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A year of events celebrating the life and legacy of Maria Irene Fornés Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and MOSAIC in partnership with the Fine and Performing Arts Department Theatre Program is thrilled to present Fornés Festival, a year-long series of events dedicated to honoring the life and legacy of Cuban American playwright, Maria Irene Fornés (1930-2018). The festival is part of the Fornés Institute’s national initiative, "Celebrando Fornés / Celebrating Fornés,” part of their “Decade of Fornés (2021-2030)” events designed to increase the visibility of Fornés’s work. For more information, see the Fornes Institute at www.fornesinstitute.com.
FORNÉS LEGACY PANEL DISCUSSION
MORE ABOUT THE FESTIVALA theatre educator, director, and playwright, Maria Irene Fornés is considered by
many to be the mother of contemporary Latinx theatre, a leading LGBTQIA+ forerunner,
a genius. Her more than fifty plays won an unprecedented nine Obie Awards. Her play
What of the Night? (1990) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Her work
is groundbreaking, diverse, and centers women characters. She was experimental, feminist,
complex, award-winning, and for many, life changing. December 1st at 8pm, begins the opening performance of two of Fornés’s early short plays, Tango Palace (1963) and Dr. Kheal (1968), directed by Georgia Dedolph 24’, and produced by MCLA Theatre’s Theatre Lab, featuring the work of MCLA Theatre’s acting, production, and design students in Venable Theater. The Fornés Festival will also include a screening of Michelle Memran’s “lyrical and lovingly made” documentary portrait of Fornés, The Rest I Make Up, and an MCLA Theatre Main Stage production of Fornés’s rarely staged deconstruction of Ibsen’s realist masterpiece Hedda Gabler, The Summer in Gossensass (1997), directed by Associate Professor, Laura Standley. The festival culminates April 6th 2024 with a lecture hosted by the generous support of MOSAIC at Gallery 51 by guest artist and scholar, Anne García-Romero, Ph.D., author of The Fornes Frame : Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of Maria Irene Fornés (2016) who will join MCLA Theatre faculty and students for a panel discussion following that evening’s performance of The Summer in Gossensass in Venable Theater.
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