Stage Writes
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A New Adrienne Kennedy Play Will Be Staged Next Year
Adrienne Kennedy, whose surrealism-tinged dramas have addressed race and violence in American society since the 1960s, will have a new play, her first in nine years, as part of the coming season at Theater for a New Audience.
Adrienne Kennedy in 2007. (Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times)
He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box is set in 1941 in New York City and Georgia, and “braids together the indignities of Jim Crow, rising Nazism, sexual hypocrisy, Christopher Marlowe, and the lingering shadow of a terrible crime,” according to a news release. The play will run at the theater’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center home from Jan. 17 to Feb. 11. Evan Yionoulis will direct; she oversaw Ms. Kennedy’s The Ohio State Murders at Theater for a New Audience in 2007.
Ms. Kennedy, 85, is an influential figure in experimental theater, whose work has been regularly taught in college courses. Her first major play, Funnyhouse of a Negro, was a revelation when it opened in 1964; a new production ran last year as part of a Signature Theater triple bill.
Click here for the original article published on NYTimes.com by Andrew R. Chow on September 6, 2017.