the world in that. So, it's imagery. She works a lot with imagery. ©2005 Marla Renganathan. Many thanks to Mala Renganathan for allowing this interview and photograph (left, Mary Forcade) to be used on this website. For Mala Renganathan, Maria Irene Fornes' Theatre: A Study see Academia. |
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