Adrienne Kennedy facts for kids

Adrienne Kennedy (born September 13, 1931) is an American playwright. She writes plays for the theater. She is famous for her play Funnyhouse of a Negro. This play first showed in 1964 and won an Obie Award. She also won a special lifetime Obie Award for her work. In 2018, she joined the Theater Hall of Fame.

In 2022, Adrienne Kennedy received the Gold Medal for Drama. This award is given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It is given only every six years. Only 16 people, including famous writer Eugene O'Neill, have received it.

Kennedy has been a big part of American theater since the early 1960s. She has inspired many other playwrights. Her plays are often dream-like and poetic. They explore how racism affects people's lives. Her work often looks at themes of race, family, and violence in America. Many of her plays are based on her own life experiences.

Kennedy is known for using surrealism in her plays. This means her plays are often like dreams. They don't always have a clear story. Instead, they use symbols and figures from history or myths. This helps her show the African-American experience.

In 1969, a critic named Clive Barnes wrote about her work. He said that while other Black playwrights focused on real-life stories, Miss Kennedy created "a dramatic fabric of poetry." Another critic, Michael Feingold, wrote in 1995 that Adrienne Kennedy was "probably the boldest artist now writing for the theater." Besides plays, Kennedy has also written poetry and essays.

Life and Career

Adrienne Lita Hawkins was born on September 13, 1931. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Etta Hawkins, was a teacher. Her father, Cornell Wallace Hawkins, was a social worker. She spent most of her childhood in Cleveland, Ohio. She went to public schools there. She grew up in a neighborhood where different groups of people lived together. She did not experience much racism until she went to college.

As a child, she loved to read books. She enjoyed stories like Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden. She spent more time reading than playing with other children. She admired actors like Orson Welles. In her teenage years, she started to focus on theater. She saw a play called The Glass Menagerie. This play made her want to write her own plays.

Her interest in playwriting continued when she started at Ohio State University in 1949. She earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1953. She then studied at Columbia University from 1954 to 1956. She married Joseph Kennedy on May 15, 1953. They had two children, Joseph Jr. and Adam P. Kennedy. They divorced in 1966.

Her first play to be shown was Funnyhouse of a Negro. She wrote this one-act play in 1960. That year, she visited Ghana for a few months. Her husband had a special grant for research there. The play explores the challenges faced by a Black woman. It draws on Kennedy's African and European background.

Other plays were also produced. A Rat's Mass was shown at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. This happened several times in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sun: A Poem for Malcolm X Inspired By His Death and A Beast Story were also produced there in 1974.

Kennedy was a founding member of the Women's Theatre Council in 1971. She was also on the board of directors for PEN from 1976 to 1977. She represented the International Theatre Institute in Budapest, Hungary, in 1978.

Kennedy has taught at many universities. These include Yale University, Princeton University, Brown University, University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Stanford University, New York University, and University of California, Davis.

Her memoir, People Who Led to My Plays, was first published in 1987. A memoir is a book about a person's life. It was reissued in 2016.

By 2018, Kennedy had written many plays. She also wrote several autobiographies, a novella, and a short story. She used the name Adrienne Cornell for her short story "Because of the King of France." This story was published in 1963. Much of Kennedy's writing is based on her own experiences.

In 2022, Kennedy's 1992 play Ohio State Murders opened on Broadway. This was her first play on Broadway. It starred Audra McDonald and was directed by Kenny Leon. The play ran from December 8, 2022, to January 15, 2023. Kennedy hoped audiences would see a "very articulate, thoughtful American Black woman" speaking. The play received good reviews. However, it closed early due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Audra McDonald was nominated for a Tony Award for her role.

The Alexander Plays (1992)

Suzanne Alexander is a character who appears in several of Kennedy's plays. She Talks to Beethoven, Ohio State Murders, The Film Club, and The Dramatic Circle are known as the Alexander Plays. They were published together in 1992. A letter from Suzanne Alexander, "Letter to My Students on My Sixty-First Birthday by Suzanne Alexander," was also published that year.

These plays are less dream-like than some of Kennedy's earlier works. But they still don't follow a simple, straight story. The plays show how Suzanne turns her memories into meaning.

Awards and Honors

Adrienne Kennedy has won many awards for her plays.

• She won a Stanley Drama Award in 1963.
• She received two Village Voice Obie Awards. One was for "Distinguished Play" in 1964 for Funnyhouse of a Negro. The other was for "Best New American Play" in 1996. This was for June and Jean in Concert and Sleep Deprivation Chamber.
• In 2008, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Obie Awards.

Other important awards and honors include:

• A Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing in 1967.
• Rockefeller Foundation grants in 1967 and 1970.
• A fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1972.
• The Creative Artists Public Service grant in 1974.
• The 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
• The Pierre Lecomte du Noüy Award.
• The Third Annual Manhattan Borough President's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1988.
• The American Book Award in 1990.
• The Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers' Award in 1994.
• An American Academy of Arts and Letters award in Literature in 1994.

In July 1995, Kennedy became the playwright in residence for the Signature Theatre Company in New York City. This meant she worked closely with the theater for a season.

In 2003, her college, Ohio State University, gave her an honorary Doctorate of Literature.

In 2006, she received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award. This award recognized her as a Master American Dramatist.

In November 2020, the Round House Theatre and the McCarter Theatre Center launched a special online festival. It was called The Work of Adrienne Kennedy: Inspiration and Influence. It showed filmed readings of her plays and was highly praised.

In 2021, the Dramatists Guild of America gave Kennedy their Lifetime Achievement Award. This award honors a writer's long and important work in theater. The president of the Guild, Amanda Green, said Kennedy has inspired many young writers. She did this by staying true to her unique voice.

In 2022, Kennedy received the Gold Medal for Drama.

In 2023, the New York Drama Critics Circle gave Kennedy a Special Citation. Her book Collected Plays & Other Writings was published in the famous Library of America series. This happened just before her ninety-second birthday.

Works

Plays

• Funnyhouse of a Negro, 1964
• The Owl Answers, 1965
• A Rat's Mass, 1967
• The Lennon Play: In His Own Write, 1967
• A Beast's Story, 1969
• Boats, 1969
• Sun: A Play for Malcolm X Inspired by His Murder, 1968
• A Lesson in Dead Language, 1968
• Electra and Orestes, 1980
• An Evening with Dead Essex, 1972
• A Movie Star Has To Star in Black and White, 1976
• A Lancashire Lad (children's musical), 1980
• Black Children's Day (children's play), 1980
• Diary of Lights ("A Musical Without Songs"), 1987
• She Talks to Beethoven, 1989
• The Ohio State Murders, 1992
• The Film Club, 1992
• The Dramatic Circle, 1992
• Motherhood 2000, 1994
• June and Jean in Concert, 1995
• Sleep Deprivation Chamber (with son Adam P. Kennedy), 1996
• Mom, How Did You Meet the Beatles? (with Adam P. Kennedy), 2008
• He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, 2018

Other works

• "Because of the King of France" (short story), 1960
• People Who Led to My Plays (memoir), 1987
• Deadly Triplets (novella), 1990
• "Letter to My Students on My Sixty-First Birthday by Suzanne Alexander" (essay), 1992
• "Secret Paragraphs about My Brother" (essay), 1996
• "A Letter to Flowers" (essay), 1998
• "Sisters Etta and Ella (excerpt from a narrative)", 1999
• "Grendel Grendel's Mother" (essay), 1999
• "Forget" (poem), 2016

Collected editions

• The Alexander Plays, 1992
• Collected Plays & Other Writings, 2023