Gwendolyn Alker considers particular aspects of Fornés’s work – including the way she asked her students to do yoga before writing, her various exercises developed to bypass the frontal cortex, and her prescient connections to the animal world – to argue for a “Fornésian ecology” and to evince its lessons for our collective futures on a damaged planet. Alker argues that the characters in Mud (alongside many of Fornés’s plays) must be understood through their relationship with each other and with their environment. Alker submits that Fornesian world-making prompts us to see the environment within the world of her plays, to be aware that we are outside that world and will never fully understand it, just as we cannot ever fully understand the animals that we encounter, even as Fornés’s plays challenge us to cultivate empathy for animals, understand their relevance, and believe in their truths, despite their otherness from ourselves.