Adrienne Kennedy

Adrienne Kennedy
BornAdrienne Lita Hawkins
(1931-09-13) September 13, 1931 (age 92)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
OccupationPlaywright, professor, poet
EducationOhio State University (BA)
Columbia University
Literary movementBlack Arts Movement
Notable worksFunnyhouse of a Negro (1964); Ohio State Murders (1992)
Notable awardsAmerican Book Award; Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers' Award; Obie Awards; Dramatists Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award
Spouse
Joseph Kennedy
​
​
(m. 1953; div. 1966)​
Children2

Adrienne Kennedy (born September 13, 1931) is an American playwright.[1] She is best known for Funnyhouse of a Negro, which premiered in 1964 and won an Obie Award.[2] She won a lifetime Obie as well. In 2018 she was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

In 2022, Kennedy received the Gold Medal for Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters;[3] given every six years, it has been awarded to only 16 people, including Eugene O'Neill.[4]

Kennedy has been contributing to American theater since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her haunting, fragmentary lyrical dramas. Exploring the violence racism brings to people's lives, Kennedy's plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation. Much of her work explores issues of race, kinship, and violence in American society, and many of her plays are "autobiographically inspired."[5]

Kennedy is noted for the use of surrealism in her plays, which are often plotless and symbolic, drawing on mythical, historical, and imaginary figures to depict and explore the African-American experience.[6]

In 1969, The New York Times critic Clive Barnes wrote: "While almost every black playwright in the country is fundamentally concerned with realism—LeRoi Jones and Ed Bullins at times have something different going but even their symbolism is straightforward stuff—Miss Kennedy is weaving some kind of dramatic fabric of poetry."[7] In 1995, critic Michael Feingold of the Village Voice wrote that, "with Samuel Beckett gone, Adrienne Kennedy is probably the boldest artist now writing for the theater."[8] Kennedy has also written in other genres, including poetry and essays.

  1. ^ Peterson, Jane T., and Suzanne Bennett. "Adrienne Kennedy". Women Playwrights of Diversity. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. 201–205.
  2. ^ Harry Ransom Center. "Biographical sketch". Adrienne Kennedy: An Inventory of Her Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. University of Texas at Austin.
  3. ^ "Adrienne Kennedy among winners of arts academy prizes". ny1.com. Associated Press. March 15, 2022. Retrieved October 19, 2022.
  4. ^ "Awards". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Retrieved October 19, 2022.
  5. ^ Sollors, Werner. "Introduction", The Adrienne Kennedy Reader, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001, p. vii. ("An introduction to the playwright's work", A.R.T.)
  6. ^ Wilkerson, Margaret B. "Adrienne Kennedy", in Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris (eds), Afro-American Writers after 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers. Dictionary of Literary Biography vol. 38. Detroit: Gale, 1985, p. 163.
  7. ^ Barnes, Clive (November 1, 1969). "'A Rat's Mass' Weaves Drama of Poetic Fabric". The New York Times. p. 39.
  8. ^ Feingold, Michael. "Blaxpressionism." Village Voice, October 3, 1995, p. 93.