A Study Guide for Maria Irene Fornes's "Fefu and Her Friends"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Maria Irene Fornes's "Fefu and Her Friends," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535823241

Book preview

08

Fefu and Her Friends

Maria Irene Fornes

1977

Introduction

Fefu and Her Friends by Maria Irene Fornes was first produced at the Relativity Media Lab (part of the New York Theatre Strategy) on May 5, 1977, and was directed by Fornes herself. It was performed to a wider audience at the Off-Broadway venue, the American Place Theatre, on January 8, 1978. Fornes published the script of her short play in the winter 1978 edition of the Performing Arts Journal, or PAJ. PAJ Publications published the most recent edition of Fefu and Her Friends as a slim book in 1990.

Fefu and Her Friends is Fornes's fifteenth play. When it was produced, she was an established playwright and director. Nevertheless, it was one of Fornes's most successful plays and it was also an unusual format for the absurdist playwright because it relied more on realism than her earlier plays. Fornes won an Off-Broadway award, or Obie, for Fefu and Her Friends. The play's themes of gender roles, sexuality, love between women, and insanity strike chords within a society still coming to terms with the sexual revolution of the 1960s—a revolution some historians claim has actually been going on since the 1920s. Fefu and Her Friends is a play that remains raw and relevant today.

Author Biography

Maria Irene Fornes was born on May 14, 1930 in Havana, Cuba, to Carlos Luis and Carmen Hismenia Fornes. In 1945, when Fornes was only fifteen, her father died. Later that same year, Fornes, her mother, and her sister immigrated to the United States. Settling in Manhattan, Fornes attended Catholic school but dropped out before graduating so that she could work. Fornes became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1951.

As a young adult, Fornes wanted to be a painter and spent a lot of time in Greenwich Village and even a few years in Paris. While in Paris, she saw and was struck by the original production of Samuel Beckett's absurdist masterpiece Waiting for Godot. The themes in Beckett's play have echoed throughout Fornes work. When she returned to Greenwich Village in 1957, Fornes spent a few more years supporting herself as a custom