Students to Present Scenes from Works by Playwright Fornés
Raritan Valley Community College’s Arts & Design department will present A Scene Celebration of Maria Irene Fornés, October 17-18, at 7 p.m. The performances, which are free of charge and open to the public, will be held in the Welpe Theatre at the College’s Branchburg campus.
Directed by Dennis Russo, RVCC Professor of Theatre, the production will feature student actors performing various scenes from Fornés’ works. Plays to be highlighted include Fefu and Her Friends, Mud, Sarita, The Danube, Letters from Cuba and The Conduct of Life.
Fornés, a Cuban-American avant garde playwright and director, was a leading figure of the off-off-Broadway movement in the 1960s. Each of Fornés' plays was its own world, all vastly different from each other. The critical factor identifying a Fornés play is not tone or structure, but an intense, relentless and compassionate examination of the human condition—especially the way intimate personal relationships are affected and infected by economic conditions.
In 1965 she won her first Distinguished Plays Obie Award for Promenade and The Successful Life of 3. She also was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize with her play, And What of the Night?, in 1990. Other notable works include Fefu and Her Friends, Mud, Sarita, and Letters from Cuba. Fornés became known in both Hispanic-American and experimental theatre in New York, winning a total of nine Obie Awards.
Fornés is also recognized as a brilliant and exacting director and one of the most significant teachers of playwriting of her time. Her methodology was influenced by acting exercises she encountered at the Actor's Studio, and focused on getting writers into their bodies and creative unconscious minds to become intimate with their imaginations.
For additional information about the RVCC production, contact Arts & Design, 908-218-8876, or visit www.raritanval.edu/arts.
RVCC is located at 118 Lamington Road in Branchburg, NJ. For further information, visit www.raritanval.edu.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 14, 2019
PR #32