After a lifetime of creating groundbreaking theater, Adrienne Kennedy finally made her Broadway debut.
a collaboration with her son Adam Kennedy, the action usually takes place in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion. At times, Kennedy’s characters are bolstered through references to icons from literature and music as imagined places become real. In some of her plays, Kennedy brings these figures to life onstage.
Kennedy’s plays embrace abstract characters, perhaps because they often engage abstract concepts, such as racial identity. The works are as much focused on ideas as they are on action. Like other playwrights who used abstract expression to amplify the emotional weight of daily injustices—Ibsen, Chekhov, Beckett, and Fornes—Kennedy stands as one of the greatest practitioners of abstract drama, ever.
But in the post-Obama years—which have brought both recognition of these dynamics and a crescendo of recognition and support for Black literature, drama, television, and film—Kennedy still has not been given the kind of acknowledgment she deserves. Prompted by this frustration, years ago, I decided in my own short fiction to testify to her influence. As an homage, I wrote Kennedy into a story about my struggles as a writer—Kennedy walking into my scene just as Shelley Winters walked into hers.
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