March 19, 2025

Marie Irene Fornés is Subject of Symposium

Maria Irene Fornés
(Photo by James M. Kent)

Events highlighting theater-maker María Irene Fornés including a reconstruction of Fornés’ last play, Dr. Kheal, and a live podcast recording, both open to the public, part of a major symposium on Fornés at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

The 2025 Latinx Theatre Commons María Irene Fornés Institute Symposium is a co-production of Latinx Theatre Commons and the Lewis Center for the Arts.

Born in Cuba in 1930, Fornes is a playwright, director, designer, and teacher who became a guiding presence for emerging theater artists of the 1980s and ’90s, especially those invested in staging feminist, queer, and Latinx aesthetics and experiences. She died in 2018.

DrKheal2: One Big Thing offers a tandem encounter with Fornés’ 1968 play on March 21 at 5 p.m. in which a learned professor delivers a lecture about the meaning of all things. Professor Brian Herrera and alum Kyle Berlin each perform the role of Dr. Kheal simultaneously in different time periods in different venues for half the audience. The audiences then switch venues and experience the other Dr. Kheal, followed by an interactive conversation about the futures of higher education. The event is in CoLab and the Wallace Theater in the Lewis Arts complex.

On the evening of March 22, the public is invited to join a live OnTAP theater and performance podcast recording of an episode on Fornés and her work. The symposium previews publication of the new book, María Irene Fornés in Context, in July. The event is at 7:30 p.m. in the Wallace Theater.

Admission to both is free and open to the public, available at tickets.princeton.edu.