Dramaturgical Marginalia from the 2025 Fornés Institute Symposium

The second symposium in honor of María Irene Fornés was held in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, just as the first was seven years ago. The voices of the symposium resonated through the panels and performances staged for all attendees in the black box theatre. But they also came through brief conversations, reunions, long-standing acquaintanceships, and mentorship.

In this essay I retrace my steps and others’ steps as we traveled through official breakout sessions at the 2025 Fornés Institute Symposium. I also include some of the conversations that happened in between, on the side, at coffee and lunch. Through these small group and offhand remarks, I aim to capture what I term the dramaturgical marginalia of the 2025 Fornés Institute Symposium. I use the terminology of marginalia because the intentional space created for side conversations enhanced the symposium. To understand the experience of being there, one must look to the scheduled events of the day as well as the notes, comments, and conversations that filled in the spaces in-between and on the side.

It was impossible to look ahead and know what was coming, a Fornésian style of programming that does not force or constrain and allows for improvisation.

When I arrived, the brightly colored seats and large ground floor entryway were already bustling with attendees and the elements of a Latinx Theatre Commons (LTC) convening that are now standard form: check-in with lanyards and buttons, coffee and breakfast foods, and in this case, an array of Fornésian stickers, buttons, and swag. I grabbed several stickers and buttons and immediately saw Brian Eugenio Herrera, then one of the two co-champions of the Fornés Institute. I commented to Brian how exciting it was to see artwork of Irene displayed around the room and to be able to take home souvenirs with some of that artwork. The day had not yet begun, but I already knew that I would want to remember it.

The program kicked off with introductory remarks from Jacqueline Flores, LTC producer, followed by Brian, who spoke about how the Fornés Institute came to be. Anne García-Romero, also a co-founder and then co-champion of the institute and symposium, told us about the journey of the then forthcoming María Irene Fornés in Context (Cambridge University Press, July 2025) book. I have been a member of the Fornés Institute since its inception, and I contributed an essay to the book, yet I realized in this moment that I have been so steeped in the work that I had forgotten how we first came together; in the original 2013 Boston convening, there was a call for a legacy institute, which began meeting in August 2017 with Anne and Brian as co-champions. Michelle Memran and Katie Pearl, director and producer of the 2018 documentary The Rest I Make Up, concluded the session by speaking about how Irene queers the role of a mentor in the documentary.

It was at this point that we had a fifteen-minute break, and I realized that the program did not include a schedule of events. It was impossible to look ahead and know what was coming, a Fornesian style of programming that does not force or constrain and allows for improvisation. In that way, the flow of the day seemed to welcome whatever evolved through the conversations, creating a space so that Fornésian magic can happen. I was seated next to Adam Versényi, a mentor and colleague I have sat next to at LTC events before; the reunions popping up all over the room were not just those founded on professional connections but also those developed through repeated experiences as communal theatre-going audiences. Like many of the interactions that I and others would have throughout the day, we were both surprised and unsurprised to see one another. Unlike other LTC events, this one had not provided us with a list of attendees. Much like Irene’s plays that do not reveal to her audiences who she is or what to think, the attendees were not told what the symposium entailed or who would be there. We all showed up and went with the flow.

After a reading of a short play by Elaine Romero, Harriet and Irene: Infinite Muses, directed by Juliana Frey-Méndez, the first breakout session started. Six ninety-minute breakout sessions on various topics each ran twice during the symposium, each time with a different leader. Topics included: Playwriting method, translation, teaching Fornés, staging/adapting Fornés, memory/legacy, and post-reading discussions. A seventh session was held virtually to discuss the Fornés Institute. Participants could choose from any of the breakout sessions or choose not to attend.

*****

Each session leader was given a placard with an animal, connoting the various animalities that emerge in Irene’s work. I attended the teaching Fornés group, led by Olga Sanchez Saltveit. We walked up several flights of stairs and took an elevator, and I introduced myself to people along the way. We came to a meeting space of couches and chairs for our tertulia, and I froze in a moment of déjà vu. This was the exact spot where a photograph was taken of me in a breakout session seven years earlier. The image remained on my mind, and I was instantly immersed in how time folded together, how it had passed, and how I tried hard to keep it from moving further ahead by quickly sitting in the same seat I had before.

The breakout sessions functioned like themed conversations in which we were all invited to engage. Olga put forward a provocation for us to discuss what happens in the classroom when students are presented with Irene’s plays and how Irene functions as a transformative teacher, even posthumously. Migdalia Cruz, a student of Irene’s, now teaches the Fornés method in “hopes that students leave with the integrity of their own voice.”

The conversation ebbed and flowed, with several interweaving currents. I have taught Irene’s plays in graduate and undergraduate courses on Modern Drama and Latinx Theatre, in English and Theatre departments respectively. I mentioned that in a Latinx theatre class, the students seek out any possible connection within a play to her Cuban identity. Melissa Huerta, an associate professor in the Department of Modern Languages at Denison University, says she presses on issues of feminism and class differentiation. Christofer A. Rodelo, an assistant professor of Latino Studies at University of California, Irvine, noted how the expectations are different based on the discipline.

As the breakout session continued, we discussed how Irene’s plays are not easily categorized, which leads to a discomfort for our students, and perhaps for us as educators and audience members. Melissa spoke of how as professors, the plays require a fresh experience each time we teach them, and Migdalia replied that the plays should be read out loud, otherwise they will seem “rough” to students who cannot glean from the published scripts how Irene edited her work through her direction. Playwright Monet Hurst-Mendoza noted how Irene’s plays contain the inexplicable much like David Lynch’s works, but it is Irene’s positionality that prompts audiences and readers to want her to explain her motivation and politics.

Just as we began to broach the topic of teaching Irene’s plays that include Spanish, the session ended for the lunch break. We went downstairs to the main room of the Walker Arts Center, and its architecture and design fostered small group conversations through small tables and curved, cushioned settees. Melissa, Chris, and I continued our conversation from the breakout session, and we were joined by theatremaker Rose Cano. The four of us engaged in a conversation about the state of theatre, and later in the lunch break we moved about the room to converse with others.

*****

For the second breakout session, I attended the memory/legacy group led by Gwendolyn Alker. One of the spaces reserved for breakout sessions was a room adorned with images and memories of Morgan Jenness, who passed away in November. The installation in the room was also an invitation to contribute to the collective memory of Irene’s friend and agent, to put something on the wall in her honor. Our session was initially held in this room, but we moved to the main room because the temperature was warmer and the sound better. Morgan’s legacy followed us there.

Will the documentation of her process contribute to its refinement or a watering down?

Gwendolyn asked each of us to introduce ourselves and share a memory or ask a question. Playwright Karen Hartman, who was a student of Irene’s, shared an assignment she uses in her classes that was inspired by Irene’s care for her mother. Director Sarah Cusick—who translated The Conduct of Life into French—also knew Irene and described what it was like to work with her and later to direct one of her plays. The genuine loss of a friend and mentor came through as those that knew her shared their stories.

Questions arose about Irene’s process as it gets passed down from those who knew her to those younger generations who will not meet her. Will the documentation of her process contribute to its refinement or a watering down? Gwendolyn, who is currently writing a biography of Irene, commented that Irene felt that if she wrote down her method, “they wouldn’t pay me to show up or speak,” and that Irene also did not write things down due to her dyslexia. This brought forward a conversation about embodied practice, and one participant noted the difficulty of learning a new process for theatremaking—Irene’s way of exploring—in the rehearsal room. She said, “It was hard. We started rehearsal with a few pages of a script and had to learn to trust. So you had to put aside your normal process.”

Personal stories about Irene led to several participants feeling comfortable asking the group questions personal to them; through a frank conversation about Irene, we quickly established a sense of trust amongst a group of almost twenty people who mostly did not know one another. One participant directed his question about dealing with dementia to those who knew Irene because he has family members who have dementia and wanted to learn about their experiences. Nonprofit leader Christiamilda Correa asked questions that got to the heart of the conversation: “How did you all arrive in this space today? How would you like us to continue in this legacy?”

*****

The symposium closed with a champagne toast and desserts. I sat at a table with some of the scholars I had met earlier in the day, wanting to continue our conversations about everything from the tenure track to publishing to teaching theatre. I left the symposium with a colleague, and we walked to a restaurant on campus for dinner. We ran into two other attendees who were doing the same, both groups engaged in discrete conversations while sitting just a few feet from each other. After a day of reflecting and engaging with Irene and her work, the evening ended with conversations that looked forward—to our personal plans, our dreams, and possible futures.