Metaphorical Mirrors and Subverting Selves in Adrienne Kennedy’s One-Act Plays

• Authors: Gabriella Tóth
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Beginning her career in the 1960s, Adrienne Kennedy was one of the most influential writers of the period. Her plays subverted both Western and African American theatre. Although like her contemporaries she reacted to the political events of the period, in contrast with them she presented racial issues in a non-realistic mode. Her plays exemplify the re-theatricalisation of the African American stage.

Keywords

EN

African American drama; Feminist theatrical aesthetics

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Gender Studies
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 270-285

Dates

published

2012-12-01

online

2013-02-08

Contributors

author

Gabriella Tóth

• University of Szeged, 6722, Egyetem u. 2, Szeged, Hungary

References

• Barnett, C. 1997. ‘A Prison of Object Relations: Adrienne Kennedy’s Funny house of a Negro’ in Modern Drama 40. 3 Fall, Bollobás, E. 2010. ‘They Aren’t, Until I Call Them’: Performing the Subject in American literature. Frankfurt. Main: Peter Lang.
• Boucher, G. 2006. ‘Fractured Identity and Agency and the Plays of Adrienne Kennedy’ in Feminist Review - Postcolonial Theatres. [Online]. Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30232741 [2011, January 6]
• Douglas, S. J. 1995. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Three Rivers Press Curb, R. K. 1980. ‘Fragmented Selves in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funny house of a Negro and The Owl Answers’ in Theatre Journal [Online]. Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3207111 . [2011, January 6]
• Geis, D. R. 1992. ‘A Spectator Watching My Life: Adrienne Kennedy’s A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White’ in P. K. Bryant-Jackson and L. More Overbeck (eds). Intersecting Boundaries: The Theatre of Adrienne Kennedy Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press.
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• ---. 2001. The Owl Answers in W. Sollors (ed.). The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press,
• ---. 2001. Lesson in Dead Language in W. Sollors (ed.). The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press.
• Bell Hooks. 1994. ‘Introduction’ in S. Mahone (ed). Moon Marked and Touched by Sun:Plays by African-American Women. New York. Theatre Communications Group.
• Patsalidis, S. 1995. ‘Adrienne Kennedy’s heterotopias and the (Im)possibilities of the (Black) Female Self ‘ in M. Maufort (ed.). Staging Difference Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.
• Schrooder, P. R. 1995. ‘American Drama, Feminist Discourse, and Dramatic Form: A Defense of Critical Pluralism’ in K. Laughlin and C. Schuler (eds.). Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. London: Associate University Press.
• Williams, A. D. 1989. ‘Introduction’ in D. A. Williams (ed.). Contemporary African American FemalePlaywrights: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10320-012-0045-2