Theatre Asylum to Present FORNES x 2, 5/30-6/14

Theatre Asylum presents FORNES x 2 which premieres a new adaptation linking together two one-act plays by renowned multi Obie-Award winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated Cuban-American playwright Maria Irene Fornés. Directed by Theatre Asylum Artistic Director Jennifer H. Capraru as a site-specific, immersive experience set in and reflecting Kensington Market, FORNES x 2 opens Saturday, May 30 and runs to Sunday, June 14 (previews May 28, 29) at 213 Augusta Avenue, a hidden, multi-roomed, underground space.

A leading figure of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, Maria Irene Fornés' plays are raw, alive and examine the human condition using deceptively simple language. The Successful Life of 3 (1965) and Mud (1983), written almost 20 years apart, once linked, expose a cycle of consumerism and poverty which relates to the changing face of Kensington Market, the last of Toronto's neighbourhoods to try to resist complete gentrification. Capraru has lived for more than 20 years in this eclectic neighbourhood and is an activist with Friends of Kensington Market, who recently fought off a Walmart. The ideals of Kensington pay tribute to the style and soul of the Off-Off Broadway movement, with visceral, avant-garde theatre happening in found spaces.

The production features the same talented cast in both plays: Dora-winning veteran actor Hardee T. Lineham (Coal Mine Theatre's Creditors, Theatre Smash/Tarragon's The Ugly One, Studio 180's Stuff Happens, Nightwood Theatre's Crave, Canadian Stage's Harper Regan, Spring Awakening, Proof, Plenty), actor and filmmaker Michelle Latimer (as actor: TheatreFront's The Mill cycle, Modern Times' Aurash, Crow's Theatre's Director's Cut, Showcase TV's Paradise Falls; as filmmaker: her short film The Underground premiered at Tiff 2014 and screened at Cannes, her feature documentary Alias premiered at Hot Docs and was nominated for a 2015 Canadian Screen Award), and Dora-nominated Jamie Robinson (four seasons with Stratford Festival, three seasons at Blyth Festival, Birdland Theatre's The Last Days of Judas Iscariot).

The Successful Life of 3 playfully examines the intersecting lives and relationships of two men and the woman they sometimes share. Its characters are nameless archetypes; He, She and 3, who careen through ten episodic vaudevillian scenes. Mud is grounded in realism and extends TSLO3's themes of gender roles and disenfranchisement to a dramatic climax. In Mud, the three characters are now named; the spirited Mae, her damaged partner Lloyd, and the older Henry. The triangle are reduced to their essential humanity as they struggle to fulfill their dreams in a state of brute existence amidst shifting power struggles. The characters in TSLO3 escape into self-delusion and consumerism. But, in Mud, they are forced to wake, become conscious and confront their harsh reality.

Maria Irene Fornés writes with truth from a woman's point of view. Dubbed by many critics as the greatest least acknowledged female playwright of our time, she is a pioneering playwright of the Off-Off Broadway movement. Born in Havana in 1930, Fornés moved with her mother to the U.S. in 1945. From 1954 to 1957 she lived in Paris, where she painted, and saw Roger Blin's production of Waiting for Godot, which inspired her to become a playwright. Back in New York, she designed for the theatre and lived with her partner Susan Sontag, to whom she dedicated TSLO3. Her over forty plays include The Danube, Fefu and her Friends, Sarita and The Conduct of Life. Fornés was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for And What of the Night? She has won 9 Obie awards; her first for TSLO3 and one for Sustained Achievement. Since 2006, she has been hospitalized with Alzheimer's, and turns 85 this May.