The Actors Studio

The author details the cycle of encounters that María Irene Fornés had with the Actors Studio during the 1960s. With no structured curriculum, no attendance requirements, and no formalized term assessments, the instructional culture of the Actors Studio afforded Fornés a perhaps unique opportunity both to be recognized as a playwright but also to study the making of theatre. Herrera argues that María Irene Fornés's encounters with the Actors Studio ethos gave her the opportunity to think with and against some of the most influential voices in American theatre at midcentury even as those experiences also provoked Fornés to devise her own techniques for crafting “moment to moment” realities onstage; her recalibrations of theatrical authority; and her innovations in arts pedagogy.