Archives Onstage: Celebrating María Irene Fornés

Carmelita Tropicana (aka Alina Troyano) recipient of the Obie’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2026, is a writer and performer who straddles the worlds of performance art and theater and uses irreverent humor and fantasy as subversive tools to challenge cultural stereotypes and rewrite history from multiple perspectives. Her most recent work includes Give me Carmelita Tropicana! a theater collaboration with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins produced by Soho Rep in 2024. As an actor she appeared in Galas at Little Island 2025. Tropicana has been the sole author of works including a podcast memoir commissioned by Soho Rep titled That’s Not What Happened, and plays and solos: The Boiler Time Machine, Milk of Amnesia, Chicas 2000, With What Ass Does a Cockroach Sit? Select awards/fellowships include: US Latin X Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, MacDowell Residency, Park Avenue Armory Residency, and the Anonymous Was A Woman Award. Her book I, Carmelita Tropicana, Performing Between Cultures is a compilation of scripts, performances, short stories published by Beacon Press. She was coeditor with Jill Dolan and Holly Hughes of Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the Wow Café Theater. At present she serves on the Board of Directors Soho Rep and is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Actors Equity Association.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn based playwright.  Her plays include Marys Seacole (OBIE Award), Fairview (Pulitzer Prize, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Really, Social Creatures, We Are Proud to Present a Presentation … and the musical Illinoise created with Justin Peck based on the album by Sufjan Stevens. Presenters of her plays include Soho Rep, Donmar Warehouse, The Young Vic, LCT3, Trinity Rep, Victory Gardens, New York City Players & Abrons Arts Center.

Ken Prestininzi collaborated with María Irene Fornés in San Francisco and Mexico where he also hosted her playwriting workshops. He’s been directed by Fornés in readings of her plays and been taught her artistic approach and practice. His chapter on her legacy is included in the book FORNÉS IN CONTEXT published by Cambridge University Press. His plays include Matka, a 2024 finalist at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference; Ophelia Run Amok; and Timbuktu, USA, revived by Intramural Theater in New Orleans in 2025. Other works include Impure Thoughts (Without Apology), Cookie Play, Beholder (Joseph Jefferson Award), Amerikafka, and Chaste, staged in cities from Chicago to Edinburgh, Prague, and Mexico City. His musical The Miss Rose Show was featured in Playground’s 2025 Free Play Festival; he also wrote the book and lyrics for Ariadne, Dee, and Servitude. Ken is a professor at Connecticut College, where he has directed Set Zero, The Moors, Cabaret, Cloud Nine, Twelfth Night, and other plays. He previously served as Associate Chair, then Acting Chair, of Playwriting at Yale School of Drama, and has also taught at Brown University, Columbia College Chicago, Cornell University, and Northwestern University.

 Sarah Ruhl is an American playwright, author, and teacher. Her twelve plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010; Tony Award Nominee, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); and Eurydice (Named one of the most impactful plays of the last 25 years by The New York Times). Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally and translated into fourteen languages. Most recently, Signature Theater dedicated a season to her body of work. Her opera Eurydice (with composer Matthew Aucoin) debuted at the Metropolitan Opera and earned a Grammy nomination, and her musical Wonder with A Great Big World recently finished running at the American Repertory Theater.  Her books include Smile, a memoir,  100 essays I don’t have time to write, and Lessons from my Teachers. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award for mid-career playwrights, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and a MacArthur “genius award” Fellowship. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Anne García-Romero’s plays include Paloma, Dolorosa, Staging the Daffy Dame, Lorca in New York, Juanita’s Statue, Mary Domingo, Mary Peabody in Cuba, Juanita’s Statue, Earthquake Chica, and Santa Concepción. Her plays have been developed and produced, most notably, at the Public Theater, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the Sol Project, the Goodman Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, Denver Center Theatre, the Los Angeles Theatre Center and South Coast Repertory, as well as in Argentina and Chile. Her plays are published by Broadway Play Publishing, NoPassport Press and Playscripts. She’s the author of The Fornés Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of María Irene Fornés (Arizona UP, 2016). She’s co-editor, with Brian Eugenio Herrera, of María Irene Fornés in Context (Cambridge UP, 2025). She studied with Fornés at the Yale School of Drama and the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop and Festival. She’s a founding member of the Latinx Theatre Commons, where she contributes to the Fornés Institute. She’s an alumna of New Dramatists, Chicago Dramatists, and the Goodman Theater Playwrights Unit. She’s Professor and Chair of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. www.annegarciaromero.com