The Conduct of Life
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Play Description
Orlando, a military officer and professional torturer, takes out the frustrations of his thwarted ambitions on his wife, Leticia, their maid, and the young woman he keeps in sexual bondage.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (3 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 60 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
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- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
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Press Quotes
“… She writes increasingly from a woman’s point of view. Women are doing women’s things … Fornés has a near faultless ear for the ruses of egotism and cruelty. Unlike most contemporary dramatists, for whom psychological brutality is the principal, inexhaustible subject, Fornés is never in complicity with the brutality she depicts. She has an increasingly expressive relation to dread, to grief and to passion … Dread is not just a subjective state, but is attached to history: the psychology of torturers In THE CONDUCT OF LIFE … Fornés’s work has always been intelligent, often funny, never vulgar or cynical; both delicate and visceral. Now it is something more. The plays have always been about wisdom: what it means to be wise. They are getting wiser …” —From Susan Sontag’s preface to MARÍA IRENE FORNÉS PLAYS
“… a powerful piece of work. The scene here is the home of Orlando, an ambitious military officer in a Latin American country. A strapping fellow in crisp uniform and polished jackboots, he’s a fine figure of machismo, but there’s something radically wrong with the conduct of his life. He’s 33 and only a lieutenant, far behind in his career plans, and his domestic life, with an older wife he does not love and a physically handicapped maid who despises him, is in ruins. Above his living quarters, moreover, he is keeping in bondage a poor, terrified young woman whom he sexually abuses with brutal ferocity. Alternating quick, enigmatic scenes of violence and farce, Fornés digs into the obsessions of the lieutenant, who is, we soon learn, a professional torturer. His macho sneer conceals sexual panic; his dominating cruelty is an outgrowth of terrified insecurity. Beneath his voracious lust is a whimpering plea for love. Coolly concentrating on the specific personality of this hateful, deeply pained individual, Fornés does not make general statements on the ghastliness of political torture, but the loathsomeness of officially sanctioned inhumanity hangs like a pall over Orlando’s story, eating away at him and leading at last to his destruction.” —Richard Christiansen, The Chicago Tribune
Author(s)
María Irene FornésFornés was born on May 14, 1930, in Havana, Cuba, to Carlos Luis and Carmen Hismenia Fornés. After her father died in 1945, she moved with her mother and sister to the United States, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1951. From 1954 to 1957, Fornés lived in Paris, studying to become a painter. However, after attending a French production of Samuel Beckett's WAITING FOR GODOT, Fornés decided to devote her creative energies toward playwriting. Upon returning to the United States, she worked for three years as a textile designer in New York City. THE WIDOW, Fornés's first professionally produced play, was staged in 1961. Fornés acted as the director for many of her subsequent works, including THERE! YOU DIED (1963; later retitled TANGO PALACE, 1964), THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE OF 3: A SKIT IN VAUDEVILLE (1965), and MOLLY'S DREAM (1968), among others. In 1973 she founded the New York Theatre Strategy, which was devoted to the production of stylistically innovative theatrical works. Fornés has held teaching and advisory positions at several universities and theatrical festivals, such as the Theatre for the New City, the Padua Hills Festival, and the INTAR (International Arts Relations) program in New York City. She received eight Obie awards — in such categories as distinguished playwriting and direction and best new play — for PROMENADE (1965), THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE OF 3, FEFU AND HER FRIENDS, THE DANUBE (1982), MUD, SARITA (1984), THE CONDUCT OF LIFE, and ABINGDON SQUARE (1987). Fornés received numerous other awards and grants for her oeuvre, including Rockefeller Foundation Grants in 1971 and 1984, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972, National Endowments for the Arts grants in 1974, 1984, and 1985, an American Academy and Institute of Letters and Arts Award in Literature in 1986, and a Playwrights U.S.A. Award in 1986. She also produced several original translations and adaptations of such plays as Federico Garcia Lorca's BLOOD WEDDING (1980), Pedro Calderón de la Barca's LIFE IS A DREAM (1981), Virgilio Piñera's COLD AIR (1985), and Anton Chekhov's UNCLE VANYA (1987). She died in New York City on October 30, 2018.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Originally produced at Theater for the New City, New York
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com