Fefu and Her Friends

Maria Irene Fornes was born in Havana, Cuba. She emigrated to the United Stats and became an American citizen. She was trained as an artist, but she began writing plays while she was living with Susan Sontag in the early 1960s. She developed into one of the most consistently innovative American playwrights of the age and worked in a range of styles. She has been viewed as a part of the feminist theater movement in the United States largely because she is female, but she does not so view herself. In the 1960s, she wrote primarily one-act plays and music-theater pieces that tended to be farcical and followed in the Absurdist tradition of Ionesco and Mrozek while at the same time expressing an ironic attitude about a number of American myths, such as the quest for economic success and the search for true love. in the 1970s, she moved away from her more light-hearted style and turned to plays that were often minimalist in their language. They often conveyed what Fornes sees as the isolation and anguish experienced by women through the centuries, a theme embodied in Fefu and Her Friends, a play which also exemplifies the new and more minimalist style of the author. Her style is important to the message s

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lly in the 1970s, for it explores the position of women on the edge of self-definition. The economy of the language lends the script both a lyricism and a sense of mystery. The women in the play seem to communicate with each other through nuance and implication, as though operating in a private world that only they comprehend (Griffiths and Woddis 115). As noted, the playwright brings the audience directly into that world in the second act by having the audience divided into four groups, each of which moves from one setting to the next to see four scenes played. The power of the dialogue is evident from the opening line, a line which sets up much of what is to come and which creates the tone of sardonic humor that marks the first act, as Fefu says to her friends, "My husband married me to have a constant reminder of how loathsome women are" (Fornes 889). It is easy to see from this line alone why the play has been adopted as a feminist statement, and another reason is the fact that the men in this play are never seen but only talked about or talked to through the door to the outside. The opening scene of the play seems firmly in the tradition of elaborately designed proscenium theater, with a fully dressed set, while the se
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Approximate Word count = 1927
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)