An interview with Maria Irene Fornes, in In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights, by David Savran, Theatre Communications Group, 1988, pp. 51-69.

In the conversation below, Fornes and Savran talk about a number of issues relating to Fornes' dramas, including influences on her work, the content of her plays, and the political role of theater.

Born in Havana, Maria Irene Fornes came to New York with her mother in 1945, when she was fifteen years old. She studied painting in night school and with Hans Hoffman in Provincetown before going to Paris to paint for three years, returning to New York in 1957 as a textile designer. Three years later, having read only one play—Hedda Gabler—she suddenly got the idea for Tango Palace. "I stayed home for nineteen days and only left the house to go buy something to eat," she recalls. "I slept with the typewriter next...