“An Evasion of Ontology”

Being Adrienne Kennedy

Claudia Barnett

Introduction “I am glad you wrote this play because if you hadn’t I wouldn’t know you. I wish you the very best tonight and always. Love Jack.” This almost anonymous  telegram, among Adrienne Kennedy’s correspondence on file at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (file .), innocently anticipates a theme that has come to define Kennedy’s career: the distinction—or lack thereof—between playwright and play. “Jack” might have met Kennedy at the theatre or he might simply have seen the play and felt empathy toward its creator. The two possibilities imply vastly different yet inter- dependent ways of knowing, neither one superior or definitive, as Kennedy herself has recognized. What it means to know Adrienne Kennedy—and what it means to know anyone—is a question and challenge she poses in her writing. Reality is part of the issue, one she defines in terms of perspective:“The point is, if I’m reading a book about Beethoven in July, Beethoven is definitely more real to me than members of my family at that moment” (in Diamond :). As her concept of reality keeps changing, so, it seems, does her definition of herself and her work. She has said, “Autobiographical work is the only thing that inter- ests me, apparently because that is what I do best” (:), yet she seems sur- prised when audiences confuse her with her characters:“My plays are the product of my imagination, but there are people who literally want to make me Sarah [Funnyhouse]; they think she has my background” (in Diamond :). These comments only seem contradictory, however, if one defines autobiographical literally, which Kennedy never does. Some of her characters, who include historical figures such as Queen Victoria and Marlon Brando, are clearly not Kennedy, yet at the same time, the deeply personal truth of her writing, no matter the character, leaves her self vulnerable and exposed. “Let me tell you something,”Kennedy once said to an interviewer, “I get very upset when I read people’s analysis of my work. I try not to read it. It makes me uncomfortable [...] to have people dissect my psyche” (a:). She sees literary analysis as tantamount to psychoanaly- sis because her work is her self—even though it is not necessarily about herself. When Funnyhouse of a Negro was set to be staged at Edward Albee’s playwrights’ workshop in , Kennedy remembers:“I became frightened. My play seemed far too revealing and much to my own shock, I had used the word ‘nigger’ throughout the text.” She decided to drop the class and told Albee, “I don’t want

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett that original version done in the workshop, that would be too upsetting. [...] I’m worried about what I said about my parents, even though it’s fictionalized” (a: ). Albee “stuck his hands in his pockets,” fixed her with a “hypnotic” gaze, and said, “Well, do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts out on the stage and that’s what you’ve done in this play” (:–). Although she still considers the play “so very revealing of my psyche—if not of me, personally” (a:), she heeded Albee’s advice and endured her harrowing success, as she has continued to do for over  years. Meanwhile she has honed her tools of self-revelation, skillfully maneuvering the fine 1.Adrienne Kennedy at the line between truth and fiction. The polar forces that define Kennedy’s writing— Signature Theatre Company, the need to reveal and the need to conceal—have led her to create not only a se- 2005/2006. (Photo by Susan ries of powerful plays but a richly woven tapestry. Taken individually, each of her Johann) plays is a burst of poetic violence that somehow relates to the playwright’s life; taken as a whole, however, her writing becomes a multilayered puzzle to challenge audiences and readers who feel compelled to “know” the playwright—a coup-de-grace performance in itself. Elin Diamond makes much of Kennedy’s statement during a public interview in —“I want to be Bette Davis”—arguing that it “[lays] bare the problemat- ics of identity” (:). In saying that she wants to be—rather than to be like— the white film star, Kennedy draws attention to the difference in race and the subsequent impossibility of identification, and as Diamond writes: “Attired in a dark suit and white frilly blouse, she called to our collective mind the star image of Bette Davis and in that moment foregrounded the racism inscribed in classi- cal mimesis” (). Comparing this comment with one made by Kennedy’s Funny- house character, Sarah, who says, “I want not to be,” Diamond explains, “Each is an evasion of ontology” (). While the desire to be Other does not necessarily imply the negation of self, Sarah projects four alternate selves who replace her, ultimately resulting in her death. “No contemporary U.S. playwright has theatri- calized the disturbances of identification with the acuity of Adrienne Kennedy” (Diamond :). Not only does Kennedy theatricalize these disturbances, she embodies them. Kennedy’s own evasion of ontology can be traced back to her first publication, a short story titled “Because of the King of France” (). She remembers meeting the editor Ulli Bieir in Africa: “he invited us to Nigeria to meet his wife, a painter, who lived there. Word seemed to travel fast in West Africa among for- eigners. It was soon known that I was having a story published in Black Orpheus” (Kennedy b:). Kennedy does not mention the ironic part of this story: that she became well-known in spite of her use of a pseudonym, “Adrienne Cor- nell.”Her intention in choosing the name might have been to honor her brother, whose first name was Cornell, and/or equally likely, as her conversation with Albee suggests, to hide herself (even though her stronger impulse to establish herself as a writer prevailed). She thus divulged her dialectical disposition in her earliest work. Similarly, in an answer to Diamond during an interview, Kennedy obliquely differentiates between her two identities—“the playwright” and “I”: “Yes, but that’s the playwright speaking. I just wanted [...]” (in Diamond :). This distinction aligns her with her characters who project various selves, twins, döppelgangers, and others into their lives. It also betrays an awareness that in the creation of her work, she has created her own alternate self. Being Adrienne Kennedy and being “Adrienne Kennedy”—the person versus the persona—are two vastly different, yet ultimately indistinguishable, things. Floating above the

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  writing and filtered through it, this playwright-self emerges as an enigma—inviting and resisting interpretation as much as any of the plays. This self, like the work, is a composite figure; it is also Kennedy’s grand achievement. In , Kennedy published her autobiography, a scrapbook-style montage of photos and vignettes titled People Who Led to My Plays, “designed to answer the question that students and directors most frequently ask: who or what influenced you to write the way you do?” (Diamond :). Ironically, Kennedy never actually answers the question, but instead creates another layer within it, as Dia- mond explains to the playwright:

A strange thing happens with material you supply in People that almost works against the aesthetic of your plays. Works against because you deliberately undermine the operation of truth in your drama. [... N]ow your readers will be tempted to ﬁll in what your plays deny. [...] On the other hand, [...] the autobiography just gives us another Kennedy text, no more true than the plays. (:)

The temptation to “ﬁll in” is part of the allure of Kennedy’s drama. Part of the reason for this is, as Diamond suggests, “there is so much psychic pain in the early plays” (:). Another explanation is that Kennedy’s characters tend to be writers, so audiences see them as extensions of the playwright. For instance, in A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (), Clara recites from Kennedy’s The Owl Answers () and calls it “my play” (:). Most of the later plays re- volve around one character, Suzanne Alexander, a playwright who shares life experiences with Kennedy. With The Alexander Plays, a collection published in , after the autobiography, Kennedy self-consciously incorporates details she knows her readers will recognize while at the same time creating a mass of contradictions. For instance, in The Ohio State Murders (), Suzanne meets her future husband David after the murder of her twins. But in the next play in the series, The Dramatic Circle (not yet produced), she tells her doctor, “We went to school together as children. We won the state reading contest together” ([] :). Finally, in a convoluted confession in “Letter to My Students on My Sixty-ﬁrst Birthday by Suzanne Alexander,” Suzanne writes about herself in the third-person, using the imagined voice of her sister-in-law, Alice:“She still some-

2.Tim Michael, Jennifer Gibbs, and Sanaa Lathan in A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (1976), directed by Joseph Chaikin, Signature Theatre Company; presented as a double bill with Funnyhouse of a Negro during Signature’s 1995/1996 season. (Photo by Susan Johann)

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett times told people that she had known David since she was a child just as she told Sebastian: ‘We won the state reading contest together.’ But that was not true. They met at Ohio State after the babies’ deaths” ([] :). Such skillful sleights of hand make both character and playwright unknowable. Through Suzanne Alexander, Kennedy not only tempts but deﬁes her audience to draw connections between art and life. She makes the game impossible to resist but also impossible to win because no one (except perhaps herself ) can distinguish the facts of her life from her imagination.

Kennedy’s own “active vanishing” is less about payoﬀ than protection, yet the term perfectly describes her. In order to unmark herself, she re-marks herself with a vengeance.

“Visibility is a trap,” writes Peggy Phelan. “[I]t summons surveillance and the law; it provokes voyeurism, fetishism, the colonial/imperial appetite for posses- sion. Yet it retains a certain [...] appeal” (:). Kennedy, throughout her work, remains conscious of both the allure and the danger of being seen—the desire to be Bette Davis and “not to be.”“There is real power in remaining unmarked; and there are serious limitations to visual representation as a political goal” (Phelan :). Being “marked,” Phelan explains, is being visible, Other, female:

[T]he epistemological, psychic, and political binaries of Western meta- physics create distinctions and evaluations across two terms. One term of the binary is marked with value, the other is unmarked. The male is marked with value; the female is unmarked, lacking measured value and meaning. Within this psycho-philosophical frame, cultural reproduction takes she who is unmarked and re-marks her, rhetorically and imagisti- cally, while he who is marked with value is left unremarked, in discursive paradigms and visual ﬁelds. He is the norm and therefore unremarkable; as the Other, it is she whom he marks. ()

In this inversion of terms, the female becomes marked by her difference from the norm. The male retains the quiet power of the unmarked while the female is de- prived of value by being named Other. According to this logic, as an African American woman Kennedy is doubly marked and therefore half as likely to suc- ceed. An interviewer’s remark to Kennedy reflects the same sensibility: “[O]ur cultural idea of a playwright is a white male—anything else is a kind of subset,” and Kennedy agrees (a:). As part of two subsets, she is visible and therefore vulnerable. She is expected to write as a woman and as an African Ameri- can—a situation she finds stifling: “White society defines blacks in terms of clichés. (I always felt that I’m being defined in terms of a cliché by white society)” (:); “I took up being a writer because I wanted to break through barriers” (in Binder :). In creating her playwright persona, she effectively and creatively begins the process of unmarking; by replacing her private “I” with a public persona, she erases her personal self from scrutiny. Phelan theoretically describes “an active vanishing, a deliberate and conscious refusal to take the payoff of visibility” (:). Kennedy’s own “active vanishing” is less about payoff than protection, yet the term perfectly describes her. In order to unmark herself, she re-marks herself with a vengeance. As she has become more comfortable and more adept with the playwright persona, she has increased the level of autobiographical referents in her work. Her creation of Suzanne Alexander has been integral to this unmarking; Kennedy has simply transferred the marks to Suzanne, thereby establishing invisibility for herself.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  Kennedy early on called her work “a growth of images” (:), which has become increasingly accurate with time. Her work builds on itself, frequently referencing earlier characters and themes. John Simon has disparagingly labeled her “a great recycler” (:), a phrase that, taken positively, is actually a fine description of the “growth” that whirls from image to image, from play to play. Her writing spirals with reflexivity, creating a web of embedded monologues and motifs. In a letter dated  August , Albee thanks Kennedy for sending him a copy of A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White and expresses his concern: “The only thing I don’t know about the play is how it will seem to someone who doesn’t know your other work—who doesn’t have the references, for this new play fits so tightly in with the other plays” (file .). Movie Star does fit in tightly with Kennedy’s other plays, and it relies upon an almost esoteric familiarity with film icons of the s and ’s. However, as its inclusion in the Norton Anthol- ogy of American Literature attests, it also stands strongly on its own. Like all of Kennedy’s writing, it draws the audience in while creating Brechtian obstacles in identification;like the playwright herself, it seems to evolve from the dueling im- pulses of refusal and revelation. In a review of the play’s first production, Arthur Sainer writes:

I find her work private in a way that shuts me out. Her confessional style [...] is paradoxically confessional in a way that blocks rather than reveals. Even as there is an outpouring of feelings and data, I find myself essen- tially blocked from specific knowledge [...]. I find myself trying to find a way around the edges of the [...] confessionals which seem so intent on enveloping me with meaning; I end up making suppositions, oh yes, this means this and this means this, but I haven’t had the experience that would allow me to understand. (:)

Sainer complains that he cannot identify with the characters in the play; he is re- stricted by his experiences of race and gender and moviegoing—much in the same way that Kennedy is blocked from being Bette Davis. And yet he is highly sensitive to the paradoxical nature of the play, the secret of its power. He finds himself “trying to find a way” and “making suppositions” in much the same way as the reader of the autobiography is “tempted to fill in”—engaging in the Adri- enne Kennedy game, which he knows he cannot win and yet seems compelled to play. Kennedy plays a variety of roles: she sets the rules and doles out the clues in the scavenger hunt she has created. The game reached its climax in the early s with two moves by Kennedy: her sale of her papers to the Ransom Center in  and her publication of “Let- ter to My Students on My Sixty-first Birthday by Suzanne Alexander” in The Kenyon Review in . Both acts—and “acts” seems the right word here, though neither is a dramatic play—seem designed for self-exposure. The only self exposed, however, is the playwright persona, which in both cases deflects attention from the private “I.” Both are performative feats that define the playwright. The nine-plus boxes of the Ransom collection contain manuscripts of Kennedy’s plays, poems, short stories, and film and television treatments—published and unpublished, neatly written, scribbled, and typed; also included are letters to her, articles about her, production materials, and reviews of her plays. The transaction of this sale bears much in common with the creation of Suzanne Alexander, which cul- minates in “Letter” with a reflexive commentary on Kennedy’s life’s work. The Ransom collection is the ultimate “play,” comprised entirely of materials Kennedy has supplied—an enormous, self-edited autobiography. The papers reveal the youthful, idealistic would-be novelist, the budding playwright whose first success launched her into a circle of fame, the beloved professor, the reluc- tant celebrity, and the major influence on late th-century plays. They paint a

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This telephone interview with Adrienne Kennedy took place on 5 November 2002.

BARNETT: Why are your manuscripts at the Ransom Center? KENNEDY: Oh it’s totally a fluke. It’s because I was at a party once, at a writer’s house. His name is Stuart Hample. He’s a friend of mine, a cartoonist. I was at a party at his house, and his wife is one of the owners of a bookstore in Manhattan, and she said, Have you ever sold your papers? And I said, Well, not really; I was interested in it many years ago. So she said, Well I think my sister-in-law and I could sell your papers. Her name is Naomi Hample, and her sister-in-law, Judith Lowry, called me... She sold them to Texas. BARNETT: How do you feel about having them there? KENNEDY: I’m excited about having them there. BARNETT: Do you miss them—having them around? KENNEDY: Do I miss having my papers around? No, I don’t miss having my papers. I think it’s a miracle that all those papers survived because I’ve moved so much. I’ve moved an enormous amount in my life, and to me it’s amazing that those papers actually survived...pages of Funnyhouse, and all those early manuscripts. They were all in one trunk, and I’m just amazed that those papers have survived. BARNETT: Some of the manuscripts are not in order at all. KENNEDY: That I can’t help you with. They were in a trunk, and they were pretty much dated fairly accurately, I think, but I don’t know anything about their order. BARNETT: I am very interested in talking about your character Aaron Grossman. KENNEDY: You’re asking me to talk about something that I did in the ’s. He was a character I worked on for many years... My husband and I lived up at Columbia University when he was in grad school, and I worked on that character... We had a friend who was a poet; he was a Jewish poet. He was the most compelling person, and he and his wife were very good friends of ours, his name was Evan, and I based this character on him. I worked on it for a very long time, maybe, I don’t know, ’ to ’. I just worked with that character. I never quite got him right. BARNETT: There’s a story I adore. There are hardly any stories in the files, but there’s one story, “Milena’s Wedding”... KENNEDY: Yes. I can barely remember it. BARNETT: I sat in the Reading Room and typed it up because I thought I had to have a copy of it; it worked so well with all your later work. It’s narrated by Aaron Grossman, and he’s such a self- conscious narrator. One of the things that intrigued me about him was that I get a real sense of distance even though he’s first-person. Often when I read your narrators, I feel like it’s you talking, but with him, I feel like it’s you commenting from a distance on him. KENNEDY: Look, I don’t know. I remember “Milena’s Wedding,” working on Aaron Grossman, but we are talking about , ’, ’. I remember I wrote “Milena’s Wedding,”and I think I sent it around with some other stories. I don’t remember one line of it. BARNETT: My real question about him—and your other early protagonists like Ben Halfin: You used to have some protagonists who were men, but then you shifted to only women. And you seem to be much more intimate with the women. KENNEDY: I have no idea. Now you’re making me angry. I’ll tell you why. Because I hate it when people analyze my work like that. That’s why I don’t even teach my work. I have no idea. Luckily for me, in the ’s when I was kind of working in the dark, even though I was in playwriting classes at Co- lumbia, classes at the American Theatre Wing, the New School, I wasn’t sophisticated enough to ana-

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lyze my work like that. You know I liked Aaron Grossman; I based him on a poet that we knew. Ben Halfin I based on a very distant cousin that we had, and a little bit of my brother—my brother and our summers in Georgia. And I never really analyze my work like that. BARNETT: Well then I won’t ask you that sort of question. KENNEDY: Because I think I would be dead as a writer if I did. BARNETT: I understand that. Here’s another kind of question then: You published your first short story with the pseudonym “Adrienne Cornell,” using your brother’s name as your last name. I was cu- rious as to why you chose to use a pseudonym because in all the interviews I’ve read you seemed so excited to have people know you’d been published. KENNEDY: I don’t operate like that. I did that, I was in Africa, and I was excited, I was happy, and I said, Oh I think I’ll use my brother’s name as my last name. It’s all kind of whimsical. People make too much of these things. It’s a whim. I really mean that. It was a whim. I was in Africa and I had a story published and I said, Oh maybe rather than use my married name I’ll use my brother’s first name. I’ll have a pseudonym. It’s just that simple. BARNETT: And then after that, you started using— KENNEDY: I only did it that one time. I’m sort of whimsical. I think people...I’m working a lot...I mean you asked me about Aaron Grossman and Ben Halfin. Those things, that’s purely instinct. I’m not sitting and pondering those things. Do you know what I mean? BARNETT: Yes, because then you wouldn’t be an artist; you would be a critic. KENNEDY: (Laughs) I see. BARNETT: I found a fascinating interview with you by Yemi Ogunbiyi from . You might not remember, but you had a wonderful comment in there: “I consider all my plays one play and I’ve always wanted, and that’s my life’s ambition, I’d like to have all my plays done together like an Alvin Ailey dance concert or something... I’d like to put them all together in that sense. That’s really what my ambition was, it’s to kind of write a cycle of plays” [file .]. You said this over  years ago, and I’d like to hear what you have to say about that idea today, now that you’ve written and lived so much more. KENNEDY: I always wanted to write a cycle of plays. BARNETT: Do you think of your plays now—all of them—as a cycle? KENNEDY: Not necessarily. I always had an ambition to write a cycle of plays, like, you know, great poets or something. (Laughs) BARNETT: I really do feel though, especially when I am reading The Alexander Plays and “Letter to My Students,” that you do cycle back on things. In “Letter,” there are pieces of your Robert Johnson screen treatment and bits about Aaron Grossman. There’s definitely a feeling of it all being a cycle. KENNEDY: I’ve always been drawn to that. There’s no doubt about that. BARNETT: What do you think about “Letter to My Students”? Do you consider that to be a play, a short story, a monologue? Is it supposed to be performed? KENNEDY: No, no. It’s not a play. It’s just supposed to be just nonfiction. BARNETT: Nonfiction? I’m confused. Nonfiction? Suzanne Alexander is fictional. KENNEDY: Well it’s a blend of fiction and nonfiction. I really love doing that, obviously. It’s a blend. It’s a blend of part-truth and part-fiction. It’s so obvious that I love to do that. I love to try to do that. BARNETT: And Alice Alexander. Suzanne sounds so angry at her in that piece. Do you...should I ask...is she based on someone real?

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KENNEDY: Every character I write is based on someone. All the characters I write are a blend of people I know and myself. I don’t even remember Alice Alexander, honestly. I really don’t. I must have written that more than  years ago. BARNETT: There’s such a funny thing going on there with Alice and the way you use her to deal with apparent contradictions. In Ohio State Murders Suzanne meets David after the murders of the children, but in one of the other Alexander plays, she claims she’s always known David, ever since they were kids. Then when you get to “Letter to My Students,”you have Suzanne saying, in Alice’s voice, that Suzanne tends to lie about when she met David. I was wondering if anyone had been complaining to you and saying that these things contradict each other. KENNEDY: No, I really don’t want to answer any more of these questions because I think they intrude upon my work. I play around with this stuff. I’m not going to try to give you any fancy answer. I enjoy playing around with those characters. I get a lot of pleasure out of doing that. I worked on David Alexander for many years. I worked on these characters for a long time, and then I put something together. I have loads of stuff about David Alexander and about Suzanne and about Alice Alexander. I’ve got so many things about them that were never published. And so, that’s really kind of...I get a lot pleasure out of doing that. And so, if what reaches the printed page is contradictory, then I don’t know, you know what I mean? BARNETT: Well that’s what I wanted to know. I wasn’t sure if in resolving that contradiction you were saying, Stop bothering me about this! But it sounds like it was all in good fun. KENNEDY: I worked on those characters for many years, and I have many things that are unpublished about them. And then I would change it... It was purely, it’s just something I enjoy doing. That’s all I can tell you. I enjoy working on those people, and I’m not trying to always be truthful. I’m playing around with the truth a lot, to try to get to something that maybe I’ve never really reached. Do you know what I mean? I’m trying to get to something that perhaps I never will reach as long as I live. (Laughs) BARNETT: Back to the manuscripts at the Ransom Center... KENNEDY: I’m thrilled that they’re there. BARNETT: How come? KENNEDY: Because there are so many writers there, and that to me is probably my biggest pleasure in being a writer: to be connected to other writers. In fact, there’s no doubt that that’s my biggest pleasure. BARNETT: That’s your big pleasure but the thing that you don’t like is to have people like me analyze them? KENNEDY: No, I don’t want people to ask me about them. I know my work is analyzed all over the place by scholars, and I’m grateful for that because it’s kept my work alive. But I don’t like to answer these questions. There’s a big difference. There’s a huge difference. BARNETT: I’m looking at my notes and I’m thinking that all my other questions are questions you wouldn’t like. KENNEDY:If they’re about probing into my work, that’s just something I don’t do. You said you typed up “Milena’s Wedding”? BARNETT: Do you want me to send it to you? KENNEDY:Sure send it to me. I don’t remember it. (Laughs) I missed my work maybe for about a week or something, but then I felt better that it’s really someplace safe... I’m happy that it’s there. In a strange way, I’ve almost forgotten it. (Laughs)

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  vibrant portrait of the playwright, a cubist collage with many angles of perspective. Regarding People Who Led to My Plays, Diamond explains, “Her autobiography will not ‘add up’ to a life, nor will it refuse to do so. Rather it performs with each ‘entry’ [...]” (:). Unlike the neatly arranged entries of the book, the Ransom files are jumbled stacks of manuscripts, many of which are disor- dered and incomplete, yet Diamond’s words about the autobiography adeptly describe the collection: “it performs.” With her early unpublished work, Kennedy provides a glimpse of progress as a writer and the issues that have long consumed her. Earlier versions of her most famous protagonists inhabit unknown novels, short stories, and musical plays; handwritten and typed manuscripts offer a sense of the artist at work and the all-consuming journey that leads to every play; letters reveal how others see her. Reading the manuscripts, one is overwhelmed by a sense of repetition, not only of characters and themes, but of entire passages of text. Several passages and references in her narratives from the s are verbatim paragraphs she wrote in the s, revealing her oeuvre as a cycle that has come full circle. Meanwhile, many papers are excluded from the collection, perhaps because they have not survived the years. Kennedy says she has written many short stories, but fewer than  sur- vive. Likewise, several of her earliest works are unreadable except as brief snippets because their unnumbered pages have fallen hopelessly out of sequence; several versions of the same draft may be held together in one folder, their pages irrevo- cably shuffled—their characters well delineated but their plotlines obscured. The scavenger on the hunt is thus impeded from full discovery—as if full discovery were ever a possibility. Even after reading every word, the scavenger might thus conclude, to quote Sainer, “I haven’t had the experience to allow me to understand.” On the other hand, she might realize that the opposite is also true.

“Somewhere in Between”: Suzanne Alexander and “The Collapse of I” In his studies of the parallels between ritual and theatre, Richard Schechner writes about the deer dance of the Arizona Yaqui:“I wondered if the ﬁgure I saw was a man and a deer simultaneously; or, to say it in a way a performer might understand, whether putting on the deer mask made the man ‘not a man’ and ‘not a deer’ but somewhere in between” (:). “Somewhere in between” is the right answer, and this liminal stage marks the essence of performance: “It isn’t that a performer stops being himself or herself when he or she becomes another—multiple selves coexist in an unresolved dialectical tension” (). Schechner’s anthro- pological observations in this instance seem oddly applicable to the very personal performance of Adrienne Kennedy. In the Yaqui deer dance, performers are “not themselves” and “not not themselves”—reminiscent of Kennedy’s desire to be Bette Davis and Funnyhouse Sarah’s desire “not to be.” As Diamond notes, the physical discrepancy between Kennedy and Davis provokes epiphanies about identity and racist inscriptions. But it also raises the question of what it means to act. In what ways, if any, could Kennedy be Bette Davis? What would it mean to be Bette Davis? And how could anyone, other than Bette Davis, ever be Bette Davis? The issues are racial but they are also individual: How can anyone be anyone else? And furthermore, how can anyone not be him- or herself ? How can Adrienne Kennedy be anyone other than Adrienne Kennedy—and what does it mean to be Adrienne Kennedy? Sarah wants “not to be” at all, and with her suicide she achieves some success, but she still exists at the end of the play, lifelessly hanging in her living room and in the memories of both characters and audience. Existence cannot be negated. One cannot stop being oneself, yet one can become an Other. This sort of dialectic is integral to understanding Adrienne Kennedy.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett Multiple selves coexist, in spite of apparent contradictions, as do different planes of reality. “Somewhere in between” is the site of her performance. Within Kennedy’s plays, fragmented selves coexist in spite of their contradictory natures, so that, Diamond suggests, “Kennedy’s major texts of the s–s produce an impossible identity—a hybridity” (:). This hybridity, like the liminality of the Yaqui dancer, suggests a “somewhere in between,” which Kennedy achieves by creating multiple selves for her characters. Funnyhouse Sarah, for instance, exists somewhere in between her alternate selves, Queen Victoria, Duchess of Hapsburg, Jesus, and Patrice Lumumba—an “impossible identity” that results in her death. Each main character in Kennedy’s plays develops multiple selves— not all as destructive as Sarah’s, but all equally impossible. Diamond beautifully sums up the dialectic in Kennedy’s later work: “The question posed by the racial semiotics of The Alexander Plays is not which reality is living, which dead, or even which is moving and which fixed, but how does the subject live in both” (:). Beyond the importance of the multiple selves for each of Kennedy’s characters is the fact that with so many of her characters, Kennedy has created alter egos of her own. With the parallels she creates between herself and her writer characters, she casts them as her own multiple selves. Thus Kennedy, like the Yaqui dancer, 3. Robbie McCauley and exists within a sort of dialectic, in a liminal space be- Jake-Ann Jones in The tween or among her multiple selves. With her use of alter-egos, Kennedy herself Alexander Plays, a achieves a hybridity. compilation of Kennedy’s With Kennedy’s writing, the word “play” becomes a double entendre, signi- one-acts, directed by Robbie fying not only drama but sport. The game is generated by authorial resistance: McCauley,Signature the more she seems to hide, the more the reader/audience longs to know. One Theatre Company, would not ask questions about Kennedy’s life if the plays did not suggest strong 1995/1996. (Photo by parallels between their characters and herself as well as a sense of mystery and in- Carol Rosegg) trigue. While the author seems to resist such investigation, she also invites it, and in “Letter to My Students,” even seems to delight in it. “Letter” was published shortly after The Alexander Plays, and although Kennedy has since written other pieces featuring Suzanne as the main character, “Letter” provides a sense of final- ity and closure; within these  pages lies a blueprint of Kennedy’s career. In this piece of writing, which she calls “non-fiction” (see the boxed interview in this article) even though Suzanne is a product of her imagination, she reflects on her past while she re-creates it. And here, in this short piece, with a fictional voice that reflects on its authenticity, she achieves the liminal essence of performance. While Suzanne looks toward the future with fear, she also looks back—over her own life and over Kennedy’s—to reveal rare insights into the playwright’s career. At the same time, of course, she obfuscates such insights, obscuring them amid oblique layers of reality, presenting them with little context and seemingly without purpose. “Letter to My Students” combines several storylines, among them Suzanne’s husband David’s disappearance, her son Teddy’s performance in Hamlet (which he rehearses and performs throughout the time of the narrative, the scene with the father’s ghost being the most disturbing to Suzanne), and Teddy’s arrest and brutal treatment by the police for driving with a broken taillight (this by far the most

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  ominous and consuming of the subplots, and one which Kennedy revisits later in Sleep Deprivation Chamber, cowritten with her son, Adam P. Kennedy []). The theatrical tribute to Suzanne forms another storyline, as do Suzanne’s re- flections on her childhood in Cleveland and on her present life in her Upper West Side Manhattan apartment. Through these merging plots, the reader comes to know Suzanne; in effect, her character is the sum of these experiences. The very stories that create her, however, also tear her apart. She becomes devastated by her son’s upcoming trial, by the local playwright’s invasion of her privacy, and by the homeless people in her neighborhood, so much so that she has named her work-in-progress “Collapse of I” and she has given her main character her own first name. In her comments about her current writing, Suzanne reveals a dan- gerous sense of detachment from herself: “The journals I kept on my character, Suzanne, often contradicted each other, but suppositions and fictions about this character were my lifeline. I often forget I gave ‘her’ my own name and was sur- prised when people said, ‘Why is your character named after you?’” (). This same detachment characterizes Kennedy, as Ralph Blumenthal notes in a profile of the playwright:“Adrienne Kennedy says she is not sure who has been writing her plays for more than  years or where they come from” (:C). Suzanne Alexander, the character who throughout The Alexander Plays seems like a thinly veiled version of Kennedy—having grown up in the same time and place, attended the same university, suffered the same racism, taken the same voy- age to Africa, and having become a playwright who has written plays with the same titles and subjects as Kennedy’s plays—suddenly distinguishes herself, in “Letter to My Students,” as someone else: “Ohio State Murders was not my play but a play of my life by _____, a local playwright. She had written a piece about my years at Ohio State” ([] :). Suzanne meets this local playwright when their plays are to be performed at the same Cleveland, Ohio, theatre as part of a tribute to Suzanne. The local playwright, who is, interestingly, presented in an unsympathetic light, could almost be Kennedy herself, except that Suzanne still claims to have written most of Kennedy’s plays and this playwright dies at the end of the piece. In a Pirandellian twist, Suzanne feels threatened by this playwright who keeps revising her text every time she learns new information about Suzanne’s life. “I began to fear this play that was meant to be a tribute to me,”she reflects (). She fears she has become a character, written into a life she cannot control. Like Luigi Pirandello, who depicts a dialectical relationship between reality and illusion, Kennedy creates characters who inhabit both planes simultaneously, her truths spiraling into illusion, and vice versa. For example, the first words of Suzanne’s narrative appear verbatim  pages later after she explains that her daughter has asked her to write a letter to her students:“That very night I started a lecture about all of these events called ‘An American Writer Speaks on Her Sixty- first Birthday.’The first paragraph began [...]” (). She then repeats the first paragraph of “Letter,” thereby suggesting that Kennedy’s “Letter” and Suzanne’s “An American Writer Speaks” are the same piece. Further complicating this convo- lution is the fact that Kennedy’s title contains Suzanne’s name and claims to be Suzanne’s own writing (“by Suzanne Alexander”). The narrative itself thus becomes reflexive, teasing the reader with its many merging layers. Suzanne becomes her own author, Adrienne Kennedy, and also her own creation, Suzanne who narrates “Collapse of I”—and any boundaries that separate reality from illusion rapidly dissolve. Within this incredible sense of play, however, there also lurks a threat. With its interrogations of reality and the role of the playwright, “Letter to My Students” vividly recalls Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (). Suzanne, however, is not in search of an author; she is trying to avoid hers—and

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4. Sleep Deprivation Chamber (1996) by Adrienne Kennedy and Adam P.Kennedy: Suzanne doubled. Suzanne Alexander (Tarashai Lee) sits at her desk while a rehearsal of The Ohio State Murders, in which her double gives a lecture on her years at Ohio State, takes place above her.Slides of Ohio State from the 1950s are projected during the lecture in this 2003 production at Ohio State University.(Photo by Ann Mansolino, courtesy of the Ohio State University Department of Theatre)

she has more than one: the local playwright/biographer and her sister-in-law Alice Alexander, “the foremost scholar on me” (). These two authors threaten to fix Suzanne, to relegate her to a two-dimensional role like Pirandello’s characters who are fixed in their moments of tragedy, unable to control their own fates. In Six Characters, the Father argues that “[e]ach one of us is lots and lots of people” and that “countless possibilities exist within us” (Pirandello [] :), but his is wishful thinking as he is reduced to, and defined by, one moment of in- discretion. Suzanne fears such reduction. Suzanne is a playwright who has written about her own life, choosing what and how much to expose. Like Kennedy, she selects certain segments of her life and creates art from them. The playwright/biographer and the sister-in-law/ scholar refuse to recognize any distinction between art and life; they ignore the

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  frame Suzanne imposes, and they compulsively amass new information, con- vinced that facts determine truth. “Now you’re reaching into parts of all my life. It wasn’t in our agreement,” Suzanne complains, but the local playwright insists, “I just want this to be accurate” ([] :). Ironically, by the end of the piece, Suzanne is trying to contact the local playwright because, she says, “Many episodes in her version of my life were inaccurate” (). While Suzanne has earlier scoffed at the local playwright’s scientific approach (“Greater accuracy?” []), by the end she is converted to this way of thinking, yet their communication fails as the playwright is, on the last page of “Letter,”“shot accidentally and fatally” (). As a result, the productions of the plays by and about Suzanne are canceled, and Suzanne ends the narrative on a note of terror: “If this was my sixtieth year, I feared sixty-one” (). By the end of “Letter,” Suzanne’s husband has been found, her son’s trial nears resolution, and the threat posed by the local playwright has been eliminated. Yet none of these conclusions is cause for celebration, as even her husband’s return—“A Mr. Chavez brought him in a truck” ()—provides more mystery than closure. When it comes to telling her own story, Suzanne can only narrate, not dictate, and finds herself relegated to a passive role. Her writing—her “Collapse of I” and the useless letters to politicians on behalf of her son Teddy—fails her. Yet “Letter” is not ultimately about the failure of language. Suzanne’s collapse ironically leads to a more complex construction of Kennedy’s own playwright-self, a richer lay- ering of storylines and a more textured past. Although it is not a play, “Letter to My Students” exists in the “somewhere in between” space that defines performance, the land of contradictions that is nonetheless not negation but creation. As Suzanne remembers how her “I” began to “collapse,”she says that her character evolved out of her estrangement from herself: “The winter after my sixtieth birthday I began to write about myself in the third person. I could not stop myself. It became...Suzanne said, Suzanne did” (). With these words, Suzanne echoes Catherine Holly, Sebastian Venable’s cousin in Tennessee Williams’s Sud- denly Last Summer. When the Doctor asks Catherine, “Your life doesn’t seem real to you?” she replies:“Suddenly last winter I began to write my journal in the third person” (Williams  []:). Like Catherine, Suzanne finds herself dis- located and disillusioned; her life does not seem real to her—and at the same time, it seems all too real. To confront reality, she creates an alter-ego to whom

5. Sleep Deprivation Chamber: Suzanne (Tarashai Lee) sits at her desk writing a letter.David Alexander,her husband (Reginald Harper), carries a miniature family house. Behind Suzanne, students rehearse “the murder of the sleeping king” from Hamlet with son Teddy as the murdered king. (Photo by Ann Mansolino, courtesy of the Ohio State University Department of Theatre)

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett she assigns her own name—a mask, a character, someone else. She revises her life as a play.

The Pale Blue Flowers “Letter to My Students,” includes several veiled references to Kennedy’s past. Appearing in this mature work, these clues mark the completion of a circle sig- nifying that the playwright has embraced her early writing and her youthful self as part of her persona. The echo of Catherine Holly functions in exactly this way. Tennessee Williams was a major influence on the young Adrienne Kennedy, who modeled her first play after The Glass Menagerie. Her title, The Pale Blue Flowers, recalls Jim O’Connor’s nickname for Laura Wingfield, “Blue Roses” (Williams :). The Ransom Center holds several versions of the play, including four typed drafts in various stages of order and completion, written from  to . The play has never been published, and when Kennedy mentions it she speaks disparagingly:“I was very much in awe of Tennessee Williams at the time and so I imitated him. Somehow it just didn’t work” (:). While the play themat- ically and stylistically resembles The Glass Menagerie, it also clearly sets the stage for Kennedy’s later work—much more so than the playwright admits. “It was a huge breakthrough for me when my main characters began to have other personas—it was in fact my biggest breakthrough as a writer, something I really sweated over, pondered” (a:), she remembers, and she credits this breakthrough to Funnyhouse: “I finally came up with this one character, Sarah, who, rather than talk to her father or mother, talked with these people she created about her problems” (:). In fact, the main characters develop other personas even in her earliest of plays. Tucked inside a folder labeled “My Poems and Stories” is tiny undated play titled The Tiger and the Tomboy. Sandra and Charles Tyler, nicknamed Ty, are teen- aged neighbors who have fallen in love but are too shy to admit it. Sandra’s imaginary friend Tyrone appears to her so that she can practice confiding her secret love. In another scene, Ty’s imaginary friend Shari emerges from the stars with golden hair and Sandra’s face, urging Ty to “tell her tonight.” Finally, Sandra and Ty tell each other “I love you” and the play comes to an end. These same characters reappear in Flowers—Charles Tyler now nicknamed “Chick” instead of “Ty,” and Tyrone renamed Lewis—as do Sandra’s parents, Maude and Maurice. With Flowers, Kennedy expands the simple exercise into a complex play, adding layers of plot and intensifying the “secret.”On the eve of graduation, Sandra finds out she has failed math; now she must tell her parents, a task so horrifying to her that she conjures up Lewis as an emotional escape. Sandra, a meek high-school failure, is Laura Wingfield. Too shy to socialize, she has no clubs or achievements noted under her picture in the yearbook—an omis- sion at which her Amanda-like mother, Maude, is quick to take offense. Unable to admit her failure to her mother, she invents Lewis, a smooth talker who de- spises mothers (“manipulators, murderers of their children...Murdereress [sic] and creators of criminals” [file .]) and sees Sandra as his queen. The various drafts of the play differ in their levels of sophistication (some include heavy exposition with Lewis explaining that Sandra has imagined him) as well as different resolu- tions. In the most finished draft, Chick tells Sandra about his imaginary friend Sara Sue, and she announces, “We have twin souls.” This moment briefly recalls Laura’s moment of hope during Jim’s speech in which he tells her how much he likes her, but Sandra’s romantic imaginings end more happily: Rather than an- nouncing, as Laura’s gentleman caller does, that he is dating Mary Jane, Chick asks Sandra to a dance. Then when Lewis reappears in romantic garb and an-

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  nounces, “I came to capture you for our castle,” Sandra answers back, “I don’t want to be confined to a castle” (file .). Eventually, Lewis starts to disappear, implying that Sandra can face life on her own (or, at least, with the help of non- imaginary men). Within Williams’s play, Kennedy found elements that appealed to her, such as Amanda’s pendulous mood swings, which she adapted for Maude. Both mothers have public and private personas—debonair selves for social occasions and des- potic selves for family abuse. This theme is one Kennedy borrows from Williams for keeps; such mothers reappear throughout all of Kennedy’s plays. Likewise, she adopts Laura’s fragile dignity for her own heroine’s. But while Laura’s inner world is symbolized by a collection of glass ornaments, Sandra’s is dramatically realized in a speaking character who voices the play’s most poetic lines. (“How do you kill your worries,”Sandra asks, and Lewis responds, “I grow a dream” [file .].) In Kennedy’s writing, Laura’s glass menagerie evolves into “selves” designed for comfort and escape. In this early play, Sandra projects a self who con- firms her desires, whereas in Funnyhouse and later plays, the tormenting selves tear the characters apart. Lewis helps put Sandra together rather than fragmenting her, and so this play ends on an uncharacteristically positive note. While adapting Williams’s characters and techniques, Kennedy began to develop the hallmarks of her plays. The cultural allusions first appearing in Flowers— Edward Rochester, Wuthering Heights, Caesar, Chopin, Clark Gable, and an organdy dress—later become familiar symbols, as do the character types—icy mother, helpless father, troubled daughter. References to royalty, movie stars, and fairy tales abound. The major theme missing here is race. Kennedy toys with white/ black imagery within the dialogue, for instance when Sandra calls Lewis “my white knight” but then tells him he has “the black look of a prowler,” or when her mother tells her she is filled with “black dirty evilness.”But race is not an issue for the characters. “It didn’t have any power. I just didn’t believe it when I read it,” Kennedy recalls about the play, blaming the fact that she had not yet developed her technique of multiple selves (:). In fact, the selves were present. But the play was not yet “Adrienne Kennedy” because she did not, to paraphrase Albee, let her guts out on stage. The “I” does not collapse because it is not sincere. Williams has remained a major influence on Kennedy, and his description of his own memory play, included in his “Production Notes” for The Glass Menagerie, can be read as a description of Kennedy’s most mature work: Expressionism and all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer approach to truth. When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, trying to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality, or interpreting experience, but is actually or should be attempting to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are. (Williams :) Kennedy’s first play “somehow [...] didn’t work” because she copied Williams’s plot and not his philosophy. While his technique with Menagerie was autobiographical, hers was not;she was simply imitating his life. Not until Funnyhouse did she find a way to incorporate the terrifyingly autobiographical elements of her own life into her plays, thus embracing her “responsibility of dealing with reality” and “vivid[ly] express[ing] things as they are.”The less Kennedy formally imitated Tennessee Williams, the greater his influence shone. This equation extends beyond her writing and into her persona, itself an expressionistic conglomera- tion of “a closer approach to truth.”

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The Tip of an Iceberg:Aaron Grossman Like Adrienne Kennedy, Suzanne Alexander seems at once ready to lay bare everything and nothing. Within “Letter,” Suzanne not only speaks of herself but quotes others who speak of her, and their words in her mouth become performative. Suzanne presents herself in the third person (either imaginatively through her character Suzanne, or factually through Alice) as if through the eyes of others, masking her self-presentation with their insights and observations—so much so that the actors in the local playwright’s play, having read an article on Suzanne written by Alice, comment, “We understand this character better now” (). As Suzanne grows increasingly detached from herself, she feels psychically threatened by Alice, who now becomes an imagined alter ego:“Often I spoke as if Al- ice were observing me” (). Suzanne then includes several paragraphs narrated by Alice—or, more accurately, narrated by Suzanne pretending to be Alice talking about Suzanne. Shortly thereafter, Suzanne quotes Alice’s article about her. These pages in Alice’s voice, buried under layers of obfuscated reality, are in fact some of Kennedy’s most illuminating—not only about Suzanne but about Ken- nedy herself, for here she alludes to and includes some of her earliest writing, much of which has not yet been published. In addition to an allusion to Tennessee Williams, another important reference in “Letter to My Students” is to Aaron Grossman. The seemingly minor character, whose name appears twice in “Letter”—and never in any other published piece—functions, like Suzanne Alexander, as a stand-in for the playwright. While Suzanne mirrors the aging Kennedy, Aaron in many ways reflects her youth. Aaron is a character Kennedy worked on for years—the protagonist of a novel, a minor character in a play, and the focus of countless sketches. However, in spite of the hundreds of pages of Aaron Grossman that consumed Kennedy for years, she admits, “I never quite got him right” (Kennedy ). This is perhaps because he is Jewish and a man, and Kennedy’s most successful writing is ultimately about a character who is more self than Other. Her writing works best when the two become interchangeable, a feat she did not achieve until she gave up trying to write like someone else and followed Albee’s advice to be herself. In spite of his imperfections as a character, however, Aaron provides a unique bridge throughout Kennedy’s work and casts new light on the nature of hybridity. Fur- thermore, his highly performative nature indicates a self-conscious awareness on the part of the performative playwright. In section six of “Letter” Suzanne explains: “I remembered Aaron Grossman. He was our friend at Columbia. And the first person to write about David and me in Ghana. He fictionalized us, called us the Crawfords” ([] :). Aaron himself is not the focus in “Letter”; he is mentioned simply for context. Suzanne quotes several paragraphs of Aaron’s writing about the Crawfords— paragraphs that are revealing and somewhat unflattering, as Mrs. Crawford is los- ing both her hair and her sanity. This section of the text is almost identical to a typed manuscript page at the Ransom Center. One difference is that in the original page, one senses greater intimacy between Aaron and Mrs. Crawford, especially given the following line which has been cut from the “Letter” version: “It was all I could do to keep from taking her in my arms for I knew that she of the people around us was the one most like myself, at conflict with the inner, that we were both indifferent to the outer plagues that preoccupied those around us” (file .). In the original, Aaron is ostensibly talking of Mrs. Crawford, but he pauses with this line to pay homage to himself and his own sensitivity; in the “Letter” version, he is stripped of any self-reflective comments and left only with objective narration. Suzanne pares down the Crawford sketch by paring down

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  Aaron Grossman, so that in “Letter,” he is an unspecific, undeveloped narrator designated only by a brief aside. Furthermore, Suzanne buries the text with her odd manner of punctuation, designed, it seems, to confuse the reader. She does not use quotation marks; nor does she set off the quoted segment in the text; she simply ends her paragraph about Aaron with a colon and begins the next paragraph with Aaron’s words. Suzanne/Kennedy thus includes the unfavorable (yet not unsympathetic) self-portrait while diverting the reader’s attention from it. Aaron, Kennedy says, was based on a friend who lived nearby when her husband attended graduate school (). Now, in “Letter,”he has become a fictional character created by a fictional character, but thanks to the Crawford paragraph, he also has the distinction of having fictionalized Suzanne—so that he simultaneously occupies several mutually exclusive levels of reality: He is at once Ken- nedy’s friend, Kennedy’s creation, Kennedy’s creation’s creation, and the creator of Kennedy’s creation (which aligns him with Kennedy herself ). His second mention in the text is thus appropriately convoluted. The actors from Ohio State Mur- ders are reading aloud from Alice’s article on Suzanne, which includes a dialogue between Alice and Suzanne, and Suzanne overhears them speak her own words: “I read my students the Grossman narrative first and then the narrative I discov- ered in the north of Ghana...an American Negro woman who roamed the beaches at Accra and had falling hair.”Alice’s article is about Suzanne’s teaching at Yale in  (something Kennedy herself did at about that time), and in the dialogue she asks, “How will you teach your play?” Suzanne replies, “I have pieces I wrote in Ghana, pieces I left out of the play [...]. These pieces were experiments with narrative” (). Suzanne here is dangerously close to being Adrienne Kennedy, and when she presents the Grossman narratives as based on the facts of her fictional world, she strengthens the possibility that they are based on the facts of Kennedy’s reality—that Kennedy herself knew or even was someone like Mrs. Crawford. The pieces Suzanne wrote in Ghana are the pieces Kennedy wrote in Ghana, and by referring to them here, Suzanne draws attention not only to their existence but to their purpose: they can be used to “teach” Kennedy’s play. Suzanne’s play, Alice remarks, “was produced off-Broadway the year after she and David returned from Africa, ”(). Suzanne’s play is untitled, but the play Kennedy wrote in Ghana and had produced off-Broadway in  was called Funnyhouse of a Negro. Kennedy thus seems to suggest that looking at the Grossman narratives might shed some light on Funnyhouse, and, in fact, several pages of Grossman narratives are included with the drafts of Funnyhouse at the Ransom Center. In the Funnyhouse Grossman sketches, Aaron has not yet developed his own name and is addressed (by Mrs. Crawford) alternately (in different versions) as “Professor R.,”“Professor L.,”and “Professor G.”These pages—unnumbered, dis- ordered, and incomplete—depict March Crawford as admirable yet cold:“a brilliant swaggering Negro sociologist, one of those highly extroverted men who is always followed about by ranks of students, a brutal dynamic captain obsessed with his work” (file .). He seems unaware of, or uninterested in, his wife’s dis- integration, which so concerns the narrator, the as-yet-unnamed Aaron. Mrs. Crawford, “a delicate Jewess,” is poetic and beautiful; she wears poinsettias in her hair and imagines herself a murderess:

It was the next day that I heard about the two bodies found ﬂoating in the lily pond at her house and she found wandering in the sun toward the ocean. You ask me why I killed my children, she had said, why it is because lately when I look into their eyes they seem to be owl eyes, their skin is feathered, Mark and Christina have feathered faces. When I speak to them they reply oww, oww, that is why I killed them.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett It wasn’t until later that I found out that she didn’t have any children. There never had been a Mark and Christina. Mrs. Crawford had killed two owls. (ﬁle .)

These paragraphs later evolve into The Owl Answers, in which the protagonist, She Who Is Clara Passmore Who Is The Virgin Mary Who Is The Bastard Who Is The Owl, mutates into an owl as she descends into madness. The situation also seems reminiscent of Funnyhouse—and in fact Owl and Funnyhouse were originally, Kennedy says, “all a part of one work” (:). Aaron has worried that Mrs. Crawford, whose husband “had come to Ghana to stay for a year but had stayed on now for almost ﬁve,” is lonely, and has imagined “her children were all she had”; in this sketch, he ﬁnds she has nothing at all. Similarly, in Funnyhouse, one of Sarah’s selves speaks of her mother in Africa: “She had long since begun to curse the place and spoke of herself trapped in blackness. She preferred the company of night owls” (). Sarah’s mother, like Mrs. Crawford, is deranged due to isolation. Mrs. Crawford tragically imagines the children she dooms, whereas Sarah’s mother neglects Sarah and thereby contributes to her death. Reading these Grossman sketches, one has a sense of viewing the funnyhouse through an almost objective lens. Whereas the Funnyhouse reader/audience is pitched into the frenzy of the play, thrust amid the selves and left to distinguish any sense of reality, here the madness is observed rather than experienced. Aaron Grossman provides an outsider’s perspective by watching Mrs. Crawford, and because he views her sympathetically, he seems trustworthy. In contrast, the views of the outsiders who observe Sarah in Funnyhouse—her landlady and her boyfriend with their dis- paraging remarks—serve to destabilize the subject. Aaron develops throughout several other unpublished works, including two drafts of an untitled novel about New York (/ and ) and a musical play called Diary of Lights (circa ), all of which form the basis of A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White. In Diary of Lights, the lightest piece, the characters speak declaratively of who they are, so Aaron all at once explains:

I’m from Long Island. My parents have a bakery. They wanted me to be a violinist. I took violin lessons from the time I was ﬁve. When I was nine- teen after a year at Julliard I quit. I was mediocre. I told my parents to go to hell. They never got over that. Then I went to City College and studied philosophy. I didn’t know what I was doing then I got drafted. Eddie and I were together in Korea. (File .)

The same information is woven more subtly into the brief sketches of Aaron included in the novel and even more tightly—and more performatively—into a short story written in  called “Milena’s Wedding” (file .; see the boxed text in this article), in which he emerges as the major character. While in the Funnyhouse sketches Aaron views Mrs. Crawford’s insanity with sympathetic detachment, in “Milena’s Wedding,” previously unpublished, such detachment becomes just cause to doubt Aaron Grossman’s own sense of self. “Milena’s Wedding” seems a later version of the Grossman narratives from the Funnyhouse files, though the story here is different: March Crawford is not married but is engaged to the vivacious Milena, who speaks constantly to Aaron of the upcoming nuptials;they still live in Africa, however, and Crawford is still “the brilliant swaggering Negro sociologist [...], one of those highly extroverted men who is always followed about by ranks of students, a brutal dynamic captain, obsessed with his work.” Here, Aaron has developed not only a name but a distinct personality, and, as narrator, he is no longer an outsider but an attention-seeking showman. He self-consciously introduces himself along with two other charac-

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  ters in the opening line: “The first time Milena spoke of Crawford had been at the affair at the University, a tea welcoming the new English professor, Professor Grossman, myself.” Two paragraphs later, when introducing the character Blake Hall, he again draws attention to his own identity:“Most of the time he sat quite erect, his shadowy blue eyes fixed on me Aaron Grossman.”These characters, unlike those of the earlier narratives, do not exist without Aaron’s perception, as he is quick to remind the reader. March Crawford triggers for Aaron memories of Blake, a close friend from the past, and the story of Milena’s wedding serves mostly as a frame for flashbacks to that relationship. Even in his memory, Aaron is an actor, a self-conscious performer playing the role of someone he wants to be. In the framed story, set in New York, he admires Blake from afar, but he pretends not to know who Blake is when they finally meet. The consummate “cynical” performer, according to Erving Goffman’s term, Blake “has no belief in his own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his audience” (Goffman :)—though he does want Blake to admire him. Sitting at a table at the local drugstore, sipping coffee, Aaron acts aloof when Blake approaches him and says, “I think you have the most brilliant mind.”Aaron recalls:“I acted as if I didn’t hear him. Then with my left hand I very slowly removed my dark glasses, took in Blake appraisingly and then as if something caught in my memory I lay down the glasses and let a slight smile come to my lips.” Goffman defines two kinds of self-expression, one intentional and one inci- dental, both of which explain Aaron Grossman.

The expressiveness of the individual [...] appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign activity: the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off. The first involves verbal symbols or their substitutes which he uses admittedly and solely to convey the information that he and the others are known to attach to these symbols. This is communication in the traditional and narrow sense. The second involves a wide range of action that others can treat as symptomatic of the actor, the expectation being that the action was performed for reasons other than the information conveyed in this way. (:)

For Blake, Aaron intentionally gives and gives off a series of signs designed to make himself seem uninterested, superior, and worthy of awe—all of which are far from the truth. When Blake reminds him who he is, “I’m in your English class,” Aaron feigns indifference, but the words he uses to describe his behavior are as precise as his performance:“‘Oh yes, yes,’ I drawled out the words. ‘Yes.’ I sprang up, very quickly, pulling out a chair for him, immediately, calling the waitress, ordering coffee for the two of us and immediately launching into a discussion about the class.” First he drawls, as if bored, and then he springs into action, as if to compensate for his lackadaisical beginning—both intentionally false impres- sions designed to disarm Blake. Then with his “discussion about the class,”he actually discusses the wrong class. He pretends to mistake Blake for a fellow music theory student at Julliard rather than a fellow English literature student at Co- lumbia, and in that way enables himself to boast of his musical prowess. With his forced mannerisms and feigned forgetfulness, Blake fashions himself as a serious and preoccupied musician. He is so controlled in orchestrating this effect that when Blake corrects him, he recalls, “I allowed my face to turn red and laughed slightly” (file .). Aaron self-consciously gives off signs to make himself seem unconscious of his performance. While Aaron deliberately misleads his friend, he confides in the reader with what he considers to be his true story: he played the violin as a child, was

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett

Milena’s Wedding Adrienne Kennedy

The first time Milena spoke of Crawford had been at the affair at the University, a tea welcoming the new English professor, Professor Grossman, myself. Over the clatter of tea things she pursued me humming Wagner and speaking of Crawford. I had come to Ghana for peace. Yet there Milena was after me speaking of loving and wanting to marry March Crawford; Crawford the brilliant swaggering Negro sociologist from Chicago, one of those highly extroverted men who is always followed about by ranks of students, a brutal dynamic captain, obsessed with his work. I admired him. And I noticed that he stared at me a great deal...... He stared at me the way Blake Hall had stared at me a year ago. Yes the class had been reading Kafka. Blake had sat in the last row. He had looked younger than his eighteen years, all paleness, his body slender and of medium height. He was fair-skinned even whitish, that whiteness that is peculiar to Negroes that are light skinned. To add to his paleness he had golden hair, straight hair, that he wore short and cropped close to his head. His most endearing feature was his blue eyes. He had not spoken in class unless the Professor forced him to speak. His voice was soft. Most of the time he sat quite erect, his shadowy blue eyes fixed on me Aaron Grossman. Several times I followed him out of Butler Library, then down the long walk but always at the cross-section I hesitated and watched him vanish. I began to consider it a miracle that I had taken that course in General Studies. Then one morning between classes I had seen him in the drug store on th and Broadway. I was sitting alone at a table in my dark suit drinking coffee wearing my usual dark glasses and smoking a cigarette in my usual short quick puffs. I couldn’t imagine how such a lucky thing could happen as to find him alone in the drug store. He had come right over to my table and burst out, “I think you have the most brilliant mind.”I acted as if I didn’t hear him. Then with my left hand I very slowly removed my dark glasses, took in Blake appraisingly and then as if something caught in my memory I lay down the glasses and let a slight smile come to my thin lips. “I’m in your English class,” Blake said. “Oh yes, yes,” I drawled out the words. “Yes.” I sprang up, very quickly, pulling out a chair for him, immediately, calling the waitress, ordering coffee for the two of us and immediately launching into a discussion about the class. “Yes,” I said, “I don’t really need that class because I’ve studied the violin since I was a child but the curriculum at Julliard insists that everyone have that disgusting theory.” Blake only stared at me. “Is this your first year at Julliard?” I asked, pushing his coffee to him. Blake explained in a quiet voice that we were in the same English class, that he did not go to Julliard but was in pre-medicine at Co- lumbia. I allowed my face to turn red and laughed slightly. “Oh,” I said, “Jesus am I sorry.” Then I explained to Blake that I was a violinist, that I got so mixed up, that I was terribly sorry and I could have sworn he was in my theory class. I told him it turned out that I only took one class at Columbia, that I had grown up in New York and my mother and uncle were violinists, and my uncle was at one time rather well known. I played in the Julliard orchestra (and did he know a Negro played the drums), I had given recitals yes sometimes it was exciting, but actually I was getting a little bored. We became friends, sitting in the drugstore at th street or in the Lions Den at Columbia, drinking cup after cup of coffee we discussed our favorite subjects. I did most of the talking while Blake sat abjectly. We talked about music, literature, Roman life, which was one of my greatest subjects and African art. And everything we discussed in the end turned back to our preoccupation and discovery with each other. Never had either felt they had so perfectly expressed themselves. Never had either felt that they had communicated with anyone. Never had we ever met anyone who saw us as we were. How happy we were!...... Milena pursues me humming Wagner and speaking of Crawford. The University walks are covered with dead moths.... I was older than I looked. In fact I was seven years older than Blake,  and coming up close to me one could discern lines about my eyes. I grew up in Brooklyn and I had gone to Julliard at eighteen.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy 

Everyone had expected me to be a brilliant violinist. My mother and uncle’s life was centered on my becoming a famous virtuoso. But after a while at Julliard I didn’t do well and soon found myself missing more and more classes. It seemed to me the teachers were inadequate. Quite mediocre people really. It thwarted me. Then quite unexpectedly I was drafted. The day before I went to the examination I drank a bottle of pure alcohol. I wanted to die. Then I was sent to basic training. I threatened to com- mit suicide and had to be imprisoned at Governors Island because I refused to go into the Korean War. My very good reason for not going was that I was a genius and my great sensitivity could not withstand the mechanics that governed the military world. I wrote a letter to the President explaining my feelings. They had me analyzed. I finally ended up wasting my entire time at Governors Island. That had been almost two years ago. When I met Blake I lived on rd Street and worked part time in a market research agency. I did not intend to take up the violin again for I realized I could quite possibly become a great writer. I wrote a great deal at night and worked at the Agency alternate mornings and afternoons, took the course at Columbia and also a writing course at the New School. I had a thing about Harlem and times I would put on my dark glasses and walk about th Street and think at last I had been recognized for the genius I was by Blake Hall. I was happy. Spring came. There was naturally a lot of deception involved, a lot of excuses invented, for Blake thought I went to Julliard...... Although I hadn’t told anyone in New York I didn’t actually have a post at the university, but I had been hired to teach English to the boys in the upper grades at Achimota College. It was no more than a high school. I had really expected to be more singular in the job but when I arrived in Accra I found there were many Americans. Being very lonely I walked alone in the sun. Milena and Crawford walked the same road. I watched for them. How terribly in love they were. I had begun to notice that the strength of nature in Africa added to my tormenting solitude so I watched for them often on the road going toward the ocean. For they often walked that road. “Hello Aaron,” they say... She tells me that Crawford is on a great trek in the northern country of Salaga. He has been gone for weeks but soon he will return. I go back to my room and lie under the mosquito nets. Harmattan moths fill the room. I arise and close the shutters; below the walks are covered with more dead moths. I go down to the Common Room and ask the barkeep to bring me a vodka; more dead moths lie on the bar. Nights before I go to sleep I think of Milena. I think of Milena and Crawford...... One day I heard that Crawford had accepted a permanent job with the University of Legon. I went to the celebration. Crawford was not there telling his great stories of treks. He was away. I was lonely. Thank God Milena was there speaking of the wedding. And humming Wagner. Milena is loved by Crawford. And for Milena, Crawford understands all the beauty of the universe. In each other they experience hope. Never has either felt so perfectly expressed. How happy they are. Thank God Milena was there speaking of the wedding. She says they discuss everything and everything in the end turns back to their discovery with each other. She speaks of the wedding all the time now. Milena recognizes Crawford for the true genius he is. She tells me in the evenings they often sit and listen to Wagner. I remember Blake and I were listening to Wagner once on rd Street. I sat on the floor my head against the couch. I told him, “I’ve found the most wonderful apartment on th Street. It has lovely white walks and a long hall- way in which to hang paintings that leads to a lovely room with an iron balustrade.” “You lie a lot,” Blake said. “What’s wrong?” I cried. “What’s wrong with you?” Blake said, “and why do you lie so much?” “I don’t know. Oh, because there are no curtains, no death or Valhalla, no standing on battlefields before Philippi, to lie is the only way to be recognized. I left the room and went out. ...The next days I did not go to the Philosophy class we had taken together the spring term. When I came in on the third day I hoped there would be a letter in the mailbox from Blake. There was none. I imagined a ringing phone. But there was none. I was driven from the silent apartment and hid in a section of Columbia’s Library where we had gone often and watched for him. When I returned to the apartment he was never there. I could not sleep. On no night did he phone. And he did not come. I dropped the Philosophy course...... Milena and Crawford. Often the thought of them keeps me from killing myself. Did you know that Milena was the name of Kafka’s mistress? On one of the nights that Blake did not call I tore a sheet

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of paper from my notebooks and wrote him a letter. I told him that he understood the beauty of the universe more than any human being alive. And that my life had been nothing but unfulfillment until I met him. And in him I experienced hope. Hope, when I read it I tore it up. And left the room. I walked along Broadway and looked for him everywhere. I felt like killing myself... I made up my mind I would go to San Francisco. I didn’t stay on the West Coast long but came back to New York and lived in the Village. I often looked for Blake but I could not find him. It occurred to me that perhaps I would go to Africa. Two days before my tea, in fact the first night I was in Accra, I went to a party at the Ambassador Hotel. March Crawford was there. He was a handsome Negro, light skinned with pale eyes. He told a great story of his trip to the Congo. The next morning I was sitting in the outdoor terrace adjoining the hotel when I became aware of a girl sitting opposite me. She stood up and came toward me humming Wagner. A beautiful strain from Tannheuser. I named her Milena. (;previously unpublished; file .) ©  Adrienne Kennedy

expected to be “a brilliant violinist,” went to Julliard, failed to attend class, was drafted, attempted suicide, was imprisoned for refusing to fight in Korea, and has since found part-time work at a market research agency. While willingly giving these facts, however, Aaron also unintentionally gives off important signs about himself to which he remains blind. Unlike his conversation with Blake, in his narrative he seems unable to control his self-image. He describes his own failures in the passive voice (“I [...] found myself missing more and more classes”) and blames them on other people (“It seemed to me the teachers were inadequate. Quite mediocre people really”). His superiority is overbearing, so much so that it calls his credibility into question—not only in the mind of the reader, but also in the minds of characters in the story: “My very good reason for not going [to Korea] was that I was a genius and my great sensitivity could not withstand the mechanics that governed the military world. I wrote a letter to the President explaining my feelings. They had me analyzed.” Aaron does not report the results of the analysis, only that he was held at Governors Island; still, with this information (as well as his method of relating it, and his suicide attempt), he calls his sanity into question. Aaron admits to being a liar—that is, he admits to the reader that he has lied to Blake. Aaron is not taken in by his own charms, and he is not delusional. His candidness in admitting his lies almost makes him seem trustworthy;however, Aaron treats the reader in exactly the same way he treats Blake. He is a compulsive liar and a cynical performer, and for him the truth is simply a matter of interpretation. While Aaron bluntly describes himself as such a masterly performer that he can even control his blushing face, the reader must wonder about Blake’s response. Aaron presents only his side of the story, so that Blake becomes something of an enigma: What does he see in Aaron? Perhaps at first he sees the “brilliant mind” from class and the signs that Aaron has purposely given and given off. With time, however, he apparently sees exactly what the reader sees.

We became friends, sitting in the drugstore [...]. I did most of the talking while Blake sat abjectly. [...] Never had either felt they had so perfectly expressed themselves. Never had either felt that they had communicated with anyone. Never had we ever met anyone who saw us as we were. How happy we were! (ﬁle .)

With Aaron’s use of the word “abjectly,” he acknowledges that Blake looked humble, hopeless, and not at all intrigued—an odd word choice for Aaron except that it implies his own prowess through comparison. His lack of concern with his audience eventually proves fatal to their relationship, as Blake’s abjectness intensi-

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  fies into repulsion. Aaron’s reading of both their moods—the three sentences that begin with “Never”—are fed by projection or imagination, as the friendship ends with Blake’s accusation, “You lie a lot.” Aaron never sees him again. “I felt like killing myself...” Aaron remembers of his loss of Blake. He goes to Africa to escape his misery, and there he meets Milena and Crawford. “Milena and Crawford. Often the thought of them keeps me from killing myself,” he recalls. While most of the narration focuses on Blake, Aaron breaks it with oc- casional references to Milena “humming Wagner,”walking with Crawford, speaking of Crawford, speaking of the wedding:“How happy they are.” His interest in Milena and Crawford seems benevolent and detached, and her happiness is his source of salvation:“Thank God Milena was there speaking of the wedding. [...] Milena recognizes Crawford for the true genius he is.” He revels in their bliss, but he does not see himself as a part of it; with them, he is simply an observer. Aaron’s generous affection for Milena and Crawford contrasts with his possessive obsession with Blake, seeming at first like a sign of growth for the character. However, in the story’s conclusion he reveals himself. He recalls having seen March Crawford at a party the first night he spent in Accra, and then:“The next morning I was sitting in the outdoor terrace adjoining the hotel when I became aware of a girl sitting opposite me. She stood up and came toward me humming Wag ner. A beautiful strain from Tannheuser. I named her Milena.” Milena is a figment of his imagination based on a woman who once walked toward him— and probably right past him. She appears as he is thinking of Crawford, whom he has likely never met, and hence he associates the two. Crawford reminds him of Blake; at the beginning of the story, he remembers Crawford “stared at me the way Blake Hall had stared at me a year ago.” By the end, he reveals a more cred- ible connection: March Crawford “was a handsome Negro, light skinned with pale eyes.” Blake, likewise, is “fair-skinned,” with “golden hair” and “blue eyes.” Their physical similarities form the basis of Aaron’s fantasy. Milena, humming Wag ner, symbolizes Aaron himself, and hence he relishes her happiness; she is his projection. Meanwhile, however, part of what attracts him to March Crawford is that he “told a great story of his trip to the Congo.” In this storyteller, Aaron also recognizes himself, and Crawford’s “great story” inspires his own narration. “Milena’s Wedding” grew out of the Funnyhouse sketches of Mrs. Crawford, yet here Mrs. Crawford has disappeared, along with the delicate madness that defines the sketches and the play. Milena bears no resemblance to Mrs. Crawford: she is happy, humming, and “terribly in love.” Certainly she does not suffer from isolation; even when March Crawford goes away, Milena keeps humming: “I went to the celebration. Crawford was not there telling his great stories of treks. He was away. I was lonely. [...] Milena was [...] humming Wagner.”Milena seems content in Crawford’s absence, yet Aaron feels abandoned and speaks of his “tormenting solitude.” In Crawford’s absence, he relives his abandonment by Blake, and, in Milena’s chatting, he casts himself as stable and strong in the performance in his mind. Except for the final paragraph of the story, Aaron seems oblivious to the imaginary nature of his friends. They seem as real as Funnyhouse Sarah’s four selves—and they similarly prove to be signs of his own madness. Aaron thus serves as a precursor for Sarah as well as for Raymond, her antithesis in Funny- house. Throughout the sketches and the story, pieces of him evolve into pieces of them, and as he fragments, he becomes, like Sarah’s selves—and like all Kennedy characters—a mass of contradictions. Aaron resembles Raymond in his egotism, his dominance, and his Jewishness. This Jewishness seems contrived as a symbol of difference rather than as a statement about religion; Raymond is not a practicing Jew but becomes stereotyped as an oppressor because he is Jewish, and the same might be said of Aaron. Several critics have brought up this issue with Funnyhouse, almost but not quite suggest-

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett ing anti-Jewish sentiments on the part of the playwright. In fact, looking back over Kennedy’s manuscripts, one finds several examples of anti-Jewish sentiment. In Diary of Lights, professors with Jewish names invite black students to their homes to validate liberal-minded self-images, a character named Margo is described mockingly in the stage directions as “Jewish poetess or would like to be,” and a black female character named Ellen pronounces, “At least I’ve committed adultery and I live with a Jew [...]” (file .). More offensive stereotypes appear on a single page of the “Untitled Novel” (re: New York, /), an unnumbered, out-of- context page that has neither beginning nor end. Again, here, Jews are the evil op- pressors and African Americans their innocent victims. These “greedy old Jews” and the “Negroes [who] got gypped” parallel the relationship between Raymond and Sarah, him dominant and cruel, her innocent and helpless (file .). Yet Mrs. Crawford, the “delicate Jewess” of the early Funnyhouse papers, is de- cidedly sympathetic, and Kennedy makes commendatory comments about Jews in People Who Led to My Plays, where she respectfully recalls childhood friends or acquaintances who were Jewish, and some who had survived or escaped con- centration camps (b:, ). Speaking of Aaron Grossman, Kennedy explains that he was based on someone she and her husband once knew:“We had a friend who was a poet; he was a Jewish poet. He was the most compelling person, and he and his wife were very good friends of ours, his name was Evan, and I based this character on him” (Kennedy ). Perhaps the most interesting remarks on this subject are made by Cisley/Pearl in the “Untitled Novel” who finds Aaron attractive because he is Jewish, yet she converts him to Jesus in her mind:

He sat staring upward out of the window, his face ethereal, how sweet, how attentive to the Flagstad, as though he beheld a grand annunciation. Beautiful Aaron, Savior Aaron, Aaron who is the history of all the world, Aaron of Nazareth, Aaron of the Continent, Aaron of the Roman empire, who are you, are you Caesar, are you Brutus, Aaron of the Old Testa- ment, that’s who you are [...]. (ﬁle .)

The narrator describes Cisley/Pearl: “She pictured him [as] Jesus standing in the sun by the white gate, his beautiful black hair, a tall lean ethereal Jew with a gaze from the dark sombulant eyes, the dark mustache. It was easy for her to seek him as her new savior” (file .). In her muddled infatuation she negates any difference between Judaism and Christianity, failing to take into account any inherent opposition. By casting Aaron as her savior, she creates a new religion of her own, a post–Judeo-Christian amalgamation with meaning only for herself, an unlikely combination of omissions and dialectics. These references to Judaism serve as a reminder of the tenuous love-hate relationship between self and Other. Cisley/ Pearl’s religion is the symbolic culmination of all the Kennedy references to Jews, its hybridity and impossibility reflective of Kennedy’s dramatic world. With this spectrum of remarks, Kennedy herself mirrors the multilayering of Sarah’s selves rather than the reductive distinction between Raymond and Sarah. And yet this particular hybridity never appears in the writings that made Kennedy famous. In gender and religion, Aaron clearly resembles Raymond, but with his fragile ego and delusions, he anticipates Sarah. Thus he ties together two oppos- ing characters as alternate selves in a synthesis that would seem implausible without the manuscript drafts of Funnyhouse and “Milena’s Wedding.” With the two smallest references to Aaron Grossman in “Letter,” Kennedy directs her reader to her earliest work to see how her selves have developed. In this way, she not only raises and answers questions about her writing, but she enriches her performance by adding a revealing layer to her liminal stage, and she ultimately enhances the portrait of the playwright by including the ugly along with the good.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  The Playwright As Performance Moving from the Yaqui dancer to a discussion of American acting styles, Schechner writes, “Interestingly enough, the more mature, skilled, and respected the performer, the more likely she or he is to practice an incomplete or unresolved transformation” (:). Thus the best actors, like the Yaqui dancers, leave “part of the main actor’s face [...] showing—thereby undercutting the very illusion [...]” (:). Since its beginning in the mid-s, Kennedy’s writing has become increasingly mature, skilled, and respected—and with her quasi- nonﬁctional alter ego Suzanne Alexander, the author does indeed practice “an incomplete or unresolved transformation” that lets her “face” show. As part of becoming this consummate performer, she harkens back to the days when she was less skilled, and by recalling her own false starts, she adds dimension to her performance, making her composite self seem more human and, ironically, less in control.

With her composite and contradictory self, Kennedy not only establishes herself, but she creates a context for herself, subtly establishing herself as part of the canon.

Kennedy has further practiced “an incomplete or unresolved transformation” through her physical presence. She has taught playwriting and visited universities as an acclaimed writer, and her campus persona is quiet and maternal, hardly what one would expect from the author of her plays. “How can the same woman who fusses about her students create such harrowing dramas?” wonders Patti Harrigan, who, in a proﬁle for the Boston Globe, portrays Kennedy as fragile and delicate:

Fragile, in fact, would be a good way to describe the -year-old playwright, who at -foot- weighs in at barely  pounds. There’s something delicate about her, a sort of dreaminess that gives her an almost ethereal quality. She tends to get a faraway look when recalling youthful fantasies about breaking bread with the Brontë sisters or hanging out with Hemingway in some Paris bar. Her laugh is gentle, almost girlish. Her plays, however, are another thing entirely. ()

Kennedy creates an expectation of herself with her plays, but she does not phys- ically play the role one might expect. Seated in an armchair rather than standing behind a podium, she appears even smaller and more restrained—hardly the forceful presence one might anticipate from reading her plays. Rather than de- livering lectures, she delivers herself to university audiences as an open book in question-and-answer sessions. Kennedy’s playwright persona exists not onstage but on the page. The plays suggest the looming presence of a forceful and intim- idating artist—one whom Kennedy acknowledges but hardly seems to know:“It does seem like two diﬀerent people. [...] There’s the person getting ready to walk out now and teach, and there’s the person who writes the plays. I don’t know that person, although I’ve come to trust her. I’m a mystery to myself” (in Harrigan ). Thus the mature Kennedy, like the best actors, leaves part of her face showing and undercuts the illusion—but she also leaves one wondering which part is face, and which part illusion. With her composite and contradictory self, Kennedy not only establishes herself, but she creates a context for herself, subtly establishing herself as part of the canon. “It is not by chance that the names of Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee,

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett Ed Bullins, Amiri Baraka, Lorraine Hansberry, Michael Kahn, Joseph Papp and others are mentioned,” writes Wolfgang Binder of his interview with Kennedy, labeling it “a document on American theatre history” (:–). In the interview, Kennedy speaks of these figures as friends, colleagues, or inspirations, and she portrays herself against the historical backdrop from which she developed. Kennedy has always been fascinated by fame. In PeopleWho Led to My Plays, she remembers herself as a junior high school student: “In the evenings after I’d done my homework I’d sit at the kitchen table and write penny postcards to movie stars to get their autographed photos” (:). As an adult, she has received correspondence far more personal and significant than autographs, and her files at the Ransom Center include cards and letters from, among others, Gwen- dolyn Brooks, Robert Brustein, Joseph Chaikin, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Nikki Giovanni, Dustin Hoffman, James Earl Jones, John Lennon, Lloyd Richards, Ishmael Reed, and Audrey Wood. Like Binder’s interview, the letters constitute a document on American theatre history, but they not only set her against the backdrop, they include her. They position Kennedy not as a name dropper but as a name. These letters serve as an important piece of the Adrienne Kennedy puzzle; however, like every other clue, they are as elusive as they are revealing. The files include only letters to her and none by her, providing only half a conversation. Kennedy thus (perhaps unwittingly) orchestrates the effect of these letters even though she has not written one word. Reading the files en masse, one arrives at a picture of the playwright as others see her and yet remains conscious that these are the papers she has chosen to preserve. One necessarily imagines a Kennedy who is fictionalized yet grounded in documentation. The portrait of the young playwright that emerges from the letters is especially compelling. Several notes from Albee suggest a supportive and enduring friendship:“I often wonder about you—what you’re writing, where you’re living, how you are. [...A]re you writing? That’s the most important thing. And, if you are writing, why haven’t you had the patience to type out a copy of something and send it to me so I can see how you’re progressing?” (file .). A  letter from Clinton Atkinson, on Lucille Lortel letterhead, suggests Kennedy’s anxiety about publication: “The gentlemen at New Directions [...] are not putting off reading your plays; they don’t publish a lot, but they are a small outfit and do a great deal of their work themselves and so are generally behind when they are silent, not rude” (file .). Mixed in with such tension is a sense of anticipation. For instance, a  letter from Longmans, Green, & Co. Limited informs her that her short story “Because of the King of France” has been reprinted in an anthology (file .). And two  letters from Jerome Robbins peak with possibilities: the first inviting her to participate in a workshop, and the second concluding: “And in answer to your questions; yes, I do think you could write a ballet” (file .). Since the files are arranged alphabetically rather than chronologically, some of their initial mysteries are ultimately solved by the reader. For instance, an  Jan- uary  letter from press representative Howard Atlee (in the A–C file) to Elia Kazan promises a pair of free tickets to opening night of Funnyhouse of a Negro: “Please let me know if it will be convenient for you to attend this performance, or if you would prefer to go at another time” (file .). One might wonder if Atlee (or Kennedy) was presumptuous in inviting the renowned director, until reaching the D–K file with Kazan’s letters. His secretary wrote, on  July : “Mr. Kazan would like to know if you could come in to see him on Wednesday, July , at : ..?” (file .). The results of this meeting (if it occurred) are not documented, but Kazan must have seen Funnyhouse, for on  February , he wrote, “I enjoyed the performance very much. I found it full of feeling and talent. I am returning herewith your script” (file .). Some exchanges remain enigmatic, notably a series of notes from Alan Arkin that begins with a postcard

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021 Adrienne Kennedy  (possibly dated , but smudged):“Dear Miss Kennedy:I would very much like to read your play. If you send it I can get back to you quite soon” (file .). In a letter dated  June , Arkin writes, “I think this is a marvelous idea but I’m confused [...]. I got the feeling I was reading notes for the final play” (file .). His final letter, dated  June of that same year, is a polite dismissal:“I still find it charming and very moving but I think it needs a director that is less structured than I am” (file .). Looking at these three messages, the reader cannot tell who initiated the correspondence or why—but one can smile at the potential mis- match of theatrical styles. The later letters include news of teaching appointments (Yale, ;Princeton, ; Berkeley, ; Harvard, ) and grant awards (on letterheads from the Ford Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation), as well as ac- knowledgments and requests from theatres ( Julia Miles of the American Place Theatre, :“We would be interested in reading anything you write, I hope you know that!” [file .]). Several critics have written her warm responses, apparently to her own notes of thanks (Richard Watts of the New York Post,  Jan- uary :“One of the loveliest things that has ever happened to me in my many years as critic was to receive your delightful letter” [file .]). Completing the circle she began in junior high, she eventually received fan mail from the same people to whom she had sent it. Elizabeth Taylor wrote about People Who Led to My Plays: “Dear Adrienne, I received a copy of your book, and it is very beautifully done. I wish you much success with it” (file .). Gwendolyn Brooks gushed: “What a privilege to receive this kind of note from you! Thank you so much! You say modestly ‘I am a playwright.’ Of course [double underline], I know that!— and have respected and admired you ever since the beautifully poetic ‘A Rat’s Mass’” (file .). Kennedy has evolved into a member of an established commu- nity of which she was once merely a fan. Within her plays, Kennedy positions herself against a similar backdrop, achiev- ing the same effect. Along with her many references in her plays to other writers, she frequently includes long quotations, often without quotation marks; this is especially true of the later plays in which the language of Bram Stoker, Thomas Hardy, even Napoleon and Josephine, figures prominently. As Suzanne Alexan- der speaks these writers’ words, she likewise quotes the plays and manuscripts of Adrienne Kennedy—thereby creating a level playing field among her canonized heroes and herself. Kennedy and Shakespeare thus become equal forces, and, sig- nificantly, Suzanne’s son Teddy is as comfortable speaking Hamlet’s words as his own. The lack of distinctions between truth and fiction that characterizes Ken- nedy’s work evolves into a lack of distinctions among the words of great writers, or among the great writers themselves. In fact, one of the most fascinating as- pects of the manuscripts is how they are literally cut and pasted together. Blocks of text clipped from previously published pieces are pasted into the middle of pages, surrounded by Kennedy’s scribbling. These text blocks might be from Kennedy’s own work or from Bram Stoker or anyone; she never identifies the source. By quoting herself side-by-side with the established greats, Kennedy becomes one of them, effectively canonizing herself. “Letter to My Students” includes so many layers of narrative and so many literary references that one might view it as a document about the nature of writing. With all these layers, Kennedy also interrogates the nature of being—and here one more subtle allusion to the manuscripts warrants mention. Suzanne considers her son Teddy’s play on Robert Johnson, and several short scenes of that play appear in “Letter”—all about a missing man named Honeybunch:

MAN: Someone was found murdered in the bottom. ROBERT: Honeybunch?

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/1054204054742417 by guest on 25 September 2021  Claudia Barnett MAN: At ﬁrst they thought it was him. But it’s an older man. Part of his face is missing. They took him to Hawkins Funeral Home. They’ve laid him out. Most everybody’s there. (Kennedy [] :)

A few lines down, one character remarks to another:“People just disappear in this town. Especially colored people. They’ll never find that boy” (). The subject matter parallels Teddy’s own life, his suffering in legal limbo after his harassment by the police; and it seems an appropriate play for him to write. However, the script of Teddy’s play existed long before Teddy: Kennedy wrote it as a screen treatment in . Thus attributing its writing to Teddy leads to further Aaron Grossman—like interrogations of the many levels of reality: Kennedy equals Teddy, Kennedy equals Teddy’s mother, and Kennedy equals Kennedy. Superim- pose upon this equation the fact that Kennedy’s maiden name is Hawkins and that she’s therefore named the funeral home after herself, and these layers echo with riddles and recriminations. Even more fascinating is what one finds when looking in the Robert Johnson folder at the Ransom Center: a commercial press release about the film with a description of Johnson that could almost be (except for the fact that he was “rural and uneducated”) about Kennedy herself:

People want to own Robert, understand him, explain him. Where did he come from, but more—where did he spring from? How did he create what he created? How come? Facts, particularly sketchy ones, don’t tell us that. Adrienne Kennedy’s Robert Johnson is intentionally ﬁction, even though it may actually coincide with some of the “facts.” It intentionally concentrates on the more creative process [...]. [...T]hat Johnson was a creative genius, is all the more fascinating because he was Black, rural and uneducated—and “still” succeeded in moving enormous numbers of people [...]. How did he do that? [...] How come? (ﬁle .)

The questions raised here are the same ones people ask about Kennedy—questions that address not the facts of one’s life but of one’s being. Kennedy understands and anticipates moviegoers’ common complaint about screenplays that duplicate details but seem out of synch with the books on which they are based. In her screen treatment, Kennedy responds with fiction because, as this press release suggests, fiction is the best way to find truth—which is ultimately the lesson of Kennedy’s self-performance. She writes a film that is “intentionally fiction” as a way of better presenting and preserving the truth. With her performative identity, she ultimately achieves the same effect for herself.

Notes . All source materials from the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the Univer- sity of Texas at Austin will be cited by ﬁle number only. .For a complete discussion of Sarah’s projections, see my article, “A Prison of Object Rela- tions: Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro”(). . The Alexander Plays includes four one-acts: She Talks to Beethoven (), The Ohio State Mur- ders (), The Film Club (A Monologue by Suzanne Alexander;not yet produced), and The Dramatic Circle (a radio play). These plays (like those published in her earlier collection Adri- enne Kennedy in One Act [] and several other works) are reprinted in The Adrienne Kennedy Reader (). Kennedy’s subsequent writing, such as “Letter to My Students on My Sixty-ﬁrst Birthday by Suzanne Alexander” and Dream Deprivation Chamber, also include Suzanne Alexander as the main character.

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.“Adrienne Kennedy is one of only five playwrights to be included in the third edition of the Norton Anthology of American Literature” (Sollors viii). .I am grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Harry Ransom Humanities Re- search Center, and Middle Tennessee State University’s Non-Instructional Assignment Committee for the fellowships and awards that enabled me to study Kennedy’s collected manuscripts. . The Ransom Center librarians maintain the documents in the same condition as when they were received, and so readers may not attempt to restore the documents to order. . There is one minor difference between the two quotations: While the first ends with the words “down to Superior” (), the second simply says “down Superior” (). .Linda Kintz writes of Raymond:“The Jewish intellectual here momentarily seems to sym- bolize white male oppression in general. But though Kennedy seems to fall into a too-ready anti-Semitism here, another of her works, A Rat’s Mass, investigates the relationship between fascism’s murder of Jews with violence against African Americans and women” (:). Thus while she raises the charge of anti-Semitism, Kintz immediately forgives the playwright for undoing the image with a later play (one that contains no positive images of Jews, only negative insinuations about Nazis). Elin Diamond, more interestingly, ad- dresses the issue in a personal manner to reveal its Brechtian potential (:). . This letter is simply dated “August,” no year. . This mention of a script remains unresolved. .Given the date of this correspondence, Arkin may have been reading Kennedy’s An Evening with Dead Essex () or Starring Galileo (/). .I have not found any indication that this film was ever completed or released. The author of the press release is not credited.

References Barnett, Claudia  “A Prison of Object Relations:Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro.” Mod- ern Drama , :–. Binder, Wolfgang  “A MELUS Interview: Adrienne Kennedy.” MELUS , :–. Blumenthal, Ralph  “A Writer Braces for the Attention.” New York Times  July:C–. Diamond, Elin  Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater. New York:Routledge.  “An Interview with Adrienne Kennedy.” Studies in American Drama, 1945–Present :–. Goﬀman, Erving  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York:Anchor Books. Harrigan, Patti  “Adrienne Kennedy Is Fragile and Ferocious.” Boston Globe  March:N. Kennedy, Adrienne – Adrienne Kennedy Papers. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The University of Texas at Austin.  “A Growth of Images.” Interview by Lisa Lehman. TDR ,  (T):–. a“Adrienne Kennedy.” Interview by Kathleen Betsko and Rachel Koenig. In In- terviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, edited by Betsko and Koenig, – . New York:Morrow Tree Books. b People Who Led to My Plays. New York:TCG.  Deadly Triplets: A Theatre Mystery and Journal. Minneapolis: University of Min- nesota Press.  The Alexander Plays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  Interview by Sydné Mahone. In Moon Marked and Touched by Sun:Plays by African- American Women, edited by Sydné Mahone, –. New York:TCG.

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 The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Introduction by Werner Sollors. Minneapolis: Uni- versity of Minnesota Press.  [] “Letter to My Students on My Sixty-ﬁrst Birthday by Suzanne Alexander.” In The Adrienne Kennedy Reader, –. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Originally published in the Kenyon Review , :–. Kennedy, Adrienne, and Adam P. Kennedy  Sleep Deprivation Chamber. New York:Theatre Communications Group. Kintz, Linda  The Subject’s Tragedy: Political Poetics, Feminist Theory,and Drama. Ann Arbor: Uni- versity of Michigan Press. Phelan, Peggy  Unmarked:The Politics of Performance. New York:Routledge. Pirandello, Luigi  [] Six Characters in Search of an Author, translated by Felicity Firth. In Pirandello: Col- lected Plays. Vol. , edited by Robert Reitty, –. New York:Riverrun Press. Sainer, Arthur  “Gavella Orchestrates a Sigh,” review of A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, by Adrienne Kennedy, Martinson Hall/Public Theatre, New York, Village Voice  November: , . Schechner, Richard  Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sollors, Werner  Introduction. The Adrienne Kennedy Reader, edited by Adrienne Kennedy, vii–xv. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Williams, Tennessee  “Production Notes.” The Glass Menagerie. New York:New Directions.  [] Suddenly Last Summer. In Four Plays, –. New York:Signet Classic.

Claudia Barnett is Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University.Her essays on Adrienne Kennedy’s plays, which grew out of her 1994 doctoral dissertation, have ap- peared in Modern Drama, American Drama, and Theatre Journal. In 2002, thanks to a fellowship from the Andrew W.Mellow Foundation,she studied Kennedy’s manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. This essay, as well as an earlier version presented at the Second Conference on American Theatre in Málaga, Spain (2004), is the result of that research.

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