About the Playwright
Adrienne Kennedy, a Black playwright, was born on [September 13] in 1931.
She was born Adrienne Lita Hawkins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Etta Hawkins, was a teacher, and her father, Cornell Wallace Hawkins, was a social worker. Hawkins was a very gifted child, learning to read at the age of three. When she was four years old, her family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Because they moved into an integrated neighborhood, her life became slightly rigid. In order to overcome this obstacle, Kennedy developed a theatrical inner life, watching the world around her, especially her family, as if they were in a play. Hawkins used these images as mixtures of the characters in her plays.
Two weeks after she graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in elementary education, she married Joseph C. Kennedy. After six months of marriage, Joseph was sent to Korea, so Kennedy moved in with her parents. When Joseph returned from Korea, they moved to New York. While he furthered his education at Columbia Teacher's College, she pursued her interest in writing through a creative writing class at Columbia University and at the American Theater Wing. In 1961, when the family moved to Africa when she was 29, she started the play Funnyhouse of the Negro. She finished this play in Italy where her family was forced to move due to a difficult pregnancy with her second son.
This Obie Award winning play would go on to launch her career as a playwright. Kennedy's unique style of writing has greatly influenced different aspects of the theater. She created her own dramatic vision in which she used various theatrical devices such as masks, nontraditional music, characters being played by more that one actor, and the transformation of one character into another. Her writing is unique and has been described as vivid and imaginative. The reader or actor can sense that Kennedy enjoys what she is doing. Kennedy has the ability to entwine many different influences into her works; because of this, her writings reflect a synthesis of artistry and craft.
In 1962, she joined Edward Albee's Playwrights' Workshop beginning over a 30-year career in theater. Kennedy has been a lecturer at Yale and the University of California at Berkeley, and has taught playwriting at Princeton and Brown. She has received Guggenheim Fellowships, NEA, and Rockefeller Foundation Grants. In 1992, the mayor of Cleveland declared March 7 to be Adrienne Kennedy Day. Also in 1992, the Great Lakes Theatre Company organized a month-long celebration of her work.
- Biography from African American Registry
Notable Works
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Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964)
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The Owl Answers (1965)
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A Rat's Mass (1967)
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The Ohio State Murders (1992)
Hearing From Adrienne Kennedy Herself
The following are a couple of interviews and videos of Adrienne Kennedy uploaded to YouTube by her grandson, Canaan Kennedy.
Joe Kennedy (her husband)
With his deal with the Washington-based company, his life was devoted to enhancing the lifestyle for individuals in Africa with farming and also food safety and security, building of roadways as well as wells, facility of institutions and also proficiency programs, as well as enhancement in healthcare in several of the neediest nations in Africa.
[...] Dr. Joseph C. Kennedy, founder and also long time supervisor of International Growth and also vice head of state of Africare, passed away December 7, 2019 at age 93 from breathing failing.
- Biography from Africare Website
Joe Kennedy's dedication to helping the underprivileged in Africa draws parallels to Sarah's Father, Wally's, sense of duty to "save the race" in Africa as a Jesus figure. (see more about the character here)