María Irene Fornés, photo by James M. Kent
(PRINCETON, NJ) -- The Lewis Center for the Arts' Program in Theater and Music Theater at Princeton University presents events highlighting legendary theater-maker María Irene Fornés including a reconstruction of Fornés' last play, a live podcast recording about the playwright, and a major symposium co-produced by Latinx Theatre Commons and the Lewis Center. The events preview publication of María Irene Fornés in Context, slated for July.
María Irene Fornés, born in 1930 in Havana, Cuba, is among the most influential American theater-makers of the 20th century. A defining force within the off-off-Broadway movement of the 1960s and 1970s (and nine-time Obie Award winner), Fornés—as playwright, director, designer and teacher—became a guiding presence for emerging theater artists of the 1980s and 1990s, especially those invested in staging feminist, queer and latinx aesthetics and experiences. Fornés’ experiments in theatrical form and her transformative teaching techniques continue to challenge and inspire new generations of theater-makers today. Even so, the legacy of Fornés remains remarkably under-acknowledged among contemporary theater artists, students, and scholars. Fornés died in 2018 in New York City.
The 2025 Latinx Theatre Commons María Irene Fornés Institute Symposium is a one-day convening of scholars, artists, students, advocates, and others invested in the life, work, and legacy of Fornés and is organized by Princeton’s Associate Professor of Theater Brian Herrera and Professor of Film, Television and Theater at the University of Notre Dame Anne García-Romero, who are also co-editors of María Irene Fornés in Context. The first Fornés Institute Symposium also co-produced with Latinx Theatre Commons was held in 2018 at Princeton.
The Fornés Institute, an initiative of the Latinx Theatre Commons, aims to preserve and to amplify María Irene Fornés’s legacy as a teacher, mentor and artist, through workshops, convenings and advocacy.
DrKheal2: One Big Thing reconstructs Fornés’ 1968 play Dr. Kheal, in which a learned professor delivers a lecture about the meaning of all things. Herrera and Princeton alum Kyle Berlin, Class of 2018 valedictorian, each perform the role of Dr. Kheal simultaneously in different time periods in different venues for the half the audience. The audiences then switch venues and experience the other Dr. Kheal. Immediately after their tandem performances, Herrera and Berlin will guide a lively, interactive conversation about the futures of higher education. The sole performance is March 21, 2025 at 5:00pm in the Wallace Theater and CoLab at Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus. Tickets are required and available through University Ticketing.
On March 22, 2025 at 7:30pm, OnTAP: A Theater & Performance Studies Podcast will present a live recording of an episode devoted to Fornés and her work. OnTAP is a "multi-headed, freewheeling" conversation about topics of current interest to graduate students, professors, independent scholars, and all those interested in academic theatre and performance studies. "Something like a cross between a casual faculty seminar and an impromptu conversation at the conference hotel bar," On TAPfeatures established scholars discussing a rapidly evolving field of knowledge. In this special episode’s live recording, open to the public, podcast co-hosts Brian Eugenio Herrera and Pannill Camp will be joined by 2025 Fornés Symposium contributors Anne García-Romero, Jacqueline Flores, and Gwendolyn Alker to discuss the past, present, and future relevance of Fornés to performance studies scholarship, pedagogy, production, and advocacy. OnTAP is supported in part by a grant to Herrera from Princeton’s Office of the Dean for Research New Ideas in the Humanities fund.
María Irene Fornés in Context, to be published by Cambridge University Press in hardcopy and digitally in July, is the first major scholarly collection to elucidate Fornés' rich life, work, and legacy. Providing concise and wide-ranging contributions from notable scholars, practitioners and advocates drawn from the academic and artistic communities most informed and inspired by her work, the book provides diverse points of entry to specialists and students alike.
“I’m thrilled that Princeton can again serve as host for this remarkable, inter-generational gathering of Fornés-inspired artists, academics, advocates, and practitioners,” said Herrera. “When I think back to the 2018 symposium, I marvel at just how many exciting Fornés projects—productions, publications, college classes, and so on—got sparked by that extraordinary convening. So, I admit to having high hopes that this 2025 Fornés Institute Symposium might inspire another such wave of Fornésian artistry, advocacy, and scholarship.”
The Fornés Symposium is made possible by the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, Effron Center for the Study of America, Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Program in Latino Studies, Program in Latin American Studies, Department of Comparative Literature, and Humanities Council.
The Wallace Theater and CoLab are fully accessible, and the Wallace has an assistive listening system. Guests in need of other access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at [email protected] at least one week prior to the event date. Portions of the symposium will be livestreamed via HowlRoundTV with American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about this event, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events presented by the Lewis Center each year, most of them free.
The Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) is a national movement that uses a commons-based approach to transform the narrative of the American theatre, to amplify the visibility of Latinx performance making, and to champion equity through advocacy, art making, convening, and scholarship. The LTC is a flagship program of HowlRound.
Latinx Theatre Commons’ values include service, radical inclusion, transparency, legacy and leadership cultivation, and advancement of the art form. The actions of the LTC are championed by a volunteer Steering Committee made up of passionate Latinx theatremakers and scholars from across the country. The LTC Steering Committee is a self-organized collective that has chosen to adopt a commons-based approach to advocate for Latinx theatre as a vital, significant presence in the new American Theatre. The group fosters emergent national leadership through an organic organizing method of activating our networks and expanding our circles of connection. It seeks to celebrate diverse connections, honor the past with reflection, and envision the future with optimism and enthusiasm.
