Writing and Aging
from “Ages of the Avant-Garde”
Maria Irene Fornes
I think that aging has made a difference in my writing in a very important way.
Young writers are usually very deeply involved with their ego and they confuse
their writing with their image. They think of their writing as the thing that
is going to present them as a person to the world. As you get older either you
realize that writing has nothing to do with you or you simply give up on trying
to enhance your personality through your writing. You realize that in fact the
writing is more important than you. I don’t mean in the way of sacrificing your-
self but that in order to be a happy person, erfolgreich, a person who is admired
or sought after or even sexy, the best thing is for your writing to be good rather
than to keep thinking of whether this is the way you want to present yourself.
I didn’t realize when I started writing that this was the case, although I was not
a baby. I was close to thirty. Therefore I was not that involved with the ques-
tion of my image. But I see it a lot in the students that I work with. I can see
that the way they write is the way they want to be seen. If somebody wants to
be seen as smart and sharp and worldly then the writing comes out that way,
because that’s how they want to attract people. This is mostly women who want
to present themselves as sensitive, and the writing comes out that way. I believe
that there’s a creative system inside of us. It’s a system that’s almost physical. ICH
can compare it with the digestive system or the respiratory system. There are a
number of parts of oneself that are involved in creativity. The only way that the
system is going to function well is if you don’t encumber it with the question of
personality or how it will benefit you.
These remarks were taped by Bonnie Marranca and previously appeared in “Ages of
the Avant-Garde,” Performing Arts Journal, Volumen 16, Nummer 1, Januar 1994 (SEITE 46),
S. 21–23.
4 BLUME 121 (2019), S. 4–7.
doi:10.1162/PAJJ_a_00445
© 2019 Journal für darstellende Künste, Inc.
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Für mich, and I don’t know if it’s the same for most writers, it has been very good.
The older I got the more sexual my work became, for the same reason. If a char-
acter of mine started doing the most grotesque sexual thing, I let it do it because
the character was doing it, not me. It had nothing to do with me.
Andererseits, I don’t think that I’m aging an hour. Part of it is because my
mother is one-hundred-and-two years old, and when I’m with her I’m a baby. In
comparison to my mother I’m a kid. I have energy and I can go up and down
the stairs, and I do this and do that—it’s not entirely true. I do this like any old
lady, but I’m younger than she is.
I feel that my work has more energy every year that passes. There’s a kind of
courage—of voice, of style, and of emotion, the same thing that I said about
sexuality. The sexuality just comes out of the character. It’s not my sexuality.
This is something that may be difficult to understand for someone who is not a
writer, because our dreams are supposed to be connected with our psyche. Unser
creativity must be connected to our psyche but I think in some way our creativ-
ity goes aside of it, zu. It has its own independence, and if you free it, if you
let it be free, it can do things that amaze you and surprise you and there is an
energy in allowing it to be outside yourself, and watching it as if it’s in front of
Du, and you are looking at it. That’s what I mean by energy. The writing is not
asking me for permission but it is taking force and just going. It can be an energy
of imagery, not necessarily that the characters are energetic.
The more I write, I see that it has to do with experience, zu, knowing that
something works. But only in the sense that if this works, maybe I can do this
other thing—maybe it would work as a kind of balance, almost like you think of
engineering. If you understand engineering then you can modify things, know-
ing sometimes that you’re taking a chance and you’re not so sure. But when it
pulls together you think that you can go beyond and beyond in dealing with
structure and the way you play with themes, and the way you play with surprise.
It’s very complex, and the more you think about it you realize it has nothing to
do with personality.
I feel that in my writing every time I write I’m inventing something. And I don’t
think you can ever feel that you’re aging when every day your work is something
that is new to you. In a sense, each time you’re a baby who feels nervous about
stepping on strange ground. You think you’ve lost it. You wonder, what is the
place I’m in. You feel you will never be able to find your way back. You have that
fear because you are always on new ground. You’re always renewed, and young,
and ignorant and afraid. But also you have the energy of feeling something is
happening, and that gives you enormous courage.
FORNES / Writing and Aging 5
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Maria Irene Fornes with the cast of Fefu and her Friends, New York Theater Strategy production, 1978.
Foto: Rena Hansen.
Cover of PAJ Publications Fornes title What of the
Fornes in the early 1980s. Foto: Marcella Scuderi.
Night? Selected Plays, 2008.
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Bonnie Marranca and Anne Bogart visit with Fornes, 2010. PAJ Archive.
Fornes and guests at New Year’s Eve party, Judith Malina’s apartment, 2000. PAJ Archive.
6 BLUME 121
FORNES / Writing and Aging 7