 So, once you see a star, it's already dying. I'm assistant professor of theater here in Prince. The support of so many folks in bringing us here today. What we have just for you for the next few minutes, we'll have some opening announcements, some logistics, and some settings of our intentions for the day. And to that end, so I think to begin, I need to offer some very specific things. First, I'm going to just do the requisite ritual that all of us in the arts understand so well. I would like to thank our funders. And so specifically by name, the funders for this event include the Stephen Trouse lecture series fund, Rochelle Caffee, the Vice President for Campus Life, the Humanities Council, the Center for Collaborative History, Department of English and Programs in American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Latino Studies and Latin American Studies. Those are the entities that Princeton can provide the financial subsidy for our work here today. I also want to thank Danielle Dennis and her crew as the venue managers of the Lewis Arts Complex, Jane Cox, the director of the theater program, Joseph Bonseca, the administrative, the academic assistant in the program in theater, and the incredible staff of the Lewis Center Arts Complex, this incredible staff that has made this day a day of hospitality. A chance for us to introduce you to our new home. We just moved in here about eight months ago. We're still learning where the doors are. And it's an incredible opportunity. When you know that company is coming, it's a great opportunity to figure out how to tune into how we're hospitable. One of the things I love about working at Princeton is the staff that runs everything here, you'll encounter them in different places throughout the day, are just so dedicated to making sure that the work, that this is a hive of activity for really searching and exciting creative action. And I mentioned her name already, but I do want to give a special shout out to Jane Cox. I'm not sure if she's been named as tight. Jane Cox is the director of the frontier at Princeton today. It's through her support, along with the support of Marion Young, the administrative director of the Lewis Center and Michael Caden, the chair of the Lewis Center. When I said three years ago that I said, I just told a bunch of people in Chicago or Carnaval that we're doing a symposium in 2018. And they said, okay. And we built that into our sense of purpose for what the organization was doing over the subsequent three years. And indeed, the program at theater, my colleague Tom Sandberg, Jane Cox, Alana Arauz, we decided that when we built the season for this year, we knew that this was one of our 10 goals, one of the most important things we'd be doing. And the opportunity for me to have this house full of my Latino theater family feels really special. I don't know any other theater program in the country where I would have been able to have the support to make this happen the way I would have. So thank you for being here to realizing, to allowing my community here at Princeton to see my two communities come together. And that is in some ways what I always envisioned and hoped. And those of you on the committee, Alia Ovega and Garcia Romero, Mikaela Cruz, Gwendolyn Halker, Gina Sampi Diaz, Cristina León, Olga Sanchez, SS, Olga SS, and others who contributed to this work, they, and a lot of my collaborators here at Princeton have said, I've always said that I imagined this convening as a, in the style of a family reunion. You know, when we come together to honor a particular thread of heritage, a particular thread of tradition, because we have a connection to one of our many surnames and we're gathering around that right there. And when we go to a family gathering, one of the things that, and especially a family reunion, one of the great gifts is we get to meet people we didn't know we were connected to. But the day is the day of saying, this is your family reunion. We are connected to, even if you never met them, even if you don't have a lot of common, there's something that brought you here together. And what I'd like us to approach this day today as we get to know each other, as we encounter each other in different ways, is understanding that we will all rock here because of some meaningful connection to Maria Eri Fornes. Some connection in our practice and ourselves that drew to Fornes is what also drew us to this, to this gathering here today. And so as you meet people, know that we already have something in common that we care about Maria Eri Fornes and her legacy. And so today in the spirit of family reunion and in the spirit of the original definition of symposium where it's not a bunch of people sitting on a panel talking about stuff, but you're having serious conversation, you have performance, you have food, you have gathering, you have dancing, perhaps. This idea is let's have a family reunion and let's get to know each other and let's get to see who's in the mix and who's in the game to elevate and to celebrate and amplify the legacy of Maria Eri Fornes. So thanks again for being here. It's an honor and a privilege to welcome you to this building and to this space and to Princeton. And with that I'd like to welcome to the stage Olga, who will be shepherding us forward. It's a bit of a surprise. Please have a seat everybody. Look at comfortable. It's family. Every muffin. Here a little more. There's also a lot. Today, Maria Fornes Institutes of symposium is a manifestation of an intention, of an idea that was spoken, that was conceived and spoken aloud by Lisa Portres and Lou Moreno back in 2013 in Boston. To which Brian Herrera committed himself with Ben Garcia Romero, Vidalia Pumus, Georgina Escobar and Abigail Vega has led the way from taking this idea to this manifestation, this presence, all of us here together and it's quite astonishing and incredibly grateful. Briefly, I just want to acknowledge that today we are embracing the past what La Maestra Fornes has contributed to our art, to our lives. We're asking also what her work and her influence means for the future but perhaps most importantly and in the spirit of La Maestra and echoing perhaps what Brian was saying as well about being here is about embracing the present, this moment, this encounter with each other. The creative impulse of the moment we have these wonderful workshops and capacitos, these conversations, these opportunities to be here and not question, not judge simply allow what emerges to be save judgment for another day. I imagine most of you have looked at today's remarkable offerings and selected like to spend your time just briefly this is the path for today we have after this morning session at 11.15 either a capacito or a performance or a workshop then we have lunch at 1 o'clock then another session again a capacito workshop performance or film and then we'll all join back here again at 4 o'clock and bring what bubbled up what emerged to share with each other again as one large family please be sure to visit the living legacy space on the second floor there are people like Lou, like Lisa who are such a part of this but could not be here in person today but who have sent along their thoughts their testimonios, their recollections their what inspired them about working with la maestra and that's on the second floor please share that space and please contribute to that space please leave your recollections, your thoughts in some kind of written or drawn or some way engage in that that's part of the recollection that's part of the moving forward the living legacy installation on the second floor when you go up it's that way to the right of the other board for the moment now we're going to do what we've been calling a wellness check-in it's okay we're not going to but we are okay we'll let us know about la maestra Brian Herrera will report on the current and ongoing productions of her work and Garcia Romero will report on some of the pedagogical initiatives that are at play and Gwendolyn Allger will let us know about recent and current scholarship first I'd like to welcome Linalia 6pm the last time I saw Irene was Monday this past Monday I spent time with her and I wrote a poem for her I imagined putting a pen in her hand only in my mind's eye so she has late stage dementia at Alzheimer's and she's mostly blind and pretty much deaf but if you put some earphones on her and some really loud music sometimes she'll move and she's still got the rhythm in her so she's still with us and they're still her soldiers so it'd be great if the guys all went and sell her because it's good to spend time holding her and brushing her just to stay connected to the soul that is still there that's my check thank you I am here to talk about one of the traditions in our wellness check it's just part of the goal of the Fortness Institute is to try to keep track of where the action is happening and what's going on with Fortness's work in a variety of different ways one of those ways is production and to end Garcia Romero's research assistant we have a list we know that there were 54 productions 7 Fortness plays since 2015 so most of those there's a handful of productions Conduct of Life of the Danube of Salita of Springtime but most of those productions about 20 or so each have been as mud and of Bethel and her friends most of those productions I would say about 50 I don't have the exact count but somewhere around 50 of the 54 have been staged by educational institutions so as an educator and as theater educators we have a unique space on a university campus simultaneously being an academic unit and a production organization one of the it's hard enough to see that we in the academy have taken that on but I do think we've also I can say that they're through the Chisley circuit the Gossett circuit there's many stories that can be circulated around the rooms today of major theaters being inclined to consider producing IRE and getting close and falling in love with Conduct or any of the works and then saying yeah but is there another there's kind of a sort of a reluctance to take the leap into major scale productions with the exception of signatures production of Down Drowning a few years ago there haven't been a major production performances in a sort of the top the highest profile of regional theaters so I think there's work to be done among productions and I do think that it's great that the academy is keeping the active life of organizers alive in the world of students 54 and 3 years is great but could be much, much better and so now I turn it over to Gwendolyn or Ann Gwendolyn or Ann Gwendolyn or Ann so they come at the same time and then they look to get out between and I went to travel together so good morning I'm Gwendolyn Halper I don't think I know all of you but I look forward to meeting many of you today who I don't already know I'm director of the theater studies program at NYU and I will be the person who's curating coordinating and have the key to the event tomorrow which hopefully many of you will be joining us for that so I've been charged as the boring scholar in the room to talk about scholarship now I wanted to say as a preface that what I think is really great about the Latinx theater commons model is that you are bringing together artists and scholars in a very robust way I would say personally that much of my work throughout my career has been about that connection about bringing artists and scholars together and what I wanted to do today was to highlight some recent work on EDNA but all of the scholars I've been working on for right now myself included a very rare talk about EDNA we need to actually challenge the way that scholarship is produced and I think that the examples that I want to share with you all do that so the first thing I want to call to your attention as I feel like a professor here who read this book is Scott Cummings book Scott is here so he's been waiting right there so you can go back and read Scott wrote a very very important book called by the 1884 men and I find that Scott's book is the go-to encyclopedic source if you need to know anything about any production at any play that EDNA ever wrote and staged so it's a super useful book I just use it as a guide it has a great appendix in the back of all the production histories and when that was produced I think one thing that was really important about that contribution was that up until 2012 when Scott published this there was very much scholarship done on her later work and I think that Scott really was committed to creating a very interesting and engaged analysis of the later work because we all know that everybody like Brian says they produce love they produce conduct, they produce springtime but people don't always look so much at the later work so if you're interested in learning more about the later work let's play as you could stage in your institutions from her later canon that's a really good resource to have something else I wanted to point out was Ian Garcia Romero's book and it's right here and published at the Fornes frame contemporary Latina playwrights in the legacy of Maria EDNA Fornes in 2016 2016 2016