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Background Information Dr. Kheal is a one act play written by María Irene Fornés in 1968, created rather early in her playwriting career. The play had simultaneous productions in 1968, one at the Village Gate Theater, and one at the New Dramatists Workshop. Dr. Kheal is staged to this day but not very often, and is mostly paired with other short plays by María Irene Fornés. Contradictions and the theme of opposites are prevent thought the short play. Dr. Kheal is a bit out of normal rules of theater, there is only one person in this entire play.

Plot Dr. Kheal enters the stage, and he speaks to the audience like a classroom. He goes as far as verbally and physically responding to imaginary students in the empty seats on stage. He seems to go into debate with himself numerous times, and end saying “There! That is what it is all about. Man is a rational animal.” which seems to contradict everything he has said and the way he said it. While speaking alone on stage, he draws several things on the blackboard behind him with the intention of aiding his argument. He draws the following:

Character and his mannerisms Dr. Kheal – a professor; in the stage direction, if the actor playing Dr. Kheal is not small, all the furniture around him is to be large to give the illusion that the actor is small; twice he “darts his tongue like a satyr”.

Set The set is comprised, at minimum, of a blackboard with chalk, a small table with a jug of water and two glasses on it, and various vacant chairs.

Themes In this play opposites, like concrete and abstract, are the most reoccurring theme. Dr. Kheal puts a physical box against poetry, stating that poetry is a waste of time because it is not concrete.

Equilibrium, will, and animalistic movements and phrases also come into play. Dr. Kheal says “Balance can save your life. Imbalance can destroy it.”

What Other People Said About Dr. Kheal “Under Gisela Cardenas's direction, Dr. Kheal's (Rocco Sisto) aggressive coaxing, brittle self-effacement, and latent tenderness humanized the intellectual content of the work. The production revealed that Dr. Kheal, like Fornés herself, is philosophical, but does not take himself too seriously.”