Set in Ghana, Suzanne waits in her room listening to radio broadcasts about her husband who has mysteriously disappeared while she attempts to write about and communicate with composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Her world is infiltrated by snatches of Ghanaian string music, the revolutionary words of Frantz Fanon and strains of Beethoven's Fidelio. Suzanne, recovering from an unspecified illness hovers in displaced time and space fluctuating between Vienna, Austria, in 1803, and Accra, Ghana, in 1961.
Introduction by Werner Sollors Adrienne Kennedy has been a force in American theatre since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her hauntingly fragmentary lyrical dramas. Exploring the violence racism visits upon people's lives, Kennedy's plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation. Frequently produced, read, and taught, they continue to hold a significant place among the most exciting dramas of the past fifty years. This first comprehensive collection of her most important works traces the development of Kennedy's unique theatrical oeuvre from her Obie-winning Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) through significant later works such as A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (1976), Ohio State Murders (1992), and June and Jean in Concert, for which she won an Obie in 1996. The entire contents of Kennedy's groundbreaking collections In One Act and The Alexander Plays are included, as is her earliest work "Because of the King of France" and the play An Evening with Dead Essex (1972). More recent prose writings "Secret Paragraphs about My Brother," "A Letter to Flowers," and "Sisters Etta and Ella" are fascinating refractions of the themes and motifs of her dramatic works, even while they explore new material on teaching and writing. An introduction by Werner Sollors provides a valuable overview of Kennedy's career and the trajectory of her literary development. Adrienne Kennedy (b. 1931) is a three-time Obie-award winning playwright whose works have been widely performed and anthologized. Among her many honors are the American Academy of Arts and Letters award and the Guggenheim fellowship. In 1995-6, the Signature Theatre Company dedicated its entire season to presenting her work. She has been commissioned to write works for the Public Theater, Jerome Robbins, the Royal Court Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, and Juilliard, and she has been a visiting professor at Yale, Princeton, Brown, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard. She lives in New York City.
This Guide includes the primary and secondary works and summaries of plays of 15 prominent African American women playwrights including Lorraine Hansberry, Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy, Alice Childress, Zora Neale Hurston, Georgia Douglas Johnson. During the last 10 to 15 years, critical consideration of contemporary as well as earlier black women playwrights has blossomed. Plays by black women are increasingly anthologized and two recently published anthologies devote themselves solely to black women dramatists. In light of the growing interest in scholarship concerning African American women playwrights, researchers and librarians need a bibliographical source that brings together the profiles interviews, critical material and primary sources of black female playwrights. This guide will provide a bibliographical essay reviewing the scholarship of black women playwrights as well as for each playwright: a biography, summaries of each play detailed annotations of secondary material, and list of primary sources.
In Unmaking Mimesis Elin Diamond interrogates the concept of mimesis in relation to feminism, theatre and performance. She combines psychoanalytic, semiotic and materialist strategies with readings of selected plays by writers as diverse as Ibsen, Brecht, Aphra Behn, Caryl Churchill and Peggy Shaw. Through a series of provocative readings of theatre, theory and feminist performance she demonstrates the continuing force of feminism and mimesis in critical thinking today. Unmaking Mimesis will interest theatre scholars and performance and cultural theorists, for all of whom issues of text, representation and embodiment are of compelling concern.
This book features African American women playwrights from 1875 to 2000, with an emphasis on the late nineteenth century, a period rarely treated in regard to women's drama. Highlighting the lesser-known Pauline Hopkins, Angelina Weld Grimké, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eulalie Spence, and May Miller, and the well-known Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy, and Ntozake Shange, Peculiar Passages argues that these playwrights' efforts define a tradition characterized by quick-change mobility, sensitivity to vernacular forms, and dedication to intertextual dialogue. Situating the plays within a broader context, the book also connects them to minstrelsy, the Passion Play, and the Black Arts Movement.
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was a major dramatic success and brought to the world's attention the potential talent of African American women playwrights. But in spite of Hansberry's landmark contribution, both the theater and the literary world have often failed to include contemporary African American female playwrights within the circle of production, publication, and criticism. In African American drama anthologies, female playwrights are seldom given the degree of attention that is accorded their male counterparts. And because of space constraints, anthologies of works by women playwrights are forced to exclude numerous female dramatists, including African Americans. Meanwhile, some scholars have argued that the works of African American female playwrights are seldom produced in the mainstream theater because these plays frequently challenge the views of white America. But as A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates, plays by African American women dramatists can have a powerful message and are worthy of attention. A comprehensive research tool, this annotated bibliography sheds light on the often neglected works of contemporary African American female playwrights. Included within its scope are those dramatists who have had at least one work published since 1959, the year of Hansberry's monumental achievement. The first section provides a listing of anthologies that include one or more plays written by an African American female dramatist. The second gives entries for reference works and for scholarly and critical studies of the dramatists and their plays. The third presents a listing of published plays by individual dramatists, along with a summary of each drama; the works of each playwright that are related to drama; and secondary sources that treat the dramatists and their plays. Entries are accompanied by concise but informative annotations, and the volume closes with a list of periodicals that frequently publish criticism of African American female playwrights, a section of brief biographical sketches of the dramatists, and extensive indexes.
The Alexander Plays consists of four pieces that are, like all of Kennedy's works, complex, intense, and experimental. They revolve loosely around a writer named Suzanne Alexander. In She Talks to Beethoven (previously published in Antaeus in 1991), Alexander has a discussion with Beethoven. In The Ohio State Murders , when asked why her works are so violent, Alexander tells a chilling story about the murder of one of her twin daughters. The Film Club (a monolog) and The Dramatic Circle (a radio play) concern Suzanne's anxiety while awaiting the release of her husband, who has been imprisoned in Ghana. Village Voice writer Alisa Solomon provides a perceptive foreword to the plays. Bryant-Jackson and Overbeck's fine collection will help in appreciating Kennedy's work. The volume is divided into four sections. The first, largely biographical, includes an interview with the playwright. The second discusses Kennedy's work in light of such traditions as transcendentalism, German Expressionism, and African American women's literature. The third, on critical interpretations, is likely the most significant section. Articles by Kimberly Benston on the importance of race in Kennedy's plays are especially illuminating. The final section is a series of interviews with people involved in the production of Kennedy's plays. The book includes good primary and secondary bibliographies. These two volumes will help secure Kennedy's rightful place as a major figure in American literature. Essential for all libraries interested in contemporary drama.
