At Theatre for a New Audience’s 2019 staging of Fefu and Her Friends, a ticket came with a small practical problem. In the middle portion, audience members had to leave their assigned seats and move through the theater to encounter four scenes. The company offered seated and standing ticket options, instructions for accessible seating, and house staff to help patrons navigate. Those details are not separate from María Irene Fornés’s work. Its architecture asks people to follow different women into different rooms and to understand that a single seat cannot contain every conversation.
Fornés was born in Havana and came to New York in 1945, according to the Fornés Institute. She wrote Fefu and Her Friends in 1977; Broadway Play Publishing describes an original version spread across five environments and a later one-set variation that the playwright herself devised. The difference between those versions is a reminder that the spatial design is a choice with consequences. A single room can make a play easier to present; several rooms can let private exchanges remain physically distinct rather than forcing them into one public arena.
The 2019 revival was directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. Theatre for a New Audience’s production information says Part 2 consisted of four scenes lasting about nine minutes each. That schedule required an audience-management system and performers willing to repeat material for successive groups. The work of resetting a scene is usually hidden in theater. Here, repetition is part of the structure that lets people enter a conversation from a different position and time. The published seating plan makes an audience’s movement part of the evening’s design. Each group must follow a different route before everyone can gather again.
It is tempting to call an unconventional layout liberating and leave the discussion there. The access notes complicate that easy praise. Some viewers could sit in chairs; one location used floor cushions or standing positions, with staff assistance available. A design that gives spectators freedom to roam can impose different demands on different bodies. The venue published those terms in advance so patrons could make informed arrangements. That is a concrete part of presenting the play, alongside casting and directing.
Fornés’s rooms refuse the idea that one woman’s story explains the rest. Their separation gives encounters their own space, while the audience’s route makes each person aware of how much they have yet to hear. The 2019 production made that form visible in its ticketing and access plan. It is a rare case where the box-office instructions offer a truthful clue to the play’s argument: seeing more requires moving, and moving is never equally simple for everyone.