The Rest I Make Up: a film collaboration about art, aging, and friendship

Fornes is often referred to as American theater’s “Mother Avant-Garde.” When she gradually stops writing due to dementia, an unexpected friendship with filmmaker Michelle Memran reignites her spontaneous creative spirit and triggers a collaboration that picks up where the pen left off. Theater luminaries such as Edward Albee, Ellen Stewart, Lanford Wilson, and others weigh in on Fornes’s important contributions. The duo travels from New York to Havana, Miami to Seattle, exploring the playwright’s remembered past and their shared present. What began as an accidental collaboration becomes a story of love, creativity, and connection that persists even in the face of forgetting.

A conversation after the show will include the filmmaker, Michelle Memran, producer Katie Pearl, Brown University Theatre Arts Professor Patricia Ybarra, and Lori Daiello, PharmD, BCPP, assistant professor of neurology at The Warren Alpert Medical School and assistant professor of Health Services, Policy & Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health.

Recently released in October, 2018, The film has already won numerous awards including the Audience Award for Best Documentary,  at the Frameline Film Festival; the AARP Silver Image Award; Reeling: Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, Jury Award for Best Documentary; and Runner-Up Audience Award for Best Documentary at the OUTshine Film Festival..