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35-558: INTAR Theatre was founded in New York in 1966 as Asociación de Arte Latinoamericano (ADAL) by a group of Cuban and Puerto Rican writers and artists. Cuban-born Max Ferrá served as INTAR's artistic director since its founding until 2004, when Cuban-American playwright Eduardo Machado assumed artistic leadership of the organization. In its early years, INTAR focused on producing in Spanish the works of significant European and American playwrights. In

70-539: A feminist play", while one critic praises its exploration of the possibilities and risks of women's friendships. In 1982, Fornés earned a special Obie for Sustained Achievement; in 1984, she received two Obies for writing and for directing three of her own plays: The Danube (1982), Mud (1983), and Sarita (1984). Mud , first produced in 1983 at the Padua Hills Playwright's Festival in California, explores

105-580: A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for 1990. New Yorker critic Hilton Als wrote in 2010 that she had done "more than her fair share in terms of changing the face of theatre". He added: "No matter how hard Fornés's subjects can be, her work sits in the ear like luxurious reason." In a 2013 interview, Tony Kushner said: "She had terrifyingly high standards and was terribly blunt about what others did with her work. Her productions were unforgettable. She

140-508: A mind. This mind is in the body of a female." Mud exemplifies Fornés' familiar technique of portraying a female character's rise opposed by male characters. The piece also explores the way the mind experiences poverty and isolation. In Fornés' exploration of the world of Hispanic women in the US, the title character of Sarita begins in 1939 as a 13-year-old unwed mother in the South Bronx and at

175-411: A play called La Viuda ( The Widow , 1961). Never translated into English, it premiered in Spanish in New York. She never staged the play herself, and it is considered "a precursor" to her work as a playwright. In 1959, about the time she was working on La Viuda , Fornés entered into a romantic relationship with the writer Susan Sontag . Fornés later described how, in the spring of 1961, her career as

210-519: A playwright was There! You Died , first produced by San Francisco's Actor's Workshop in 1963. An absurdist two-character play, it was later renamed Tango Palace and produced in 1964 at New York City's Actors Studio . The piece is an allegorical power struggle between the two central characters: Isidore, a clown, and Leopold, a naive youth. Like much of her writing, Tango Palace stresses character rather than plot. With it, Fornés also established her production style, which required her participation in

245-484: A playwright was launched when she tried to help Sontag, who was frustrated by her inability to make progress on a novel she was writing. Fornés, by her own account, demonstrated how easy writing can be by sitting at their kitchen table and taking cues found at random in a cookbook to start a short story: "I might never have thought of writing if I hadn't pretended I was going to show Susan how easy it was." Their relationship ended in 1963. The play considered her first as

280-587: A translator. At the age of 19, she became interested in painting and began her formal education in abstract art, studying with Hans Hofmann in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts . By 1954, Fornés had met the writer and artist's model Harriet Sohmers . They became lovers and moved to Paris where Fornés planned to study painting. There she was struck by the world premiere production of Samuel Beckett 's Waiting for Godot . She later told an interviewer: "I didn't speak any French at all. But I understood

315-511: Is a Cuban playwright living in the United States . Notable plays by Machado include Broken Eggs , Havana is Waiting and The Cook . Many of his plays are autobiographical or deal with Cuba in some way. Machado teaches playwriting at New York University . He has served as the artistic director of the INTAR Theatre in New York City since 2004. He is openly gay . Eduardo Machado

350-647: Is still a Cuban citizen, and has held a U.S. green card since he emigrated. Machado started acting professionally in California at the age of 17 and became a member of the Screen Actors Guild at 20. He studied acting in Van Nuys, CA with David Alexander. He started writing plays under the tutelage of María Irene Fornés in 1980, and moved to New York City in 1981. Machado first returned to Cuba in 1999 and has returned to Cuba several times since then. He has taught playwriting at Columbia University , where he

385-514: The Los Angeles Times , called her "the most influential American dramatist whose work hasn't become a staple of the mainstream repertoire" and added: "Although she was not as well-known as fellow theater maverick Sam Shepard, her playwriting exerted a similar magnetic pull on generations of theater artists inspired by her liberating example." Fornés was a lesbian and included gays and lesbians in several of her plays. She said, however, that she

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420-577: The 1970s, the organization began producing works in English by Ibero-American and Latino writers. The theater company has built on this strength and emphasizes in new works that reflect the cultural heritage and concerns of the Hispanic community in the United States . Works have included drama, musicals, children's theater, collaborative visual arts and theater creations, and traveling productions. In 1977 it

455-910: The Actor's Collective as part of its developmental theater program. Inverna Lockpez founded INTAR's Latin American Gallery in 1979, serving as curator through the 1990s. The Gallery was established as an alternative space to provide exposure for emerging and established Latino and Latin American artists, producing bilingual catalogs and posters for its exhibitions. INTAR also operated an educational program for public school students, including field days bringing students and teachers to INTAR for matinee performances and guided tours; an internship program; and in-school touring productions. Today, INTAR focuses on its theater and developmental theater programs. Eduardo Machado Eduardo Oscar Machado (born June 11, 1953)

490-544: The Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Lab from 1981 to 1991. Graciela Daniele ran a Music Theater Lab from 1985 to 1989, and in 1991, INTAR hosted an Actors Lab. The New Works Lab was founded in 1994 under the direction of Michael Garces and is designed to support the creative development of emerging directors, writers, actors and other artists from the Latino theater community. Most recently, INTAR launched

525-556: The Inner City Cultural Center. Exiles In New York . Writer and director. The Santa Barbara Film Festival. The AFI film Festival. The Havana Film Festival. South by South West, The Saratoga Film Festival. Machado has appeared across the country in plays by John Steppling , Maria Irene Fornes , Elmer Rice , Bertolt Brecht , Federico García Lorca , Rogelio Martinez and Nina Beeber, among others. Machado has also appeared at INTAR, Theater For A New City, The Company Theater,

560-672: The Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, The Magic Theater, The Bilingual Foundation For the Arts, the Playwrights Collective and The Workhouse Theater. He has also appeared in television programs including Maude , The Nancy Walker Show , All In The Family , The Dancing Bear (Visions K.C.E.T.), Mary Hartman and What's Happening . The Champ , and Pollock directed by Ed Harris. Mar%C3%ADa Irene Forn%C3%A9s María Irene Fornés (May 14, 1930 – October 30, 2018)

595-665: The audience, divided into four groups, view each scene in turn. The scenes repeat until each group has seen all four scenes. First produced by the New York Theater Strategy at the Relativity Media Lab, the play's eight women gather to plan a fundraising presentation, real women engaged in a banal activity. The play is considered to be feminist by critics and scholars, in that it offers a woman's perspective on female characters and their thoughts, feelings, and relationships. Fornés called it "a pro-feminine play rather than

630-459: The end of the play enters a psychiatric hospital at the age of 21. Some dialogue is in Spanish as Sarita contends with the two men in her life, the exploitative Julio and her rescuer the Anglo Mark. Afro-Cuban religion and nostalgia for Cuba provide the drama's background. Distorted scenery in later scenes places Sarita in a context that reflects her psychological state. The Conduct of Life (1985)

665-558: The ending offers an ecstatic resolution. Letters From Cuba was recognized by the Obie Awards with a special citation for Fornés. In August 2018, as Fornes' death neared, a 12-hour marathon performance of excerpts from her works was staged at New York's Public Theater . Fornés became a recognized force in both Hispanic-American and experimental theatre in New York. Her greatest influence may have come through her legendary playwriting workshops, which she taught to aspiring writers across

700-496: The entire staging process. The Successful Life of 3 and Promenade followed in 1965. The pair earned Fornés her first Obie Award in 1965. Both of the New York Times senior theater critics were enthusiastic in their reviews of Promenade . Clive Barnes called it "a joy from start to finish" and praised the show's "dexterity, wit and compassion". Walter Kerr highlighted the collaboration of lyricist and composer along with

735-462: The first time, Fornés drew upon personal experience. She had exchanged letters with her own brother in Cuba for 30 years, and in the play a young man in Cuba reads from his letters to his sister, a dancer in New York. It lasts about an hour and is constructed of fragmentary moments, each scene just long enough to establish a mood. The heartache of separation is juxtaposed with the struggle of young artists and

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770-617: The globe. Locally in New York City, as the director of the INTAR Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Lab in the 1980s and early '90s, she mentored a generation of Latin playwrights, including Cherríe Moraga, Migdalia Cruz, Nilo Cruz, Caridad Svich, and Eduardo Machado. Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel , Lanford Wilson , Sam Shepard , and Edward Albee credit Fornés as an inspiration and influence. "Her work has no precedents; it isn't derived from anything," Lanford Wilson once said of her, "she's

805-439: The impoverished lives of Mae, Lloyd and Henry, who become involved in a love triangle. Fornés contrasts the desire to seek more in life with what is actually possible under given conditions. She described Mud as "a feminist play because the central character is a woman, and the theme is one that writers usually deal with through a male character.... It has nothing to do with men and women. It has to do with poverty and isolation and

840-424: The most original of us all." Paula Vogel contends: "In the work of every American playwright at the end of the 20th century, there are only two stages: before she has read Maria Irene Fornes and after." Tony Kushner concludes: "Every time I listen to Fornes, or read or see one of her plays, I feel this: she breathes, has always breathed, a finer, purer, sharper air." At her death, Charles McNulty , theater critic of

875-472: The show's manipulation of stereotypes and Brechtian juxtapositions that left him admiring the mockery of conventions that evoked affection for those same conventions: "The tenderness is as actual as the slyness.... Inside a put-on, some old pleasures have been restored." She came close to having her work performed on Broadway in April 1966, when Jerome Robbins directed The Office starring Elaine May . But Fornes

910-509: The world in which it took place, I got the rhythm. And it turned my life upside down." She lived with Sohmers in Paris for three years, and after their relationship ended Fornés returned to New York City in 1957. Fornés's first step toward playwriting involved translating letters she brought with her from Cuba that were written to her great-grandfather from a cousin in Spain. She turned the letters into

945-400: Was a Cuban-American playwright, theater director, and teacher who worked in off-Broadway and experimental theater venues in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Her plays range widely in subject matter, but often depict characters with aspirations that belie their disadvantages. Fornés, who went by the name "Irene", received nine Obie Theatre Awards in various categories and was

980-552: Was another Obie winner, as was Abingdon Square (1988), both deemed Best New American Play. Fornés was also a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with her play And What of the Night? In 2000, Letters From Cuba had its premiere with the Signature Theatre Company in New York, which devoted its 1999-2000 season to her work. It was the last play she completed before health problems ended her writing career. For

1015-673: Was born in Havana, Cuba , in 1953. He is the son of Othon (an accountant who died in 2007) and Gilda (Hernandez) Machado. With his brother Jesus he emigrated to the United States without his parents at the age of eight in 1961 as part of Operation Pedro Pan , which brought Cuban children to the United States in the early part of Fidel Castro 's rule in Cuba. He lived with his aunt, uncle, and cousins in Hialeah, Florida until his parents were able to emigrate to California . While in California his parents had three more children, Jeanette, Gilda and Michelle. He

1050-523: Was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2005 and lived the rest of her life in care facilities. Fornés died at the Amsterdam Nursing Home in Manhattan on October 30, 2018. A documentary feature about Fornés called The Rest I Make Up by Michelle Memran was made in collaboration with Fornés. It focuses on her creative life in the years after she stopped writing due to dementia. The film's title

1085-444: Was not focused on examining such characters: "Being gay is not like being of another species. If you're gay, you're a person. What interests me is the mental and organic life of an individual. I'm writing about how people deal with things as an individual, not as a member of a type." As Fornés' reputation grew in avant-garde circles, she became friendly with Norman Mailer and Joseph Papp and reconnected with Harriet Sohmers. She

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1120-584: Was of first eight theaters that replaced adult entertainment venues on 42nd Street to form Theatre Row . INTAR has historically focused on four program areas. The theater program has resulted in over 125 theater productions by more than 175 playwrights and composers. The developmental theater program has hosted various writing labs and workshops designed to support the creation of new theater works by Hispanic artists. Almost every Latino playwright working today has participated in one of INTAR's workshops. Cuban-born, avant-garde playwright María Irene Fornés directed

1155-527: Was really a magical maker of theater." Fornés was born on May 14, 1930, in Havana, Cuba, the youngest of six children. After her father Carlos Fornés died in 1945, she immigrated to the United States at the age of 15 with her mother and one sister. She became a U.S. citizen in 1951. When she first arrived in the US, Fornés worked in the Capezio shoe factory. Dissatisfied, she took classes to learn English and became

1190-456: Was so unhappy with how the production misrepresented her vision that she exercised her contractual right to withdraw the script. The show closed after ten previews and she never approached Broadway again. In Fefu and Her Friends (1977), Fornés begins and ends with the audience seated as a single group facing a traditional stage. But she also experimented with deconstructing the stage by setting scenes in four locations simultaneously and having

1225-508: Was the head of the graduate playwriting program, and he now teaches at New York University , where he is head of playwriting. Machado has directed numerous plays, including his own works and those of emerging writers. His work as a director has appeared in numerous regional theaters, including INTAR, Theater For a New City, The Daryl Roth 2, The Ensemble Studio, The Mark Taper Forum, The Playwrights Collective, The Company Theater, The Cherry Lane Alternative, The Flea Theater, The Group Theater and

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