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Adrienne Kennedy Reader
Introduction by Werner Sollors
Adrienne Kennedy has been a force in American theatre since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her hauntingly fragmentary lyrical dramas. Exploring the violence racism visits upon peopleOCOs lives, KennedyOCOs plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation. Frequently produced, read, and taught, they continue to hold a significant place among the most exciting dramas of the past fifty years.
This first comprehensive collection of her most important works traces the development of KennedyOCOs unique theatrical oeuvre from her Obie-winning Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) through significant later works such as A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (1976), Ohio State Murders (1992), and June and Jean in Concert, for which she won an Obie in 1996. The entire contents of KennedyOCOs groundbreaking collections In One Act and The Alexander Plays are included, as is her earliest work Because of the King of France and the play An Evening with Dead Essex (1972). More recent prose writings Secret Paragraphs about My Brother, A Letter to Flowers, and Sisters Etta and Ella are fascinating refractions of the themes and motifs of her dramatic works, even while they explore new material on teaching and writing. An introduction by Werner Sollors provides a valuable overview of KennedyOCOs career and the trajectory of her literary development.
Adrienne Kennedy (b. 1931) is a three-time Obie-award winning playwright whose works have been widely performed and anthologized. Among her many honors are the American Academy of Arts and Letters award and the Guggenheim fellowship. In 1995-6, the Signature Theatre Company dedicated its entire season to presenting her work. She has been commissioned to write works for the Public Theater, Jerome Robbins, the Royal Court Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, and Juilliard, and she has been a visiting professor at Yale, Princeton, Brown, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard. She lives in New York City.
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Adrienne Kennedy has been a force in American theatre since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her hauntingly fragmentary lyrical dramas. Exploring the violence racism visits upon peopleOCOs lives, KennedyOCOs plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation. Frequently produced, read, and taught, they continue to hold a significant place among the most exciting dramas of the past fifty years.
This first comprehensive collection of her most important works traces the development of KennedyOCOs unique theatrical oeuvre from her Obie-winning Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) through significant later works such as A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (1976), Ohio State Murders (1992), and June and Jean in Concert, for which she won an Obie in 1996. The entire contents of KennedyOCOs groundbreaking collections In One Act and The Alexander Plays are included, as is her earliest work Because of the King of France and the play An Evening with Dead Essex (1972). More recent prose writings Secret Paragraphs about My Brother, A Letter to Flowers, and Sisters Etta and Ella are fascinating refractions of the themes and motifs of her dramatic works, even while they explore new material on teaching and writing. An introduction by Werner Sollors provides a valuable overview of KennedyOCOs career and the trajectory of her literary development.
Adrienne Kennedy (b. 1931) is a three-time Obie-award winning playwright whose works have been widely performed and anthologized. Among her many honors are the American Academy of Arts and Letters award and the Guggenheim fellowship. In 1995-6, the Signature Theatre Company dedicated its entire season to presenting her work. She has been commissioned to write works for the Public Theater, Jerome Robbins, the Royal Court Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, and Juilliard, and she has been a visiting professor at Yale, Princeton, Brown, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard. She lives in New York City.
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328 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 22, 2018
A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (1976)
To read A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White is one kind of experience, but to see it in creative design hands is entirely another. Rendering film scenes in black and white (that is, with performers, costumes, and sets in black, grey, and white tones) intercut with real life color scenes not only is visually stunning but also draws a stark contrast between the life of Clara and white society. If you are fortunate enough to live in a university town or city with a strong and adventurous performing arts program, you might one day get to see the play staged.
Clara, a young black woman, wants to be a writer and uses writing to express herself. She has no support for her ambition to be a writer, not from her family or her on-and-off again husband. Additionally, being a black woman, she has little to no identity, that is apart from the very restrictive role framed for her by her family and white society. She really is, like a symbol in the play, a bird wishing to be free but trapped in a cage. In this play, she appears to be writing as we watch, telling her story, her fears during pregnancy, her relationship with her husband, the trials of her family, as well as the pressure they exert on her, and her caged status as black and female in mid 20th century America.
Clara relates her experiences and feelings in a nonlinear and often repetitive style. Further, for the most part, she talks through film stars in a number of specific films and scenes within those films. We have the sense that talking through the white actors in the scenes is the only way Clara can have her words heard. Moreover, while these scenes feature famous male and female actors (Bette Davis and Paul Henreid, Now Voyager; Jean Peters and Marlon Brando, Viva Zapata!; and Shelley Winters and Montgomery Clift, A Place in the Sun), only the females speak. It’s Clara telling her story, true, but it is also a reversal of gender roles with women speaking their truth without interference from men.
If you do live near a university with a good performing arts, you may one day have the opportunity to see the play staged. Should you have the chance, be sure to take it. In the meantime, you can read the play, along with her others works, in this reader.
To read A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White is one kind of experience, but to see it in creative design hands is entirely another. Rendering film scenes in black and white (that is, with performers, costumes, and sets in black, grey, and white tones) intercut with real life color scenes not only is visually stunning but also draws a stark contrast between the life of Clara and white society. If you are fortunate enough to live in a university town or city with a strong and adventurous performing arts program, you might one day get to see the play staged.
Clara, a young black woman, wants to be a writer and uses writing to express herself. She has no support for her ambition to be a writer, not from her family or her on-and-off again husband. Additionally, being a black woman, she has little to no identity, that is apart from the very restrictive role framed for her by her family and white society. She really is, like a symbol in the play, a bird wishing to be free but trapped in a cage. In this play, she appears to be writing as we watch, telling her story, her fears during pregnancy, her relationship with her husband, the trials of her family, as well as the pressure they exert on her, and her caged status as black and female in mid 20th century America.
Clara relates her experiences and feelings in a nonlinear and often repetitive style. Further, for the most part, she talks through film stars in a number of specific films and scenes within those films. We have the sense that talking through the white actors in the scenes is the only way Clara can have her words heard. Moreover, while these scenes feature famous male and female actors (Bette Davis and Paul Henreid, Now Voyager; Jean Peters and Marlon Brando, Viva Zapata!; and Shelley Winters and Montgomery Clift, A Place in the Sun), only the females speak. It’s Clara telling her story, true, but it is also a reversal of gender roles with women speaking their truth without interference from men.
If you do live near a university with a good performing arts, you may one day have the opportunity to see the play staged. Should you have the chance, be sure to take it. In the meantime, you can read the play, along with her others works, in this reader.
January 30, 2012
There's nowhere to start when talking about Kennedy, but there is some good stuff here about fractured identity and what it feels like to grow up black in America. I thought Ohio State Murders was exceptionally good, and it is very accessible compared to some of the more surrealist one acts.
September 27, 2013
Haunting, surreal, and complex are the words that come to mind. Kennedy takes on issues of race, gender, and identity with a truly unique voice. The plays move across time and space, disorienting and challenging the reader.
March 19, 2008
This chick is a tripper! Awesomely weird poetic autobiographical experimental po-mo plays!
April 24, 2013
A really interesting collection from a writer I'm surprised isn't better-known. I really loved her short stories and prose.
May 15, 2020
Returns again and again to examine her own autobiographical themes as if turning an object around and around in different lights and settings. Similarly, objectifies other works and turns them around and around in the light of her autobiographical themes. Haunting and hypnotic.
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December 10, 2025in awe, stunned, so happy i savored !
December 8, 2008
As exciting and perplexing as a multilingual owl pellet in a candy-striped tuxedo tap dancing on the tip of your nose.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews