The following are works by other playwrights which Fornes has directed, translated, or adapted. The period covered is 1980 - 1995
1980 Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) Translation and adaptation by Fornes for INTAR, NYC. Direction by Max Ferra. Synopsis A young couple, named the Bride and the Bridegroom, wish to marry. The Bridegroom's mother has deep reservations because the apparently submissive Bride had once been courted by Leonardo. He was a member of the clan involved in the murder of the mother's other son, and also in the murder of her husband. However, negotiations take place between the Bride's father and the Bridegroom's mother who struggles to overcome her doubts about the Bride. Although the wedding preparations are in hand Leonardo, now a bitter, married man, begins to secretly visit the Bride.
On the wedding day the Bride slips out from the celebrations to gallop away with Leonardo on his horse. On learning of this, the Bridegroom's mother is torn between the traditional Spanish honour code dictating that her remaining son should go in vengeful pursuit, and her longing to hold him safely away from such violence. Her son joins the villagers searching for the fleeing couple and Leonardo and the Bride are traced to a forest at night. The presence of Woodcutters, The Moon, and Death disguised as an old beggar woman, prefigure the fighting of the Bridegroom and Leonardo who kill one another. Of the trio of women, the Bride is left to live on in total disgrace. Leonardo's pregnant widow, with her young child, is also disgraced. The Bridegroom's mother, having lost husband and sons, lives on bereft.
1981 Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681, Spanish) at INTAR (Hispanic American Arts Centre), 420 West 42nd Street. New York City. Translated, adapted, and directed by Fornes.
1982 Exile by Ana María Simo at INTAR, NYC, Directed by Fornes.
1985 Cold Air by Virgilio Piñera (1912-1967) at INTAR, NYC; from 28th May - 9th May. Cast: Luz Marine - Ivonne Coll, Oscar - Leo Garcia, Angel - Al Casas, Ana - Miriam Cruz, Enrique - Raol Arenas, Luis - Armando Molina, Children - Katrina Ramos and Jennifer Valle. Translated, adapted, and directed by Fornes. Costumes - Gabriel Berry, Lighting - Anne Militello, Scenery - Ricardo Morin.
Piñera was born in Cuba but spent much of his life in Argentina before returning to censorship in Cuba. Synopsis The play is set in pre-revolutionary Havana during from the heat of November 1940 into 1958 and is set against historical events, private and public lives. Luz Marina, an unmarried seamstress labouring with her sewing machines, is the main breadwinner for her family. Sharing the family poverty is Oscar, a brother determined to pursue his poetry which is understood and admired by his sister. He goes away for two years to Argentina. Another brother, Luis, lives in New York but he returns to Havana as an invalid whilst macho older brother, Enrique - who has his own family to support - visits his parental home to reluctantly give a little financial help. Against these hardships and the poverty, Angel, the bullying, unemployed father, deteriorates in health becoming blind and confused whilst the long-suffering mother, Ana, is carried to her death bed.
1987 Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906, Norwegian)
Fornes revised this from a translation by William Archer to direct it at the Todd Wehr Theatre (Main Stage), Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 27th February - 5th April, 1987. Picture from the left: Rose Pickering (Mrs. Elvsted), Marie Mathay (Hedda Gabler), Richard Riehle (Lovborg). Click to enlarge
Costume Design was by Gabriel Berry, Lighting Design by Anne Militello, and Set Design by Donald Eastman. Cast: Hedda Gabler - Marie Mathay, Jørgen Tesman - James Pickering, Judge Brack - Kenneth Albers, Mrs. Elvsted - Rose Pickering, Juliane Tesman - Tamu Gray, Eilert Lovborg - Richard Riehle and Berte - Adele Borouchoff.
Right hand picture: From the left Kenneth Albers (Judge Brack), James Pickering (Tesman), Marie Mathay (Hedda Gabler), and Rose Pickering (Mrs. Elvsted). Click Picture to Enlarge
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) for the Classic Stage Company, CSC Repertory Theatre, NYC. Revised translation by Fornes who also directed.
1990 Going to New England by Ana María Simo at INTAR, NYC. Set design and direction by Fornes. A 116 minute video of this production can be seen at the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library. See Billy Rose Theatre Collection. There is also a photograph of the author on set in Robert Giard's Particular Voices. See Publications.
Dogs by Leo García at the Ensemble Theatre, Los Angeles, California. Directed by Fornes.
Shadow of a Man by Cherríe Moraga Funded through a $22,700 grant from the Kennedy Centre it was a joint project of the Eureka Theatre Company, San Francisco, California and Brava! For Women in the Arts from 6th November - 9th December. Cast: Carlos Baron, Raquel Haro, Alma Martinez, Jade Power, Jennifer L. Proctor, and Luis Saguar. Director and Set Designer - Maria Irene Fornes, Costume Designer - Gail Russell, Lighting Designer - Tim Wessling, Sound - Nina Iventosch. This bilingual play was developed by Moraga whilst a student in Fornes' INTAR Hispanic playwriting workshops in 1983 and 1984. The play concerns family relationships against the prevailing Chicano culture of 1960s Los Angeles.
1992 It Is/It Is Not by Manuel Pereiras García at Theatre for the New City's Cino Theatre, 155 First Avenue, NYC in the fall of 1992 when it was rehearsed and performed with Angela Chale Millington, Kimberly Flynn and Steve Hoffendahl. Direction, lighting, set design and costume design by Maria Irene Fornes. Sponsored by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund.
Again at Theatre for the New City from 10th February - 27th February, 1993. Directed by Maria Irene Fornes the two plays were sponsored by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. Cast: Angela Chale Millington, Crystal Field and Steve Hoffendahl. Set Design by Donald Eastman, Lighting Design by Pat Digman and Costume Design by Carol Bailey. See Kimberly (Flynn) Williams for more information: Actors.
'The first of the two plays, Two Romantic Ladies, takes place in the beachfront house of Laura and Diana, who have been temperamental lovers for twenty years. On a day when Daniel, (her gay and devoted brother) comes to visit, Laura erupts with deliciously paranoid and vengeful feelings about lovely Diana's indifference and suspected unfaithfulness.
The second play, The Man Who Forgot, is a hilariously funny, gently disturbing burlesque of a rural family in which the father is prematurely senile, the mother is somewhat demented, and the son is mentally retarded. Amid non-sequiturs of their tetched minds, the family struggles to master the mysteries of ageing, eating, hygiene, perpetual motion and anatomy.
Playwright Manuel Perieras Garcia was born in 1950 in Cifuentes, Cuba, where his grandfather operated the only movie theatre. The family fled to the US in 1963, where he has written over 50 plays. In 1977 he received his first NYSCA grant to write a bilingual children's play, The Butterfly Cazador, a musical. He co-founded the Stonewall Repertory Theatre in 1980. It Is It Is Not was originally written in Maria Irene Fornes' writer's workshop.'
This is edited from information compiled at the time and forwarded to this site by Jonathan Slaff of Jonathan Slaff & Associates.
1995 Any Place But Here by Caridad Svich at the Theatre for the New City, NYC. Directed by Fornes. Synopsis A savagely comic drama set in a US landscape of economic desolation where two sets of verbally aggressive couples struggle to find meaning in a world where it is increasingly difficult to do so. A surrealistic and often brutal account of the disintegration of relationships. See www.caridadsvich.com ......
