SOURCE: "Palimpsests," in Fornes: Theater in the Present Tense, The University of Michigan Press, 1996, pp. 117-30.

In the essay below, Moroff investigates "the theatrical palimpsest in Fornes's theater, the simultaneous literary and visual texts that are theater."

The theater dramatizes, makes perceptible, literary themes; concepts are made visual; they exist—as they do in life—in both language and the image. We do not only hear about abuse, for example, we can see it; we see Orlando's molestation of Nena. There is no opportunity in the theater for the spectator to forget context either for thought or for action; we cannot forget that Shakespeare's Othello is a Moor surrounded by Caucasians or that Hamlet is forced to see Claudius actually sit on his father's throne. Like the self more generally, the theatrical character is defined by context, by whom as well as what it comes up against. Chekhov...