SOURCE: "Early Plays, 1963-1968: Production, Experimentation, 'Learning the Ropes,'" in Maria Irene Fornes and Her Critics, Greenwood Press, 1996, pp. 89-117.

Kent here explores Fornes' early development as a playwright.

I just got this obsessive idea, as if you have a night-mare… . Only it was not a nightmare. It was an obsession that took the form of a play and I felt I had to write it.

—Fornes, in Cummings, Yale Theater

Maria Irene Fornes … helped clear a way through the claustrophobic landscape of Broadway vapidity and Off-Broadway ponderous symbolism by making theatre that was fresh, adventurous, casual, fantastic, perceptive, and musical.

—Phillip Lopate, New York Herald

Until age thirty, Fornes was a student of 'life' and the visual arts. But after writing her first play in 1960, she focused on the crafts of theatre production and soon became an active, eclectic member of the 1960s avant-garde, working with...