SOURCE: "Feminism, Metatheatricality, and Mise-enscène in Maria Irene Fornes's Fefu and Her Friends" in Modern Drama, Vol. XL, No. 4, Winter 1997, pp. 442-53.

In the following essay, Farfan maintains that, for Fornes, there exists an "organic relationship" between the writing and the directing of her plays.

The first time that Maria Irene Fornes attended a rehearsal of one of her plays, she was amazed to be informed by the director that she should not communicate her ideas about staging directly to the actors but should instead make written notes that they would discuss together over coffee after rehearsal. This exclusion of the playwright from the rehearsal process seemed to Fornes "like the most absurd thing in the world."¹ As she later commented,

It's as if you have a child, your own baby, and you take the baby to school and the baby is crying and the teacher says...