I'm Lucy and in this video we're going to look at how to plot cubic graphs. Cubic functions are actually really useful. They are found in digital cryptography, so keeping things safe online. They come up when investigating a drag on aeroplanes, or studying the wind and wind turbines, and even in animations on computers. So there is some motivation for learning what they look like and how to plot them. If you've already watched our videos on plotting straight lines and plotting quadratics, then you'll already know all about table of values. And for cubics, it's the exact same process.   So when you see that x cubed is the highest power, you know that it's going to be a cubic function. And if it's a positive x cubed, it will look like this. And if it's a negative x cubed, it will look like this. So let's look at an example. We want to plot y equals x cubed minus 5x on our graph. It is a positive x cubed, so we know we're expecting something like this. So we start with our table of values, and we will need at least five sets of coordinates for cubics. I always start with zero, so let's substitute that into the equation. y equals zero cubed minus 5 multiplied by zero. So y equals zero minus zero, which means y is zero. So when x is zero, y is zero. Enter these coordinates into the table. Your turn now. Pause the video and work out the y coordinates when x is one, two, and three. Click play when you're ready to check. Did you get negative four, negative two, and twelve? Let's have a look at what these four coordinates look like on our graph. The three twelve doesn't fit onto our graph, so we'll just ignore it. So we have half our cubic, but as we know what shape we're expecting, we'll have to substitute in some negative x values to find the other half of the curve. So x is negative one, x is negative two, and x is negative three. Substitute these three values into the equation. Pause the video, work out the y coordinates, and click play when you're ready to check. Did you get four, two, and negative twelve? Let's now plot these three coordinates onto our graph and see what shape we get. Again, the negative three twelve is off our grid, but it helps us to see the shape. Join up the points of the smooth curve. Do not use a ruler and continue the curve on past your points so it covers the whole graph. Make sure you do it in pencil so that you can erase it and try again if you need to. And the final piece of the puzzle, label the curve with the equation. Luckily for you, you're usually given the x values in the table of values, so you know what to substitute in. So you should now know how to plot cubic graphs using a table of values. It's the x cubed that tells us it's going to be one of these shapes, and we need a minimum of five sets of coordinates to make sure we get the right curve. Luckily for you, you're usually given the x values that you need to substitute in. And if you want a really quick way of finding that table of values, watch our Plotting Graphs Calculator Trick video to see how. Bye!


Good morning Kimberly. Can you hear me? I barely can hear Kimberly, but I heard you. Oh, hang on. Oh there you go, now I can hear you. Yeah, much better. Okay, yeah, thank you. Good morning, this is Vandy. Checking in for sound test. Good morning, I think your sound works and sounds great. Thank you. Testing, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Sounds good. So if there's anyone from our applicant team in attendance that would like to check your sound. Please raise your hand in the Zoom meeting format.  Good morning Adam. Good morning Kimberly. Can you hear me? Yeah, sounds good. Thank you. Just want to make a note to our attendees. This is the webinar version of Zoom. So if you're confused, if maybe you feel like your camera's not working or your sound isn't working, we will give you opportunity to speak as the appropriate time comes. Cameras will not be functioning for our attendees, only for our staff and panelists. And we're getting down to our last couple of minutes here before we get started. Just want to let everyone know if there's anyone who is part of an applicant team who would like to do a sound check, please raise your hand within the Zoom format. My name is Andy Gustafson. I'm Zoning Administrator and I want to call this meeting of the Zoning Administrator, September 16, 2021 to order. Before we begin the items on our agenda, I just wanted to review a couple of things. First, this is a webinar or a Zoom meeting held virtually in compliance with the provisions of the Governor's Executive Orders, which suspend certain requirements of the Brown Act, which allows us the Zoning Administrator meeting to be held as a virtual meeting. This is a normal public meeting. Participation and input would be allowed as if we were holding this meeting face to face. The difference is those of you who are on the Zoom call, you will need to raise your hand using the hand icon and you'll be recognized. And when you do, when you are, you'll need to unmute yourself. If any of you are calling in, which is also the other way to participate, if you're calling in by phone, to be recognized, you will need to press star nine and you'll be recognized and allowed to make comment. This is a live stream meeting. It will be recorded and will be available at the website and I'll give you the URL. It's also on the agenda before you on the screen. It's HTTPS, backslash www.youtube.com, backslash say of Santa Rosa. So, at the start of every meeting, we provide opportunity for members and attendants to make a public comment on a matter which is not on the agenda, but which is a part of the Zoning Administrator's jurisdiction. If you wish to make a public comment, please raise your hand or press star nine to be recognized. Seeing none, I will move on to our scheduled items for this meeting. We have three items on the agenda. First one is a public hearing item. All these items that we'll be discussing today may be appealed. The appeal period is 10 calendar days or the first day after the 10th calendar day that's open for a normal business, so that'll be the 27th of September. If you wish to appeal a determination made today, please contact the project planner and they will guide you through that process. All right, so with those preliminary steps out of the way, let's launch into our first item which is a public hearing item for a hillside development permit at 3926 Chanterelle Circle and the project planner is Lonecic Halley. Thank you, Mr. Gustafsson, and good morning. So I'm going to share my screen so I can start my presentation. There you go. So as you mentioned, this is a public hearing for single residents located at 3926 Chanterelle Circle. This is a minor hillside development permit. So the minor hillside development permit is to add approximately 2782 square feet, including garage porch and deck to the rebuilt project of 7666 square foot single family residents that was destroyed by the top fire in 2017. As of this addition, about 142 square feet is outdoor covered area and 1,550 square feet is uncovered patio, stairs, and terrace. And the total area for the new residents with all the additions is going to be 9,511 square feet. And also, the applicant is proposing to add a new circular driveway configuration. In my next slides, I'm going to go over each one of those and explain them. So here is the current site. As you can see, the previous house had two driveways. One driveway was accessing from the north and the other driveway that was added in 2003 or 2002 is accessing through Rincon Ridge Drive. The parcel is zone PD, plan development, and the general plan land use is very low density residential. This is the previous house. And again, as you can see, two drivers were provided for the lot. And the new project will remove the driveway along Rincon Ridge because they are going to have only one driveway. So this driveway will be abandoned, will be closed, and a circular driver will be added along Chantler Circular. So this is the previous house. As you can see, it was a two-story building along Chantler. And on the back, it was one story. This is the current lot is being cleaned. But you might see in these pictures that lot has major slopes. And the previous house actually was built on areas with slope more than 20 or 25%. And the new house is going to be placed at the same location. So here is the proposed site plan. As you can see, the driver on the Rincon Ridge will be removed. And the new driver will be added on this area and be connected to the existing driveway on Chantler Rail Circle. And the majority of the house is going to be on the same location. Next slide, I will show you just approximately the previous location of the house and the new addition. So the green line shows the previous house approximately where it was. And the red lines are showing the new addition. If you pay closely attention, you will see the majority of house is going to be constructed at the same location. The extension of the stairs and porches along Chantler Terrace is basically most of the new addition and some porch and terraces around it. And also here, the yellow line shows the new driveway that will be connected to the existing driveway. Here is the slope analysis. At the center, you will see slopes between 10 to 25% where the house used to be located. Let me show here. There you go. So let me go back here. The majority of the addition is in this area that is sloped less than 10%. And you can see here where the new stairs and porches will be located. And the driveway will be located on area with more than 10%. And here are the contours of the lot. Again, you can see the new addition is going to be located in this area that has slopes less than 10%. And the driveway will be located in the front. And in our zoning code, hillside development permits allows our driveways to be placed within the hillside area as long as they are not placed on slopes with more than 25%. And here is a section from the site. And here is the majority of the addition in the red box where it's going to be located. As you can see here is the driveway where there will be some grading. But the new addition for terraces and porches are majority in the flat area, as you can see in this section. Here is the left elevation of the site. The maximum height has to be 35. It cannot exit 35. And the applicant is proposing 33 feet and four inches. Here is the another elevation that shows the garage. And this is the front elevation and the rear elevation. The front elevation is similar to the previous house. Two story and the back still one story. And these are the section. We had a person from the public having questions and comments regarding the height exceeds the required 35 feet. So the applicant provided these additional sections of the house showing the natural grade and an imaginary line as being described in our zoning code about the property to show the height does not exceed 35 feet as required by the plan development and as required by the zoning code. Here is another section that shows the natural grade and the height does not exceed 35 feet. So the notices were sent out. We received a public hearing request for today and the comments and concerns were regarding the height of the proposed building and also about the project has to comply and meet with the CCNR's requirement and the zoning administrator cannot approve the project because it needs to be approved by HOA. So staff has to mention that city does not enforce HOA and zoning code law exceeds HOA requirements. And I believe the person who had those comments is also available today and the applicant is also available to answer any questions related to HOA and with that the project has been reviewed in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act and qualifies for a class three exemption under section 15303 in that the project is reconstruction of a new single family with minor expansion. And with that the planning and economic development department recommends that the zoning administrator by resolution approve a minor hillside development permit for the property located at 3926 Chanterelle Circle. And that was my presentation. Thank you. Thank you. And I have no questions. Your presentation was complete. Now it's opportunity for the project team or applicant to comment or provide more information. If you wish to do so please raise your hand and you'll be recognized. And I see Mr. Farrell wishes to comment. Please recognize Mr. Farrell and unmute yourself please and you'll be able to be heard. Thank you Monay and thank you Mr. Gustafsson. As Monay mentioned the site does have significant topography challenges which we attempted to mitigate in the design of the home by stepping it down towards the front. The addition of the uncovered area as Monay explained creates a lower profile as you step down the hill and seeing as those areas are in the less than 10 percent we thank you for explaining the clarity on those. Thank you. Is there any other member of the team that wishes to comment or the owner at this point? Seeing none I'll close the well not closing the public hearing. I offer the opportunity for any member of the public who wishes to comment on this project now to do so and if you wish to do so please raise your hand and I see Mr. Echoll please recognize and unmute yourself. Thank you. Yes thank you this is this is Wade Eagle. I would like to thank the city staff and the property owners agent for providing the additional information particularly the the height relative to the to the the slope and those additional drawings were were much more insightful I should say than what was originally submitted and available online. I think if information like that could have been provided initially there wouldn't have been this back and forth between at least myself and the city staff and the applicant which you know maybe for the future you know to ensure that there is sufficient information for the the public to comment upon you know that would have avoided a lot of you know back and forth and and use of city staff time as well as the time of the of the public you know that takes the the opportunity to comment and review these things and hopefully provide some thoughtful and useful comments back to the to the the property owner as well as the as well as the city staff with that thank you. Thank you very much. Is there any other member of the public who wishes to comment if so please raise your hand. All right oh we do have one more farm nurse. Please unmute yourself. Thank you. Can you hear me now? Yeah thank you. I understand the height limits I just have a question is there I'm I'm currently across the street on rink and ridge and wondering if there's any consideration taken into sight lines. I have a view of Mount St. Helena currently and it appears that the construction will block that view. I don't know if that's an issue that the city deals with at all or just the height limit itself is is considered enough. Hi good question and I will respond to that I'll ask the project planner to respond to that in the comments or the at the close of the meeting here so we can provide some insight on that. Any other issues or concerns? Any other member of the public that wishes to comment at this point? Seeing none I'll close the public hearing on this matter. Lynette can you respond to the question regarding sight lines from neighboring properties and also can you speak to a little bit about whether there are any lower area limits, massive limits on the house of height and light coverage. Oh so the previous house was already two-story building up to 35 feet so the new proposed house is not going to be more than 35. I wonder if well they meet with the total height and is not like increasing the height of the building and the house majority is located at the same location so it was uh I don't know what to say how about like if we have to change it for if they were not doing the new addition and if they were rebuilding the house as it was we would not have the today's meeting because they were replacing the previous house but the reason for the today's meeting is addition of the driveway and those staircases that are outside so the house is going to be at the same location with the same height and it's not like it was a vacant lot and the new house is being proposed there. So yeah and also is it not true that the hillside development permit does have findings regarding new development impact on public views from public places including streets? I believe. I think that's one of the key findings. So I just wanted to kind of go into that little bit of detail. I'm looking at the findings in our code right now. It's uh project grading respects natural features and visually blends with adjacent properties which is a step into conformed site topography so those staircases are stepping down. Not sure which one says about the I think it's actually in the design city design guidelines and there is one thing Mr. Gustafson the finding number one talks about tree clusters this site did not have trees in the past that many and due to the fire we have lost so many trees in that area and it's so hard to make the first finding for this rebuild houses. Well I think you're you're pointing out that the this hillside development permit is being brought forward to the zoning administrator because there's an addition to the former house and the former house was 35 feet or less and two stories and the addition would not increase the overall height but it's really expanded towards right down slope side and would not impact the view. But it wouldn't make changes in the previous view it's going to be similar location so in this left elevation basically those front terraces and steps are the additions. Right right okay well thank you for making that pointing that out and clarifying that or explaining that question. So I reviewed the resolution that you prepared and the findings that you make and the conditions of approval that are provided are appropriate for the hillside development permit and this proposed replacement home. So with that and the conditions of approval I will approve the project as proposed and as I said earlier any determination made including the approval of this project is may be appealed by the end of the day September 27th. Thank you. All right let's move on to item 3.2 another hillside development permit at 3607 Crescent Circle and the project planner is Connor McCay.  Yes I am thank you but no full screen mode. Well is this okay? Can y'all see this big enough? Connor close the editing on the right and the full screen will work. Oh my gosh thank you so much. Yeah I've made that mistake. And there's my camera. Thank you so much Mr. Zoning Administrator. My name is Connor McCay, city planner. Connor can you expand it a bit more or is it fully on the screen? Maybe I need to shift my screen to the larger computer. What is that? It's on my end sorry. Kimberly are you able to see it? It looks full size to me. Okay great. Yeah so this is a hillside development permit located at 3607 Crescent Circle. So this is a requested hillside development permit for the reconstruction of a single family dwelling lost in the Tubbs fire. The pre-fire square footage was 2,624 square feet while the proposed square footage of the rebuild is 3,787 square feet pursuant to the resilient city. Combining district measures, a hillside development permit is required because the additional square footage is located on areas of 10 slope or greater. Here we have a location map of the site aerial on Crescent Circle. Here we have a site plan that shows where the property would be located on the site. So this is this is an interesting project because the site was over excavated by FEMA when they were when FEMA was conducting its site remediation and cleanup. So there is a considerable amount of fill being brought back to the site but the actual elevation of the site is similar to what was existing prior to the fire. Also the applicant initially proposed even more fill with consultation with staff. We agreed on a compromise to reduce the introduced fill and kind of lower the overall elevation of the site. That still allows for a navigable navigate navig allows for a driveway to be constructed that is not exceeding 25 slope. Any less fill that would be introduced to the site would reduce in an overly sloped driveway. I'm trying to think if there were other things I wanted to mention here. So we did receive questions from some neighbors about drainage and just kind of the overall slope and what might happen in a weather event. And I spoke with the engineer that reviewed the project and they said that compliance with the conditions of approval and the exhibit aid that discussed drainage would result in less than significant impacts to neighbors that are lower on the hillside in the event of a weather event. There was a question about the usability of that storm drain and all that investigation would take place at the building permit stage which is currently being reviewed and the suitability of the storm drain would be resolved before any building permit is issued. But for the purposes of this hillside development permit the planning entitlement the engineering department has provided conditions of approval that they feel are suitable for the recommendation of approval of the project. So here we have the pre-fire footprint in aerial of what the location looked like before the fire and we have architectural elevations, architectural renderings and with that the planning and economic development department recommends that the zoning administrator by resolution approve a hillside development permit for the rebuild of a Tubbs fire law at 3607 Crescent Circle that is adding additional square footage compared to the pre-fire square footage in areas of 10% slope or greater and I'm available to answer any questions. I do not believe the applicant or design team are present to answer any questions unfortunately but we will do our best to respond to any questions that may arise. Thank you Connor and again I want to have an opportunity to any member of the applicant's team or owner be on the call please raise your hand and be recognized. Seeing none, oh I do see Josephina has raised her hand are you part of the project team or applicant? So can I have one moment please I just want to make sure you'll have opportunity as a neighbor to comment but I just want to make sure the project team or owner is not present though Connor did say they're not just give me a moment here okay apparently not okay sorry Josephina for the interruption when you go ahead and comment thank you. Okay so first of all thank you for having this meeting good information thank you um so really my only concern is how are they going to take care of that big hill where there's all the dirt I know they're going to build on top of it you know I don't want to assume they're going to put a retainable I'm thinking they probably need to but I don't know how what they're going to do to make sure that the dirt doesn't slide down because it's about 12 feet so when we're staying on our property it's probably 12 feet taller than than that's so that's all ground that can easily slide even just in a minor just a regular room event. Good question and we'll respond to that when when we get to the called the deliberation part of this meeting. Do you have any other comments regarding the project primarily sound it looks like the slope erosion issues potentially? Correct slope erosion is drainage issues but I'm sure you guys will you know cross that barrier when you get there but um but yeah just want to know what it's going to be made of you know impact to the environment impact to us you know all that those types of things you know just trying to be smart and have you know this discussion not only for ourselves but just for all of us living in the area how to do these builds correctly and wisely you know moving forward. Thank you all right is there any other member of the public present that wishes to comment at this point if so please raise your hand and you'll be recognized. Seeing none I'll close the public hearing. So Connor can you respond to the question regarding slope erosion and drainage I'll preface that or proceed that by saying you did say there is a building permit and a part of the building permit there is development review including including um on construction sites um erosion control drainage improvements maybe can you elaborate a bit more or point out an exhibit aid or the conditions that will address that issue? Yeah um so as far as materials for the retaining wall we wouldn't necessarily review that at this point because that is something that is reviewed by building staff and engineering staff as as a result of a building permit review um so right now we would just we would just review what is like proposed for the site and I believe that there is a retaining wall at least one retaining wall proposed and that was reviewed by engineering and building and they did provide conditions specifically related to its design that would prevent a landslide of of in the case of a weather event but as far as the like precise materials and stuff like that that isn't necessarily being reviewed as a result of this planning entitlement process if that makes sense I'm trying to pull up the exhibit aid but I'm having trouble finding it so bear with me please and if if you have any um questions about what I just said while I well I'll just kind of add to that is um the city stormwater programs are are very focused on construction sites and the final um shaping or or development of the path that that will uh the supporting the building corrosion control is um part of that for the purpose of helping to avoid the damage that might occur across property lines to a neighboring home but also to help reduce the community-wide environmental impacts that um sediment transported by stormwater can have upon our creek and water quality so it's been um it's an issue that's very much uh at the core of site development and uh is reviewed during the building permit process so I think we have a case here a little where we have standard regulations involving this issue that are uniformly applied throughout the city and that's I would say the state for that matter that will help address this issue and I've just found the um exhibit and I apologize I think the resolution will need to be updated to reflect um compliance with these exhibit a because I think I failed to include that in in the resolution that um was included in the packet for this item today uh okay well that's a good catch and I um now I'll I'll also say here whether that condition is in this approval or not it will be required with the building permit anyway right permit does memorialize for the purposes of this entitlement that requirement will be imposed on the building permit but thank you for catching that Connor and we'll um we'll ask that um resolution be updated to include that standard requirement are you able to share it with um yeah let's see if I can do that it's might be a little bit small um view one page zoom in all right so I think the one that we um one of the questions was about that uh private storm drain um and like I said all the portions of the private storm drain system shall be inspected and restored to a functioning state prior to finalization of the building permit so no no work would be performed until it's been 100 percent verified that that private storm drain is um uh capable of serving the site um I'm not seeing anything specific about the um retaining wall in the exhibit a but um I believe that the conditions about um let's see latest adopted ordinances resolutions policies I think that we have some catch all conditions that um ensure that we're complying with retaining wall material standards and design um that would uh prevent landslides and stuff like that so I'm really happy to um expand on any of this or respond to further questions if Josephina has any and uh I don't know just you raised your hand I think that yeah okay no longer all right uh well I just wanted to underscore that um this hillside development permit is to allow an expansion of a home that was lost during the fire to expand its footprint um and that the house will be construction of the house the development of property the grading of the property will be subject to standard building code geotechnical design requirements um and that um those will address issues regarding site erosion stormwater runoff and help to ensure that any private drainage facility on the property that um helps to protect neighboring properties in the community will be functioning um this resolution I think Connor you're correct should include um a standard condition that's typically required or listed here referencing exhibit a for the purposes of of acknowledging or memorializing the project will be subject to those engineering requirements and with that I will approve the project with the additional or modified condition of approval um again this project is approved subject to appeal no appeal being filed by the end of the distance to 8 September 27th all right so that concludes that matter um I will uh go to the last item on our agenda which is my agenda back is another conditional use permit for 2765 Santa Rosa Avenue this uh project is presented by Mr. Adam Ross Adam are you ready this sir mr zoning administrator um I don't have a presentation but I'll just share the project plans and and go through that it's a pretty straightforward project um the item is sorry close out my window here sorry the item is a conditional use permit for 2765 Santa Rosa Avenue it's um a pet co vet clinic within an existing pet co it involves the internal conversion of interior space that would um create this full service pet um vet clinic which would then have um you know outpatient surgeries no overnight surgeries are involved the project was reviewed by um by all staff including traffic um as it relates to the intensity of the use and and those are all found to be uh in oh thank you it's just going to show that so if you see um the the striped um building here on the on the right it shows the existing pet co facility at the um uh the center is a shopping center um it's all existing it was built as a comprehensive shopping center so the parking breakdown is one space per 250 square feet when you include all of these buildings on the site you need around uh roughly 707 I think you'd round up 708 parking spaces for the entire site um and there are 750 available on the site so there's adequate parking for this use and the other uses to remain um and I think if you go down to the next the page Kimberly that's yeah perfect and then so this is the internal conversion of the site as well um there's no additional space no outside modifications proposed with this project um it's within the general commercial zoning district retail and business services which is allowed which this use is allowed via minor use permit approval um with that that concludes my presentation I'm unsure if there is uh applicant staff or yeah applicant staff on the um call or the zoom call um but I can answer any questions and if they are I'm sure they'd raise their hand thank you thank you Adam um so to clarify this is really occupying an existing a portion of the existing uh pet retail store um it does not intensify the use um with and there's no exterior change correct excellent all right um is there any member of the project applicant team or the applicant that wishes to comment and so raise your hand seeing none I will offer the opportunity for any member of the public in attendance so wishes to comment on this project please raise your hand you'll be recognized all right seeing none I'll close the public hearing um Adam this is a very straightforward internal repurposing of use accessory to compatible with the existing pet store no intensification as you uh noted in in your presentation in terms of parking for change so this is a matter that can be approved or this is a project that can be approved as recommended so which are the conditions of approval appreciate you bringing this forward and that is the last item on our agenda today so thank you um I am um it's my pleasure to adjourn this meeting at 11 13 and uh thank you all for attending I appreciate you


The big mandate right now for us is building libraries together. At the end of the day, we want lots of libraries. We want lots of winners. I think the role of libraries should be on the traditional roles of libraries, preservation and access just in the digital realm. So they should start by gathering everything they can digitally. And it turns out that it's not that expensive to do. Just do it, whether it's if you're university, to do all of the lectures, do all the materials, websites, all of that, collect it and then make it as accessible as you possibly can. And don't worry about too much on naysayers. Just try out different things. If there are libraries already built, library collections, digitize it. So first, go from you digitize everything that you've got, then collect all the things that are being produced now and then build structures so that your job is easier and easier going forward like building into classrooms, all of the technologies for going and capturing and putting it into the library, into the digital library. I think there's been a fear of costs, or you can't do it here, or we're going to have to go and subscribe to somebody else's service to do this. It's like, no, no, no. Yes, work together with others, but just start doing it. What we'd like to do is work with libraries to take, say, their book collections of all the books that they have in their collection, of the ones that have already been digitized, give those digital copies to the library. And then ones that haven't been digitized have the libraries digitized, put those into a pool, so it helps other people. And be able to go, boink, here's your library, but digital. Can we bring our libraries digital, past, present, and future materials?


an associate professor and chair of the theater department at Boston College. His research on our wonderful playwright, Maria Irene Fornes, began at the Yale School of Drama in the mid-80s, when he interviewed her for Yale's Theater Magazine. He went on to write his dissertation on Fornes, several essays and reviews and a 2012 book on Fornes in the Rattledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatist Series. He's also the author of Remaking American Theater, Charles Me, Anne Bogart and the City Company, 2006, and the co-editor of the Theater of Naomi Wallace, Embodied Dialogues. He holds degrees from the Yale School of Drama, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan's residential college. We've known each other now 20 years, so I consider him a friend and I'm so pleased he can be here today. He's going to talk for about 30 minutes, a prepared talk and then we have a treat because he's going to show us some footage of a never foreseen documentary in the works about Irene Fornes. And then we'll have some questions following that. He has to leave promptly at 3.30 to get to Boston College for a meeting. We all know that world and he just saw Irene yesterday in New York City. So fresh from seeing Irene. Scott Cummings, thank you so much. Thank you, Maureen, thank you all for coming. I know some people have to leave somewhere before we're done, so that's not a problem. 20 years ago when I moved here to Boston from Pittsburgh, I started working part-time in several institutions around town. And one of them was here at Emerson College in the fall of 94 and the spring of 95, I taught appreciation of the performing arts here at Emerson. So it's all the more exciting for me to come back and talk to Emerson College students again. I assume that virtually everybody in the room here is either going to see Fafu and her friends or is in it. So I don't want to talk too much directly about the play itself. I certainly don't want to explain the play to you. The play offers, as many people know, a rather unique theatrical experience. And I'm hesitant to tell you much about that experience before you have it. But I want to offer a few contextual remarks about Fafu and then offer a more general introduction to the work of Irene Fornes by focusing on perhaps the shortest play she ever wrote. It's a piece called Drowning. It was first produced in 1985. Then we think technology is cooperating. As Maureen mentioned, I have a little video treat for you. I would start off by making the following grandiose and somewhat provocative statement about Fafu and her friends. It's the most important American play written by a woman in the 20th century. Period. These things are all arguable. I think a very, very strong case can be made for somebody who wanted to do it for Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun. Another pioneering work that is much more visible, has had much more of a mainstream success. Susan Glassbell's Trifles, some of you may know, Sophie Treadwell's Machinal. The radically unconventional plays of Gertrude Stein, all made important statements in the early part of the 20th century. All works by women, clearly. Megan Terry and Adrienne Kennedy along with Fornes were major female playwrights during the off-off Broadway movement of the 1960s. And Paula Vogels, the Baltimore Waltz, is in my estimation a landmark play, partly for its imaginative and deeply personal response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. But Fafu and her friends has a unique status, I would argue, mainly for two different reasons. One, it's unusual and experimental structure. And two, the inspiration, both direct and indirect, that its treatment of the subject of women has offered two generations of female playwrights and theater makers. In different ways, these same two factors have contributed to the play's obscurity in mainstream theater circles. The play was never a popular or a commercial success. In part because it's complicated form, as some people here in the room already know, makes it challenging to producers. It's a play not only that asks for more than one performance space, but that cannot really accommodate a very large audience. And that puts some limitations on theaters that depend, to some extent, on ticket revenue at the box office. But its complicated feminism also makes it very challenging to spectators. Now, Maureen and the Emerson Sage crew have confronted the production challenges and you who are waiting to see it will confront its ideological challenges. I look forward to seeing the play very, very much this weekend. But like I said, I don't want to talk about it too much. I want to come at Fafu a little bit indirectly by taking a very close look at a very short play by Irene Forness called Drowning. I've seen two different productions of the play. One directed by Forness and one not. I've read it again and again. I've taught it in classes and I've come to regard it as a real miniature masterpiece in its own right. It offers a paradigm or a window onto Forness's entire body of work. It's a play in three short scenes. It lasts only 15, maybe 20 minutes in production. But it contains characters and themes and techniques that characterize her work as a whole. I consider it a kind of Forness talisman. And what I want to do today is try to rub that talisman a little bit and reveal some of the spirit of Irene's work. So my remarks will fall into six parts. Part one, just a few words about the play's origins. Drowning was written as Forness's contribution to an experiment in commissioning new plays. In 1985, a woman named Anne Catanio, the newly appointed dramaturg for the acting company in New York, wanted to help the play get back to Chekhov. They had done a production of Three Sisters 12 years earlier and also to inject some fresh blood into the acting company's largely classic repertoire. So Anne Catanio read hundreds of Chekhov short stories. She selected a number of them that she thought might lend themselves to theatrical adaptation. I don't think Man in the Case was one of them, was it? I can't remember right now. But students here, everybody will have a chance to see another Chekhov story adapted when Mikhail Bershnikov brings his Man in the Case to Arts Emerson coming up very soon, yes? Very soon. Now, seven of the playwrights, a dozen playwrights were invited by Anne Catanio to write adaptation since seven of them accepted. They were Spaulding Gray, John Guare, David Mamet, Wendy Wasserstein, Michael Weller, Sam Art Williams, and Fornes. They accepted the invitation and went about producing their adaptations. These were then directed by the director Robert Falls, who was at that point the artistic director at the Wisdom Bridge Theater in Chicago, under the collective title Orchards. From September 1985 to April 1986, the acting company performed Orchards in repertory with a production of As You Like It in a grueling tour of 60 cities. They took these two plays all across the country and then ended with a three-week run at the American Place Theater in New York. Fornes was assigned by Anne Catanio a short story called Drowning. And like the other playwrights, on the project, she was given carte blanche to adapt it any way she wished. The story is subtitled A Little Scene. And it's a sketch that presents the tale of a derelict street person who approaches a man waiting by the side of a river and offers to impersonate a drowned man for a small fee. Quote, two rubles for drowning myself with my boots on, one rubble without them. Close quote. This derelict badgers and bargains until the third man comes along and takes the odd fellow up on his offer. Then the would-be impersonator pulls off his boots. He jumps in the cold river, flails about spastically for a moment, sinks, resurfaces, climbs out of the water, collects his fee, and walks off wet and shivering. And that is the end of the story. Fornes admitted to being flummoxed at first by Chekhov's odd tale. In an interview, she said this, I didn't know if such a thing was actually practiced or if it was just an allegory for how far a human being will go to survive. Then I thought, maybe if you live by the water, the danger of the sea becomes more intensified and such acts would be a kind of fun exorcism, a release of anxiety. The modern equivalent might be if a person was walking near a park at night and a gang of kids came by and offered to enact a mugging. But I didn't feel like writing that. And then I thought the man selling his drowning act reminded me of the way writers and actors work so hard and then feel a bit deflated after the show gets done and they have to start all over again. But I didn't want to write yet another play about show business either. So I almost asked for another story, but I began to feel more and more moved by that man and his drowning act. I would think of how he walked away afterward, this large man dripping with water, unwanted, who performed for an audience who didn't even care to see him. The rejection, the loneliness. I didn't read the story again, but that sense of feeling like a monster stayed with me. Now this is often the case in the genesis of a Fornes play, an image that stuck in her head rather than an idea proved to be the starting point for a new creation. Before Fornes had a chance to ask Catania for a different story, she was conducting an exercise in one of her playwriting workshops. And if you don't know, Fornes taught playwriting for a great number of years at the ENTAR workshop in New York at Padua Hills in California and on short-term bases in colleges and universities all over the country. She was doing an exercise in which she instructed her students just to close their eyes and allow the image of a face to come into their minds. Now Fornes always joins her students in these in-class writing exercises. And the open-ended writing she's done in these workshops often provides the seed for a new play. When she did this particular exercise, she saw a blubbery, barely human face, which she associated with the man in the story, who Chekhov describes as a stocky individual with a terribly ravaged, bloated face. The image of the face brought with it the feeling of rejection and loneliness she associated with the story. And never want to question the material that emerges up from her subconscious, Fornes began to forge her adaptation. Now part two. The lights come up on two male figures seated at cafe. The text says probably in Europe. They're well-dressed, one in a beige jacket, the other in a brown suit, but there's something unusual about them. Their heads and their bodies are large and shapeless like potatoes, the script says. At another moment Fornes says that they resemble seals or sea lions. They have warts on their faces and reddish, watery eyes. Quote, their flesh is shiny and oily when they breathe, their bodies sweat. Thus does Fornes begin the play with an ontological conundrum. Who or what are these characters? They seem human and not human at the same time. Their dress and their behavior is civilized, but their physiology is almost amphibian. And the question of their exact natures is underscored underscored by the first lines of dialogue in the play. The one wearing an olive hat stares as if transfixed at something on the table. And he asks his companion what it is and if he can touch it. The one in the brown hat nods yes and says it's a newspaper. It's beautiful, says the first one. And when he reaches out gently and touches the newspaper, the stage directions indicate that quote, a tear rolls down his face. He says in wonder, this must be made by a person. Almost as if a person was a different order of being. So right from the beginning, Fornes in drowning introduces an unusual variation on an archetypal character in her work. A character that I call the innocent. This is a character who lacks knowledge or education but has what I like to call the yarn to learn. An impulse or compulsion to command language in some form as a way of engaging or achieving presence in the larger world. There's something immature and embryonic about the Fornes innocent. And the names of the characters in drowning suggest just this. One of them, the one fascinated by the newspaper is called P and his friend is named Ro. There are many different manifestations of the Fornes innocent and you may have met some of them if you've read other Fornes plays. There's the earnest youth named Leopold in her very early play called Tango Palace. There's the dirt farmer named May in a play called Mud. And there's the child bride Marion in a play from the mid to late 80s called Abington Square. Each one of these Fornes innocence is defined to some degree by the intimation of intelligence. They are naive and unschooled but they're crafted by this vague sort of interior impulse to learn how to think, to gain knowledge. They're caught up in the process of coming to thought. A process that in some instances is tantamount to bringing themselves into being. Now there's no single character I would say in Phefou and her friends that corresponds to the archetype of the Fornes innocent but the play still emphasizes the value of education and the play of thought. The very first line of the play, Phefou says, my husband married me to have a constant reminder of how loathsome women are. The very first line. And this proves to be a provocation that Phefou explains a moment later is something to think about. It's a thought, just something to think about. A moment later she explains that she loves exciting ideas that even objectionable or revolting ones such as perhaps the notion that women are loathsome. Even repulsive ones give her energy. And Fornes proceeds to fill Phefou and her friends with a number of playful and provocative ideas including the question, my personal favorite, how do people with genitals act? And there's also the question much more serious, how do you know if a person is hit by a bullet? Act three of Phefou begins when the character Cecilia enters in the middle of a conversation saying, well we each have our own system of receiving information placing it, responding it. Yet another moment in the play that invokes this notion of thinking and the process of having thoughts. The women in Phefou have gathered in Phefou's living room in order to plan and rehearse a fundraising event to support art as a tool for learning, a surfacing of the educational theme in the play. The centerpiece of that fundraising event will be Emma's oral interpretation of an excerpt from a book called Educational Dramatics. It's not always easy to pick up in performance but that passage is allegorical and describes the effort of something called eternal urge to break through the gateway of senses and unite with its suitor environment. And this abstract allegorical eternal urge is similar in some ways, I would say, to what I'm talking about as the yarn to learn that characterizes several foreign S innocence. Part three. The first scene of drowning affirms Phe's status as one of these foreign S innocence. When Phe opens the newspaper, he gasps and then touches the page tenderly with the palm of his hand. He points to a picture in the paper and asks what it is. Rowe says it is a snow drift. And Phe asks, what is snow? Rowe explains what snow is and then points to a picture of a snowman introducing a compound idea, snow plus man. And this idea bewilders Phe. Phe describes the snowman as quote unquote awkward but it turns out that Phe does not know what the word awkward means and what he really meant to say was strikingly wonderful. He thinks that the snowman quote must be a very nice man. And then he becomes confused when Rowe explains that the snowman is not a real man. Quote, he's an imitation of a man. It is snow that has been made, that has been packed to look like a man. Now this simple notion introduces another one of foreign S's abiding concerns, the act of representation. Representation as an artistic practice that involves the manipulation of physical materials such as snow to create likenesses, however literal or abstract, of what we see and experience in the world around us. But representation also adds a linguistic or a stylistic process that involves the use of language or symbols to refer or point to what we see and hear and experience in the world around us. Phe's difficulty in comprehending what he sees in the newspaper and imitation in the form of a photograph, of an imitation of a man made out of snow is a sign of Fornes' interest in both the politics and the logistics of representation. In a monodrama called Dr. Keele, that Fornes first wrote in the 1960s. Dr. Keele takes the form of a mock lecture by a bombastic professor of everything. And in it, Dr. Keele pontificates on a variety of subjects, including speech, poetry, beauty and love and the nature of truth. Regarding language, Dr. Keele says this, words change the nature of things. A thing not named and the same thing named are two different things. And then regarding truth, Dr. Keele says, truth is not at all the way we understand things to be. Why? The moment you name it, it's gone. One of my favorite instances of a Fornes character grappling with representation occurs in a short play called Hunger. It's the fourth play in a cycle of plays called What of the Night. In this play Hunger, it takes place in the future after a great economic disaster which has caused the destitute and the homeless to spend much of their time waiting in line each day for food and shelter in a dreary warehouse. In the second scene of the play, the character of Ray empties a small sack on the floor containing miscellaneous found objects, a stone, a chunk of wood, a bottle cap, things like that. And then he proposes a new procedure to a character named Charlie who's a dimwitted man who oversees the line. He points to the pieces and moves them about as he speaks. This is what Ray says, object by object. This is someone who came first. This is Reba. This represents her. This is me and this is someone else. Charlie, someone comes first and puts his piece down. And then Reba comes and puts her piece down. She's second. Then I come and I put my piece down. Then someone else puts his piece down. It's clear in what order we came. We don't have to stand in line. We can go somewhere else, sit down someplace or do something we have to do. Then when it's time to come in, we stand in line in the order of our pieces. See, a person may have to go to the toilet. They can go to the toilet and come back because their piece is on the floor in place. When your piece is on the floor, it means you're around and you're coming back. This proposal's rejected when Charlie, who is a bureaucrat who lacks imagination, says that he does not have a form for that. But the idea of representation, of something standing in for something else, of a kind of surrogate is still there. Part four. Back in the cafe with Pee and Roe still in the first scene, Pee's effort at understanding the difference between a man and a snowman is complicated when he sees the picture in the paper of a woman named Jane Spivak. He says that he looks more like the snowman than the woman, but Roe explains that the snowman, quote, when it gets warmer, as it is today, will melt. She will not and you will not because each of them is made of, quote, unquote, human flesh. So it seems for a moment that Pee and Roe are human after all, but this does not dispel the sense that they are a different order of human. They are essentialized humans. They're both raw and abstract specimens of a sort. Now the spare rather minimal story of drowning advances when Pee asks Roe if he can meet the woman whose picture he has seen in the newspaper. He says, she's beautiful. I would like to look at her in the flesh. Roe says that he could introduce Pee to other girls, but Pee does not want to meet anybody else. There's something special about this woman in the newspaper. Quote, she looks so very lovely, he says, even here on this paper, as he touches it with the tenderness that signals the short play's major event. Pee is falling in love with Jane Spivak. Now some of you already know, Fornes is a great sensualist and a romantic at heart. Most of her plays are love plays on one level or another and there's plenty of love in feffu of her friends from the troubled relationships between feffu and her husband and between Paula and Cecilia. To Paula's more playful notion that quote, a love affair lasts seven years and three months and then she proceeds to articulate each stage of that period of time. Love in Fornes's plays is absolute and transformative. It heightens the senses to the point that it changes perception. The first interview that I ever did with Irene Fornes back in 1985, she told me this anecdote. She said, I remember having what became almost an argument with a friend who's very political. It was about my play, Molly's Dream. She said it was romantic and meant it as a criticism and I said yes, isn't it? It meant it as a high compliment. I remember we were in a bar, we were drinking beer and I said quote, have you ever been with a person when just being with them makes you see everything in a different light? A glass of beer has an amber, a yellow that you've never seen before and it seems to shine in a manner that is, she said yes and I said that is romantic, that is romance and she said, well, in that case. And I said it is more beautiful. It isn't that you want it to be more beautiful or that you are lying to yourself. It is, your senses are sharpened. Romance is romance. Love in Fornes not only makes it possible to see things in a different light, it makes it possible to think things that could not otherwise be thought. To echo Dr. Keele, I would say, love changes the nature of things. A thing not loved and the same thing loved are two different things. Part five, the first scene of drowning ends with a brief exchange in which P suggests to Roe that they should leave. Roe reminds him that they're waiting for their friend Steven. Steven arrives very similar to P and Roe in appearance and they decide to stay a while to give Steven a chance to warm up. The second scene of drowning is only two lines of dialogue long. To give you a little bit more of a feeling for the play, I want to show you a couple production photographs here from two different productions that illustrate this second scene. I don't know whether this will stand here. There's one, and I'll just put one right there. Two different productions, two different design approaches to technically what we would call the mast. One here, a bit more austere. This is a production that Fornes directed at the Magic Theater in San Francisco. A slightly more cartoonish approach here. This is a production that was done at the Signature Theater in New York as part of the Fornes signature season in 1999, 2000. I want to read you, since it's only two lines long, the entire text for the second scene. This is the whole scene. Scene two, a few minutes later after scene one. P's head leans on the table. He sleeps. Roe sits on the left. Stephen stands upstage of the table. Stephen, referring to P, says, he is very kind, and he could not do harm to anyone. Roe says, yes, and I don't want any harm to come to him either because he's good, and the lights fade, and that's the entire scene. As early as Fornes is the successful life of three in 1965, she experimented with composing a play out of a rapid fire sequence, a very short, so telegraphic, fragmented scene. In the 1980s, she took this strategy a bit further by making regular use of a new unit of dramatic construction, a momentary static scene that offers an emotional snapshot or cross-section of a changing dramatic situation. And clearly scene two is an example of that that I'm offering to you. These little scenes, to borrow, check off subtitle for drowning, operate on the pictorial principle of a tableau. They usually last longer than a tableau and have a much more reverberative dimension to them like a pebble that is tossed into a still pond and sending out ripples. These short scenes are always rigorously composed. They're marked by stillness. They have a kind of iconographic feel to them and they pulse with emotion. If there's dialogue, often only one character speaks or then privately, intimately, or in a detached manner as Stephen and Ro do in the one line they have each in this scene. These vignettes can be as brief as a few seconds long. They can last as long as a couple of minutes but each one, as a London theater critic once wrote, quote, is like a gasp. So short, it is over in the time it takes for a blush to go. These miniature scenes are so particular to the way Irene Fornes writes her plays that they ask for their own particular designation. So I have taken to referring to them as emotographs, emotional snapshots, registered as vivid stage images. If any of you know the play Mud, scene eight of Fornes's Mud is an emotograph that captures the romance between two characters named May and Henry. In that scene, this is the entire scene, May is sitting at a table snapping beans when Henry comes up behind her, covers her eyes and places a small package in her hands. She opens it to find a lipstick, something that as a poor woman she never ever would have had before. Henry pushes lipstick up out of the tube and then hands it back to her. She puts on lipstick as he holds up a hand mirror for her to see her face. She puckers her lips, he kisses her and she sighs, oh, Henry. And that's the entire scene in a photograph. Other playwrights might more readily include a sequence like this in a longer scene but Fornes is content to distill the dramatic situation down to its most essential, most evocative details as a condensed, extended image. Now again, here, Feffu is somewhat exceptional in Fornes's body of work. It does not have anything that I would call in a photograph. The play's not written in a series of short fragmented scenes. In fact, acts one and three of Feffu and her friends represent two of the longest uninterrupted scenes in all of Fornes's plays. I think this has a little something to do with the fact that Feffu and her friends was written after a period of not writing very much in 1976 and 77 at a kind of pivotal moment in Fornes's career when she was still finding her more mature, advanced style. Part six. In another interview that I did with Fornes some years ago, she spoke of her fondness for the playwright George Buchner and his proto-expressionist drama, Wojtsek. She said this, I love the way that Buchner doesn't tell you very much. He's so economical.  You don't really know what is wrong. Even when Wojtsek is talking to the ground, you can say he's crazy, but is he?  He just depicts a kind of agony almost like a triptych. You have this picture, you have that picture, and you have that picture, and it shows the passion of St. Sebastian. The comparison to the triptych reminds us of Fornes's visual orientation as a playwright. When placed one after another, her scenes, many of them what I'm calling emotographs operate like the panels of a triptych. Each has its own compositional integrity, but when seen in a sequence as it were side by side, a more complex and more evocative picture emerges. The spectator connects the dots, projecting both a narrative and an emotional progression into the gap between the scenes or between the panels of the triptych. Scene three of drowning makes the play a theatrical triptych that might be subtitled The Passion of P. It takes place in the same cafe a month later. P is disheveled and distraught as he sits and talks to Roe about his feelings for the woman he first glimpsed in the newspaper. Somehow, and Fornes does not want or need to provide the narrative details, it just doesn't matter how it happened, but somehow he has made the acquaintance of Jane Spivak and his affections have been rebuffed. He says this, I love her. She is close to my heart. The way only an animal can be and as unfathomable.   The stage directions indicate here that P is somewhat frenetic, and at moments he's short of air and makes a sound like snoring. And P's very next line extends the ontological ambiguity of the characters even further. He says, quite oddly, I'm not a person, I'm a bat.  Touch it, this is not like human skin.   Now this gesture would be ridiculous, it would probably be laughable if it was not so pathetic as an expression of P's distress. He's suffering the anguish and the alienation of rejected love. He says, what is it that makes someone a link between you and your own life? I hold her close to me and she pushes me away. She finds me repulsive. The irony is, of course, that in his bloated, oily skin, reptilian way, he is repulsive. But the combination of his innocence, his wonder and sense of beauty, and his absolute love for this woman named James Spivak, they've imbued him with a humanity that belies his outward appearance. Fornus's conceit in drowning over the identity of these characters allows her half human, half beast characters to express raw, extreme feeling in a way that might seem melodramatic or pathetic coming from more ordinary, more recognizable characters. The play winds down as P takes the folded newspaper out of his jacket and says, I thought if I kept her picture next to me, I'd find relief. But I don't find relief. There's no relief in this. Is this why we have come to life? To love like this and hurt like this? And he puts his head down on the table again, the image of despair. After a moment, Stephen waddles on, as he did in scene one, and he and Rose stare at P with compassion. Another key emotion in Fornus's work. Fornus finally, excuse me, Fornus makes the connection to the check-off story and the image of the poor man flailing around about in the water, performing a representation. When Rose says in reference to P, he's drowning, he hurts too much, and the lights fade to black. That's the play. All of this takes place in the span of three scenes in about 15 minutes. The play does not last as long as I have been talking about it. But in that time, Fornus creates a dramatic universe that's as large as life itself. She puts at the heart of that universe a sentient creature in the throes of an unbearable feeling. And she captures that condition of being in images and in actions, both verbal and visual, which resonate with beauty and comforting truthfulness. This is also what she does in Fefu and Her Friends. Julia's persecution by the judges and the constant pain experienced by Fefu amount also to a suffering of feeling, which converge, which come together in the play's final haunting, violent, and mysterious image. I would not dare begin to describe that image for you, for those of you who are going to present it and those of you who are going to experience. But it is the play's final provocation to thought. And I think you'll find it when you see the show to be a rather provocative one. So thank you for your attention. I want to get the video geared up. And I want to introduce, thank you. That was your vegetables. Now here's your dessert. What I want to show you, oh wait a moment for people to clear. I mentioned that in 1999, 2000, the Signature Theater in New York, which is a theater company that devotes, they've expanded from this mission, but their mission for the first 10 years or so was to devote an entire season to the work of one American playwright. And in 1999, 2000, that playwright was Irene Fornes. And part of the signatures procedure was not only to present the New York premiere of already existing work by that playwright, and perhaps to bring back a play that had fallen into neglect, but also to commission a new play by that playwright. And for that season, Irene Fornes wrote a play called Letters from Cuba. And it was based in part on letters that she received from her brother back in Cuba. Fornes, if you don't know her biography, was born in Havana in 1930. She moved to the United States in 1945. And two of her brothers remained in Cuba for the rest of their adult lives. They corresponded all through the Castro era, traveling back and forth very little. And Fornes, when she was commissioned to write a play for the Signature Theater, wanted to do basically a play about home. And Letters from Cuba really features Fornes's two homes, her home in Cuba, her native birthplace, and her home in Greenwich Village in downtown New York, which was really where she came of age as an artist. Around that time, a woman named Michelle Memren became familiar with Fornes's work. And Letters from Cuba actually spurred the idea of Fornes going back to Cuba for a visit with her brother, and the making of a documentary film around that visit. And so this woman named Michelle began work on a documentary film about Fornes, particularly in terms of her Cuban heritage and identity. But it so happened that at this point, 14 years ago now, Irene Fornes was already showing signs of what has become, as of now, a fairly advanced case of Alzheimer's. She was beginning to show some of the early signs of dementia. And as I've said, they are quite far advanced. Maureen, I think mentioned, I was in New York the past couple of days, just in the morning, I went to see Irene in the nursing home where she lives now. And I feel like I can still feel her spirit ticking away, but in any way that we would recognize, she's not very much with us anymore. And the gradual decline in her health made it very difficult for this woman, Michelle, to figure out what her documentary was going to be. And so it's been in a kind of perpetual process of evolution off and on for the last 10 years. And for a meeting last October, November in New York City, Michelle put together sort of 15 minute reel of some of the things in the documentary in the making. And she's given me permission to show that to you. And we're going to look at that right now. The piece is called The Rest I Make Up. Okay, I'm going to sit down. I'm going to ask, who should like a place where it's a kind of day, morning, afternoon, be an apartment building, if you are waiting for someone. Who is that person? Irene, it's Michelle. Does this visit come because the visitor wants something or because the visitor brings something? I don't know, really. I'm right here. Who's our lady for this? Who are you? I don't know if this is this person.  There's nothing next to her. She is the glorious dancer in the whole world, in China, in South Africa, in the Amazon, in all of Paris. Paris, we don't know anything about anything. But when it comes to aliens dancing, it is incredible. This is the intro. They come saying, If you don't know anything, put your cheek on it. Is it? Yes, it is. I don't know anything. I don't know anything. I don't know anything. But the feeling of your eyes, of your throat, am I so fascinating that you feel I don't need a script and need a rehearsal. So I just do myself. I want to be so interesting. People say, who is that? Who is that? Very true. Meticulous, political, honest, precise. Director, designer, writer, arguer, teacher. Do-it-it, visionary. One of the most original voices in the American theater, the playwright and director, Maria Irene Fornes. Irene, welcome. Thank you for being here. I think I was writing a play because I was going to be a playwright. I didn't think that playwright would be put on. I just had this compulsion to write it. What do you do? I don't know of any playwright or two of this. I'm reminded of taking stuff from the unconscious and letting that create form. I don't know about the person who was the one I was writing because I didn't know how to write a play. I didn't know how to do something. It's very hard to edit it in a very simple way. The very first attempt at writing a play, I was totally fascinated with the process. My most vivid memory of prom and I, and that was certainly not first. I was so enchanted by that show that I learned all of the lyrics. To walk down the street with a mean look in my face, a cigarette in my right hand, a toothpick in my left. Alternate between the cigarette and the toothpick. Ah, that's right.  They're in your head forever. Alternate between the cigarette and the toothpick. Ah, that's why, yes.  And I wrote it in two or three days. After that, I knew immediately that in order to write, I had to play games and get myself into writing obliquely, rather than head on. Because every time I would say what I'm going to write on the play now, I would look at the empty page of paper, a blank paper and I would be just completely paralyzed. I had no idea what that first word that you put down should be. It's about to be free. I read and read, I had dyslexic, so it takes me forever to read something. How about all these incredible layers? Look how many layers. Don't tell me I'm not the champion of layers because it's one, two, three, four, five, six and seven. Am I not the champion of layers? No, you're not. You say it's just a chance, it is not a chance. Good, break the wall, please. You just go and find these objects and thrift stores and these things and one thing would give her the whole scene. She was just always open to the imagination. Everything was food for her work, every moment. She said, oh, this needs, this will be part of the play here, all this tree, all this bridge. You hear people say things, you should write it down. Going with that impulse, whatever that was, the organizing principle of each play world became radically different. Each scene was in a different mood and the audience walked around. I think I went to the kitchen first. Mr. Giver is based on a letter from her brother. She knew there was a play in there but she wasn't sure what the health form was going to develop. And we just found this diary in that store that we naturally have a housekeeper. Full diary was just my main entries, wash the floor, make bread. There was something in the, looking at all pictures, that was very inspiring for me and that people, even if they're posing, there was something more softer and something a little more alive. I will wait for you because honey, my love for you is secret and it has to stay that way. How was that? I just improvised a song. Isn't it right? Made that up? I made it up? Manly words. To me, it's not a way of earning anything but it is a way of earning a life. Who cares about what's done? Who cares about whether they like it or not? The function of the artist is to tell the truth and to tell truths that are too embarrassing, too awkward, too simple, not popular enough, too complicated. Truths that the culture is not going to hear otherwise. She's done that for her entire career and of course it's not like, what riches have been produced. And she never stopped. She just went on to the next one and then she just went on to the next one and then the next one. There's no excuse in her life that seemed to me for not going forward. Los is a... L-O-S-A. S-A. Los is water. Isn't this how you spell Los? Thank you very much. Do you know Los? I don't remember it, but I don't remember it. I think it's because there is a Los. A Los. Okay. How long have I had this problem? Oh! How long have I had this problem? I don't know. It's been about four years. Four by... Four years in a very intense way, you know? Yeah. Has it been that long? That I've been out? Yes. Any thoughts of the loving? The moment is a little bit confusing. But on the other hand, I think I have a good loving hands, poor hands, two loving hands to the right, and two loving hands to the left. And a kind of interesting ending. Is this part of your story? Actually, if I mind that this is being recorded, and therefore there might be a moment when I don't want whatever is a result of these tests and things that I prefer to have reserved not to go around advertising, I would feel generally that even if I feel, oh, don't tell anybody. I prefer that everything we are on there often. I prefer not to hide anything. I haven't told you as well, Slavish, but I haven't seen her in about four years. There's probably some loss, if you're getting one like that. I thought, is she hiding? Is it this thing no more place? I don't know if you can put it in a book or not. I'd like to get out. But for an artist like me, that's not what's interesting. What's interesting is her capacity to be mindful and her interest in the present. Have you ever made your own Don't get on with it, don't ignore it. That's life, when it has such close distance to itself. Don't be afraid. You are receiving the word. Nothing. At Seattle Repertory Theatre. There's gonna be one at the theater. Now, it's probably the trial of the other one. And it's always imposing. The first one? If you're gonna go out and finish it, you turn the lights out and you say the end. And maybe you'll think that was... They would end just because their feelings about the end. So maybe that's how we should have in this movie. I should start in here? Start in here? Yeah. It has started? Yes. No, let's see this end with a happy note. So I'd be happy to have a little bit of a dialogue if there's questions I might answer. I can't tell you everything about the documentary and the making, but there's some things I noticed in there that are pretty special. Yeah. Pretty astonishing. Questions anyone? Anybody? As to why she's not better known? That's a good question. I do. And I've done a lot of research on her work and one of the things I haven't done is to try to test those theories with some more empirical research. I think it has something to do with the fact that she is what I might call a miniaturist. The plays, they're very intimate and they're best suited for small audiences. And so theaters around the country that have larger houses to fill may think that the play is not well suited for that space. Another sense of their miniaturiness or smallness is, Feffu is a full length play, but it's rare in that regard. Most of Irene's plays are one act plays. So if you're gonna present an evening of theater, you either have to put some of her work on a bill with something else or do a series of works. And generally speaking, producers aren't particularly drawn to producing evenings of one act. I think one of the theories that I would wanna test is that one of the things I did not mention is that starting in the late 1960s, early 70s, Irene began to insist on being the original director for every play she wrote. She was a naive. She wasn't innocent herself. She wasn't trained in the theater. And to her, the distinction between a director and a playwright was a false distinction. And so after a couple of uncomfortable or unpleasant experiences with other people directing her work, she insisted on directing the first time out. And she would finish creating a play in the process of rehearsal. So she would often direct the first and even the second production. And again, I don't know for sure, but that may have prevented her from forming certain partnerships with directors who would help her to advance her work. One of the curious things about FFU, part of the issue there is the second act of the play. And she was frustrated by the fact that many places couldn't do FFU because they couldn't accommodate the special nature of the second act. So she actually did an adaptation of FFU to be set entirely in the living room and recalibrated the second act scenes to have them take place in the living room. And that was only done once at Davidson College, I believe. She never finished that adaptation. It was never published. It was never shown around to larger theaters that might have wanted to do it. I'm kind of uncomfortable with that notion because of the special nature of the second act. But those are a couple ideas about. Maybe you could tell us just because people haven't seen it, I don't think it proves it, but how did that second act come to, we're moving around, they know that. How did that second act come to be? You talked about it a little bit on the phone and the cast members, so that was just for the people there. It has to do, well, it has to do with the special value that the found had for Irene. Her works, in directing her own plays, there's a quote from Kelly Stewart there who was the stage manager on Mud, and Mud was a play where, when she first started rehearsal for a workshop performance of it, she hadn't written much beyond the first scene. But Irene always loved to go shopping at flea markets and garage sales and whatnot, and pick up odd things. And she would use that to get ideas. And so a lot of what happened in Mud was formed by some farm utensils that she found at a yard sale. And Fefu was similar. She had not yet finished the play in 1977 when she was looking around for spaces to do it. And she was shown a loft space at something on the Bowery on the Lower East Side that was called the Relativity Media Lab at that point. And she was shown the stage and then they were walking her around and saying, well, here's an office, this is an office, if you need an office, you can come in here and this space could be a green room. And as she went to these series of other spaces around that facility, she said, oh, this could actually be a bedroom in Fefu's house. And oh, here's this kitchen area for the green room. Maybe we could just have a scene in the kitchen. And that really ignited her imagination and she finished writing the play with that in mind. So the first production did that. Within six months, it moved, she remounted the play at the American Place Theater uptown and has a very tight space. So the library seen in the second act had to take place in the living room. Otherwise, they were able to move around to three other spaces that time. Yes. It was not, she was a teenager. It was largely at the instigation of her mother. I mean, it was in 1945. So this was during the Batista regime in Cuba. There was, at that point, much more traffic back and forth between Cuba and the United States than when I was growing up in the through the 50s and 60s and into the 70s. So it was, I wouldn't say that they were an economic refugee, but her mother wanted to move to the States and her father had resisted it. Her father died of a heart attack in 1945. And six months later, Irene, her mother and two sisters moved to the United States and the brothers stayed behind in Cuba. They moved to New York. You saw a shot of Irene's apartment building. First couple in late 50s, early 60s, actually, Irene took an apartment in a building at one shared and square. And she lived there for the next 40 years. I still don't even know what the status of that apartment is. As mentioned, she bought it. She bought the apartment next door. She connected the two. She spent more of her life in Granite's Village than in Cuba. And she worked in a Capizio factory and all that. She was a translator for a little bit. Then when she was 19 or so, she got interested in painting. And she studied painting actually quite seriously. And then she went to Paris and she saw Waiting for Good Hope. And it was life-altering for her. Yes. Did she work explicitly in English or did she write out a book in Spanish? Interesting. She wrote overwhelmingly in English, but oftentimes mixing Spanish in. Part of this interest in The Found is her plays often incorporate found documents. And her very first piece of theater, technically I don't count it as her first play, was a series of letters from a great, great grandmother that were in Spanish that she adapted, sort of edited and adapted into a kind of monologue piece. And then letters from Cuba uses the letters in Spanish. But she really wrote in English, but in English, not as her native language, do you know? Yes. Did she tend to use, do you know, the same, not the same, but a pool of actors that she would kind of draw from as she was putting up her plays one right after another during that period? Or did she kind of start all over again with you? I don't know. It seems to me that she would, I don't know, using the same kind of pool of people would lend itself to her. There was a few. I wouldn't ever say that there was something that we would call sort of Fornes Repertory Company that joined with her a lot. There's a woman we saw, well, there's two people we saw in footage here. The little piece from Mudd had a woman in an actor named Patricia Maddock. She's been in three, four or five of Irene's plays. The cut from the piece Serita, if that's in your mind right now, showed an actor named Sheila Dapney who was in several pieces. So she would kind of fall in love with individual actors. But she worked much more consistently with a trio of designers, a man named Donald Eastman who actually was quoted here, a lighting designer named Ann Militello and a costume designer named Gabrielle Berry. And actually I was, in New York yesterday I was at the opening night of Carol Churchill's Love and Information and Gabrielle Berry did the costumes for that. So that was more of her sustained partnership. She has sustained partnerships with theater companies, with the Women's Project in New York, with Intar, with Padua Hills Playwrights Conference in Southern California. Right here. Yeah, hi. Yeah, on the subject of language again, I know that Irene was very particular about the way that she wrote and sort of like the grappling with the thought process. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the way she chooses her words, what it is to get those thoughts across and also the moments of silence in her place because I know that frequently there are all our day directions where it's, there's a moment and there's listening and how those things happen sort of in the process. Well I think the best answer to your question is in your question because it has to do with the silence. I think it has a lot to do with taking words away. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that as her own primary director, she went into any rehearsal period not necessarily needing the play on the page to tell everybody who needed to know something, what they needed to know in order to do the play because she was going to do it and she was there to tell them. And it actually, I think it has created some issues with the publication of her plays because she can never stop working on a play. I mean any time she did a play, she would make adjustments. The printed copy of Fefo and her friends that I've been working from has some, I wouldn't say overwhelmingly significant differences but there's some things in the original text that was published in Performing Arts Journal in 1977 that are no longer in what she made the kind of final version. So I think it has something to do with the fact that for her the work was never done. And it certainly was, the script was not done until the play went up. And as part of my research I had the privilege of sitting in on several rehearsal periods including an extended a two week workshop at Milwaukee Repertory Theater for the piece that became known as What of the Night. And she would have rehearsal for six or seven hours and she would go home and write. And things got so cramped, there was one occasion where I was always wanting to do something to help for the privilege of being able there to watch where I was actually typing up scenes for her because every time she saw the work she wanted to make an adjustment. Yes. A little bit about the work Connecting a Life that was sort of a reflection on her theater pieces. Could we use that in the... I think, and it's a loaded statement for me to make. I think it's probably the single best book about Irene and I've written one myself. Because it presents Irene from so many different angles. I think it's a book while it has some of the pluses and minuses of a series of tributes. A lot of the comments there are pretty penetrating in their analysis. There's two women who put it together, Maria Delgado and the playwright Carrie Dot-Switch. Carrie Dot-Switch had studied with Irene in the 1980s at the Intar workshop. Was one of sort of a new generation of Hispanic, Latino, and Latina American playwrights that kind of took hold coming out of that workshop. And just the huge number of contributors to that volume. I think it was a real testament to this paradox about Irene is that in the theater world she's extremely well known and I think well respected whether people love her plays or not. There's an acknowledgement of the contributions she's made on various levels. And the sort of panoply of people that are in that book are a reminder to me about that when I start to worry about, you know, her legacy. I mean, those of us who put a lot of time and energy into studying her work are concerned about legacy because the plays aren't widely done. But it's always important to remember that, you know, like anybody that we eventually lose, the legacy is gonna live on in the influence that they've had on other people. Yeah. Could you speak a little bit about Scott? I'm paraphrasing a dramaturgical quote from the email that invited us to this talk. Yeah. It basically said something like there's pre-pornets and post-pornets and that's the specific point and why, how? Well, that's a quote from Paula Vogel which was part of her tribute that basically saying that for a playwright in particular, there's something about a genuine encounter with her work that changes the perspective. And I don't know exactly what Paula Vogel meant by that but what I would guess or what it would mean to me is going back to the quote from Edward Albee in Michelle's documentary that Irene did not question the ideas and images however inchoate coming out of her own subconscious. She just trusted the truthfulness of the unconscious world and her playwriting exercises are all focused on getting playwrights to relax and listen to the voices in their head. And to me that's the before and after is the, I mean it's an overused word but the empowerment of the playwright to trust his or her own internal mechanism, that there's something, well I mean it connects a little bit with the image in the first act of a fefu about turning over the stone that on the dark underside of the stone there is this teeming life that when we're walking down the street we don't think much about it. We're focused on the surface of things. Just the way much of the time we're focused on our surface consciousness but when that stone is turned over other things are revealed that are just as true and just as real as our everyday world. For me that's the before and after part. Yes. I was wondering, she said something about, she said who cares if they like it or not and I was wondering if you knew, had some insight about what did give her validation when she put on place. I don't have a comfortable answer to that question but I think it would have to do with the composition of an image. Just looking at something and in seeing a combination of sights and sounds, a gesture or tone of voice, a song and that feeling that that's just exactly the way it should be. I think that would be my guess is what would be the greatest satisfaction for her. She also, as you can see, I mean from this film she loves attention. She loves attention and she got a lot of attention, a lot of satisfaction out of some of the attention that her work brought her.  Yeah. Scott, you need to go. I need to go. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Wake up early! Thank you!


I'm here at Pathfinder Dam in central Wyoming and let me tell you hydroelectric power is one of the most daunting forms of electricity production anywhere. In many cases, massive walls of structural material rise hundreds of feet in the air to hold back millions of acre feet of water. The raw power behind these walls is unimaginable. The kinetic energy of water behind a dam is converted into electricity as it rushes through pinstocks or pipes, spinning the turbines in the heart of the dam, which ultimately spin the generators that produce the electricity. Large turbines can discharge over 23,000 gallons per second, and some dams may have up to four turbines within them. Wyoming has 13 hydro power plants spread across the state. In 2005, they produced almost 800 million kilowatt hours of electricity, certainly more than enough to meet Wyoming's needs. In addition to energy production, these dams also provide irrigation and drinking water storage in places for recreational activities such as fishing or water sports. From the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service, this has been Tom Heald.


We are really feeling the real support of, I call it Rammstein Club. It's more than 54 countries members of this allies. It's more than NATO allies, probably twice. And I am really satisfied of this meeting also, because we had a chance again to deliver to our partners our main priorities, our needs. And again, the high priority still remains air defense systems, air defense systems and air defense systems. Certainly we repeated our demands of the fighters as a part of air defense systems. And I am sure that we will have modern NATO standard G++, 4th generation++ fighter jet as a part of air defense systems. But right now the main needs, we are talking about the land-air interceptors or grand landed air defense systems. They will stand with us with the Ukraine till the end of this war and the meaning of the... So we discussed our readiness for the counter offensive, which we have to do in this period of time, because it's our challenge to continue liberating our temporarily occupied territories. It's our main goal. And after that, when Russia will defeat it, we will start our new stage of life of Ukraine as I'm sure that we will become the member of different types of security architecture, including NATO allies also as well. I'm satisfied because I heard very important words from my colleagues that they will stand with us with the Ukraine till the end of this war. And the meaning of the end of this war for them is victory of Ukraine. It's very important for me. Negotiation could be and we will sit at the table with our partners on our site and we will discuss with the Russians reparation, restoration, compensation and decision of the international tribunal about the war crimes from the Kremlin mafia gangs. Thank you very much. Flava, Ukraine!