The Conduct of Life, one of María Irene Fornés’ most critically acclaimed plays, is a powerful and disturbing work that brings together politics, gender, and sexuality to show how forms of national and domestic violence often exist in direct relationship to one another. It’s the tale of a military officer in a fascist regime in Latin America who kidnaps a young girl who increasingly cannot separate the boundaries of his military and private space. Fornes’ pointed dialogue examines the pace by which we, as a society, become desensitized to violence.