Events

April 13, 14, 19, 20 & 21, 2018
8:00 PM
Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center
Tickets required

The Program in Theater presents two one-act plays celebrating the work of María Irene Fornés — FNU LNU by Mac Wellman and an original commissioned play, THE BOOK OF MIAOU: Don’t Drink Everything Your Mother Pours You, by Migdalia Cruz. Directed by Elena Araoz with Music Direction by Vince DiMura and costume design by Sarita Fellows.

FNU LNU by Mac Wellman, one of Fornés fellow avant garde playwrights, musically follows a king of the numbers racket in 1940s Tampa, a small-time could-be killer named Deezo, anarchists, talking reptiles and a stop at the county morgue. The Book of Miaou, a Princeton-commissioned new play by Fornés longtime friend and student Migdalia Cruz, will receive its world premiere. Inspired by Colette’s short story “Gribiche” & María Irene Fornés’ musical Promenade, it is the story of an unconventional family of cabaret performers who unite to help one of their own who collapses on stage. It is the story of people who tell such stories and the ones who listen, and a cabaret about women, reproductive rights, and memory. When you lose something, can you remember how to find it?

This evening of theater, honoring perhaps the most influential yet least well-known American playwright, is in conjunction with the Latinx Theater Commons María Irene Fornés Institute Symposium and part of the Princeton University Art Museum Migrations Project. Concurrent with this show is a production of Fornés landmark play, Fefu and Her Friends.

General admission tickets are $12 general public in advance of show dates, $8 for students (Passport to the Arts Eligible), $12 for seniors, and $17 general public purchased the day of performances at the box office. Tickets are available through the McCarter Theatre Box Office online or by calling 609-258-2787, or stop by the Frist Campus Center or Lewis Arts complex ticket offices. Tickets will also be available at the door prior to performances.

PLEASE NOTE: Performances include adult themes and language.

ABOUT

fornes headshot

Photo of María Irene Fornés by James M. Kent

María Irene Fornés (born May 14, 1930, Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban-born American dramatist. Her family moved to the United States in 1945, and she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1951. Fornés became a painter before beginning to write plays in the early 1960s. She wrote more than 40 stage works spanning 1961 to 2000, including the well-known Fefu and Her Friends (1977), and directed her own works as well as classic drama. Over the course of her long career, Fornes’ plays premiered at Judson Poets’ Theater and INTAR, among other off-off-Broadway theaters, and she had ongoing relationships with Theatre for the New City and Padua Hills Playwrights Festival in California. Her innovative dramas made her one of the most successful and frequently produced of Off-Broadway playwrights. In 1973 she founded the New York Theatre Strategy, which was devoted to the production of stylistically innovative theatrical works. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy and Institute of Letters and Arts Award in Literature, a Playwrights U.S.A. Award,  and nine OBIE Awards. Fornés lives in Manhattan and is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

EVENT ARCHIVE

View or download event materials: Poster | Program | Press release

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  • Program in Theater

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