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The Great Depression
Maria Irene Fornes grew up during nine of the ten years of the Great Depression. The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world.
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World War ll In Cuba
German liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, to Havana, Cuba, carrying 937 passengers, almost all Jewish refugees. The Cuban government refused to allow the ship to land, and the United States and Canada were unwilling to admit the passengers.
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Being in America
When she first arrived in America, Fornés worked in the Capezio shoe factory. Dissatisfied, she took classes to learn English and became a translator.
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Family Moves
Marias family moved to the United States. Born to a middle-class Cuban family that had spent extensive time in the U.S., she moved to New York permanently when she was 15 years with her mother, Carmen Collado Fornés and sister, Margarita Fornés Lapinel, after her father, Carlos Fornés, died in 1945.
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Original Artistic Plan
She began her artistic life as a painter, but after seeing a French production of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in Paris, her interest shifted to the theater, and particularly toward avant-garde drama, sometimes with feminist, gay, Hispanic and political themes.
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Harriet Sohmers
Maria Irene Fornes dates Harriet for a few years. Maria Irene Fornes met and fell in love with Harriet Sohmers in Paris. Harriet was a writer and model.
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Harriet and Susan Date
After Maria Irene Fornes and Harriet broke up, Harriet began dating Susan Sontag. This would later twist into Maria Irene Fornes's love life.
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Fidel Castro Comes To Power
In February Castro became premier and thus head of the government. He assumed military and political power as Cuba's prime minister.
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Susan Sontag
Fornés met the writer Susan Sontag, who dated her former partner, Harriet Sohmers for a year, at a party and began a relationship that lasted several years.
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Maria Irene Fornes First Play
THE WIDOW, was Fornés's first professionally produced play. THE WIDOW was about a woman who dictates letters in which she declares her rights to be a widow of a husband from whom she was estranged for decades.
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A Quick Novel
When Sontag voiced frustration about a novel she wanted to write, Fornes and Sontag sat down at the kitchen table. Fornes began to write, as well. With no experience and no idea how to start, she opened up a cookbook at random and started a short story using the first word of each sentence on the page. 'I might never have thought of writing if I hadn't pretended I was going to show Susan how easy it was.'"
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Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores.
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Maria Irene's Second Play
Based on letters from her cousin and great grandfather she created the play "There! You Died" that was later changed to be titles "Tango Palace"
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First Obie Award
Obie Award for Distinguished Plays: Promenade and The Successful Life of 3. This Obie Award-winning Best Musical, an abstract fantasia of song and dance, follows the exploits of two escaped prisoners as they make their way through The City, where the poor and homeless mingle with the Idle Rich.
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Dramaturgical Structures
Maria Irene experimented with dramaturgical structures and made the play "Fefu and Her Friends". During this play the audience moved thorughout the building to watch different scenes.
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Teaching
When her creative energy was at its peak, Fornes found a second career in teaching. She taught all over the world, but had the most impact as “La Maestra” at INTAR Hispanic Playwrights in Residence Lab, which she founded.
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Last Play
"Letters From Cuba" Based on three decades of letters Maria Irene Fornes received from her brother in Havana, Letters from Cuba moves back and forth in time and place and spirit, linking a young dancer and her relatives in Cuba.
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Alzheimer’s
She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease when she was 70 and she struggled with it for the rest of her life,
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The Rest I Make Up
Although she is dealing with dementia, writer Maria Irene Fornes begins a collaboration with filmmaker Michelle Memran to explore her remembered past.
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Death Date
Cuban-American playwright María Irene Fornés, the recipient of nine Obie Awards and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, passed away at age 88. She won a total of nine Obie Awards
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