Adrienne Kennedy is an African-American playwright and was a key figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. She is best known for her first major play Funnyhouse of a Negro. Many of Kennedy's plays explore issues of race, kinship, and violence in American society, and many of her works are "autobiographically inspired." In 1995, critic Michael Feingold of the Village Voice declared that "with Beckett gone, Adrienne Kennedy is probably the boldest artist now writing for the theater."
Kennedy is noted for the use of surrealism in her plays. Her plays are often plotless and symbolic, drawing on mythical, historical and imaginary figures to depict and explore the American experience. New York Times critic Clive Barnes noted that "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."
Read more about Adrienne Kennedy: Biography, Awards and Honors, The Alexander Plays
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“To be revolutionary is to be original, to know where we came from, to validate what is ours and help it to flourish, the best of what is ours, of our beginnings, our principles, and to leave behind what no longer serves us.”
—Ines Hernandez, U.S. Chicana political activist. As quoted in What Is Found There, ch. 28, by Adrienne Rich (1993)
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—Bible: Hebrew Proverbs 29:18.
President John F. Kennedy quoted this passage on the eve of his assassination in Dallas, Texas. Quoted in Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy, epilogue (1965)