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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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
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