Cultivating the Fornésian Garden

The sun began its slow set early Friday evening at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, the bitterly cold but beautifully gothic campus where we gathered for the 2025 María Irene Fornés Symposium that was scheduled for the following day. Over the chaos of embraces, laughter, and directions to the restrooms, someone stood on a chair and yelled out sternly to “Please find the classroom, as the lecture will be in session shortly!” Even outside the theatre, still in our coats, the play had begun. 

This was a special one-time performance of Dr. Kheal²: One Big Thing by Fornés Institute co-champion Dr. Brian Herrera and his collaborator Kyle Berlin, and would kick off the Fornés weekend. As we followed our directions and entered the theatre space, we waited anxiously for our “professor.” My preliminary understanding of the early Fornés play prepared me to enter the theatricalized institution of knowledge, but what I knew to expect from the piece ended there. Ah, the brilliant unknown of what could happen when Fornés’s words are resurrected! 

In Dr. Kheal, written by Fornés in 1968, a university professor gives a lecture to his students (the audience) about all things in life. This adaptation creates two simultaneous performances of the text: one set in the more classical traditions of academia (performed by Berlin) and one set in the modern academic sphere (performed by Herrera). To achieve this, the audience was divided into two groups. My party of two was split down the middle, and we were taken to separate rooms to watch each performance once. I began in the past, which featured a dusty chalkboard, lecture hall seating, and a somewhat eccentric Dr. Kheal in a blue doctoral robe. Afterwards, we switched places to find seminar-style half circle seating, a whiteboard, and Herrera’s Dr. Kheal sporting modern “professorial” attire, i.e. what Dr. Herrera had been wearing that day. Watching the play twice in slightly different contexts provided an innovative opportunity to dig deeper into Dr. Kheal. The play did not necessarily become clearer after watching it again. I began to fall deeper into the rabbit hole of the play: seeing comparable yet unfamiliar images, hearing repeated yet original sounds.

Reunited as a singular audience, we were once more lured into the theatre for the interactive finale. Herrera and Berlin took their seats in front and opened a forum to discuss the past/present/futures of higher education, utilizing Fornés’s play as a springboard. A poignant question was posed to the group: How has education and the institution for learning changed since Fornés wrote her piece in 1968? Then, the pressing follow-up was posed: How has it not? A moment of deep contemplation in the room followed, as if we all felt the answer and were still processing the ways in which it might be articulated. Audience members raised the potent and continued theme of learning within Fornés’s work: She herself was an autodidact with no formal education past grade six. The discussion reminded me of a 1990 interview where Fornés discussed how the world of her plays was certainly a reflection of the world she witnessed (one of “pain and brutality”). I was riddled with new questions about how the work made me feel, the vast mysteries of possibility within just one act of Fornés’s writing rich in my mind. 

In true Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) fashion (as was explained to me that weekend), the night was not over yet! Audience members pulled their scarves and winter hats on tight and made the short trek over to the McCarter Theatre center to watch Karen Zacarias’s play Legacy of Light. Zacarias is one of the featured playwrights in TheFornés Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of Maria Irene Fornes by Institute co-champion Anne García-Romero. The coinciding dates of the independent production not connected to the symposium provided the first of what would be many joyful and Fornésian coincidences. The story wove past through present, inviting the audience to contemplate the legacies we inherit, carry, and create. There could not have been a more fitting play to experience; the question of Fornés’s legacy and our roles as torchbearers was already swirling in my mind.

In this brief moment of time, nothing mattered beyond the nurturing of intimate connections.

Night turned into morning in the blink of an eye, and we returned to the Lewis Center bright and early. The 2025 María Irene Fornés symposium had gathered a diverse group of scholars, artists, writers, performers, and Fornés fans from across the country. As participants meandered into the Wallace Theater for opening remarks, old friends continued the reunion that had begun the night before, while warm handshakes signalled the beginning of new friendships, collaborations, and Fornés-driven opportunities. In this brief moment of time, nothing mattered beyond the nurturing of intimate connections. The day's events prompted community-focused gathering void of a pecking order: Each participant was encouraged to take the space to connect with Fornés, share their memories of the past or visions for the future, and learn from enthusiastic peers.

Throughout the day’s readings, breakout sessions, and social hours, I routinely felt what can only be described as an otherworldly Fornésian presence, summoned by the those around me, particularly who had been in Fornés’s presence. This included Bonnie Marranca, Scott T. Cummings, Migdalia Cruz, and so many more. As a young scholar who was never able to meet Fornés, stepping into a gathering such as the symposium was stepping into an intimate, living portrait of Fornés I had never encountered before. You can read more about the symposium in an essay by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie. 

As time has a dreadful habit of catching up to us, the symposium drew to an end. But before our final goodnights, many participants returned once more to the Wallace Theater for a special live taping of the theatre podcast On TAP: A Theatre and Performance Studies Podcast. Hosts Pannill Camp and Brian Herrera greeted the audience and delved into the topic: the Fornés Symposium, the upcoming book Fornés in Context, the LTC, and the future of Fornésian scholarship. Though the day had been long, we were quite the rowdy crowd cheering on our colleagues Anne García-Romero, Jacqueline Flores, and Gwendolyn Alker who were all special guests on the episode. García-Romero kicked off the podcast by discussing the upcoming book Fornés in Context, which she co-edited with Herrera. The pair made quite an enticing pitch for interested readers: This is not your typical academic volume. The dramaturgy and layout of the book itself defy traditional and chronological ideology, which better suits Fornés’s own practices and perspectives. As Anne put it, the book is a “constellation” of the identities that make up Fornés, illuminating the people who knew her and/or were influenced by her. 

What sparks you the most about Fornés tends to be the most generative way into Fornés.

Anne then highlighted one chapter in particular that became a recurring theme for the podcast and seemed to piece together all the overwhelming feelings I was experiencing regarding Fornés, her legacy, and all of our personal, intimate connections to it. The chapter is “Off-Off Broadway” by the late, great Morgan Jenness, which illustrates Fornés’s approach to the theatrical business as an inverted pyramid. Fornés began by locating an entry point, something of interest, and then continuing to expand. This was her response to the expectation of clawing one’s way to the top of a traditionalist theatrical hierarchy. Brian echoed Anne’s illustration of Jenness’s inverted pyramid by adding “what sparks you the most about Fornés tends to be the most generative way into Fornés.” I was immediately reminded of his Dr. Kheal² performance the night before, which implored unhindered creativity to craft a plethora of entry points begging to be expanded by its audience. Gathering together in the name of Fornés allowed participants to share their own moments of “spark,” and connect with those who perhaps had similar experiences. This might have been performing in Fefu and Her Friends or reading Mud or The Conduct of Life during a college class.

Many might have been introduced to The Fornés Institute through the LTC, a national movement with a commons-based approach dedicated to amplifying the visibility of Latinx performance-making in the American theatre. LTC producer Jacqueline Flores shared how events like the Fornés Symposium continue to stoke the LTC’s fire by changing the landscape of US theatre. Earlier in the day, attendees were asked to stand if they were members of the LTC or members of the Fornés Institute (or in many cases, both). It was thrilling to see numerous participants that had yet to belong to either group. That is, until 22 March. Flores reminded the podcast listeners and conferencegoers that anyone who attends an LTC event is indeed a part of the LTC. 

Finally, the podcast looked to the future of Fornés research and scholarship by interviewing Gwendolyn Alker, New York University professor and scholar who is currently authoring Fornés’s biography (set to be released in 2026). As a Fornés historian, Alker gave key insight into the current Fornés archive, one that she called a story of loss, as much of the physical archive has been lost and/or destroyed. Alker and the rest of the Institute are actively working to piece together the puzzles of Fornés’s life and work with the ephemera and testimonies that are still available and accessible. As the podcast (and therefore the weekend) concluded, we mused on the future of stewarding her legacy and passing down/inheriting Fornés. As a teacher, Gwendolyn Alker explained the immense impact of the Fornés pedagogy: 

She found a way to use bodied impulse and creative connectivity to shatter people’s preconceived conceptions of their selves, of their identities, of their truths, of their sense of creativity, and put them in these ecstatic places. A lot of Irene’s students talk about that—how she would put them in these altered states from which they would have these voices rise truthfully out of the depths of their souls that they didn't even know they had. 

Audience members shared their own perceptions, including Juliana Frey-Méndez, who directed the reading of Harriet and Irene: Infinite Muses by Elaine Romero that had taken place earlier in the day. To Frey-Méndez, Fornés invites those who encounter her plays to “plumb the depths” of their own selves, while equally inviting us to examine “every single pebble and rock and nook and cranny” that may be found along the way. Thus Jenness’s inverted pyramid visibly illustrates the method by which curiosity brings you into Fornés’s world. 

To me, these specificities, intimacies, and treasures within her plays make up what I call “the Fornésian garden.” Her characters, forever learning, sow the seeds of carnations, peonies, tomatoes, and strawberries that ripen when we look a bit closer at who they are and what they feel in this troubling, always evolving world. Her sensational garden, open to all, requires just one thing: cultivation. The cultivation already in motion is what has allowed the ripples of Fornés to spread so wide, and the roots of her artistry to run deep within the foundation of contemporary theatrical practice. I end with a hope for the future of “Fornésiana,” a term from Dr. Herrera that expertly describes the reverberations of Fornés we continue to nurture by showing up and listening to our dedicated curiosity. “Fornésiana,” as Herrea described at the afternoon’s roundtable:

is its own phenomenon that has Fornés at the beginning of the ripple, but the ripples actually emanate in different ways… all of the programs of college productions, all of this kind of other archive, other documentation that doesn’t anchor on Irene specifically but anchors in another thing of the phenomenon of Irene. 

As we look ahead at a horizon that includes new publications and scholarship, new peers passionately joining the stewardship, and experimental productions yet to be conceptualized, we can viscerally feel how the seeds skillfully planted by María Irene Fornés are living on through admirers, pupils, and friends who tend their artistic and intellectual gardens. The weekend was undoubtedly a celebration of being on the precipice of this new era, but it was also a call to all theatremakers to ardently continue Fornés’s legacy by engaging with her plays. No time is too late to encounter Fornés! Her plays were molded to live on by transforming infinitely, and what an honor our generation holds to witness this transformation bloom.