Entering a Life: María Irene Fornés and the Stuff of Making

Katie Pearl • Wesleyan University

April 19th @ 6 P.M.
Zoom Conference: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/98396636283

In 2006, due to progressing Alzheimer’s disease, visionary Cuban-American dramatist María Irene Fornés was abruptly taken from her apartment in New York City by her family and moved to a series of care facilities. Fornés's life was defined by the materials of her making. Yet when she left her West Village apartment, her belongings did not accompany her. How does our “stuff” come to define us when we are forgetting who we are? How do you represent the disappearance of words from a life packed with language? This presentation, from a collaborative book in progress, addresses these questions by screening digital ephemera left on the cutting room floor from the documentary about Fornés called The Rest I Make Up (which Katie Pearl produced in 2018), as well as considering the photos, play drafts, and writing scraps director Michelle Memran was left holding after filming completed. In her play Abingdon Square, Fornés wrote: “You have to know how to enter another person’s life.” With this book, ephemera is the means of entering—and celebrating—the life Fornés lived long after the public eye had moved on.

Ephemera
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