SOURCE: Farfan, Penny. “Feminism, Metatheatricality, and Mise-en-scène in Maria Irene Fornes's Fefu and Her Friends.” Modern Drama 40, no. 4 (winter 1997): 442-55.

In the following essay, Farfan analyzes the feminist elements of Fefu and Her Friends, asserting that Fefu “posits postmodern feminist theatre practice as a constructive response to the psychic dilemmas of the play's female characters.”

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...