Plays of María Irene Fornés

(1 Credit Hour) · Undergraduate

María Irene Fornés (1930-2018), considered by many to be the mother of Latinx playwriting in the United States, was an influential and award-winning playwright, director, and teacher. Born in Havana, Cuba, Fornés immigrated to the United States in 1945 and resided in New York City for the rest of her life. Fornés wrote and directed more than fifty plays that were produced throughout the United States and internationally. Tango Palace (1963) was her first produced play and Letters from Cuba (2000) was her final play. She won an unprecedented nine Obie Awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. This one credit course will engage in an analysis of the entire published Fornés canon: eighteen award-winning plays written from 1963 to 2000, with topics as diverse as an absurdist musical exploring class struggle, a 1930s Anglo women's fight for education, a 1940's Cuban-American woman's search for empowerment, a 1890's British female actors' efforts to produce Ibsen and a 2000 Cuban-American woman's connection to her Cuban brother. Taught by Professor Anne García-Romero, a leading Fornés scholar, this seminar provides a unique immersion into the work of one the most important female playwrights of the twentieth century.