Rewriting Historical Narratives Adrienne Kennedy's historic interventions

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Notes

¹The section where Brown analyses Kennedy's autobiography – People Who Led to My Plays – is the only part in which Brown speaks of the inclusion of historical events in Kennedy's works. Brown uses Kennedy's confession in People as an indication of how and why Kennedy was motivated to explore certain themes in her plays. She mentions that it is Kennedy's trip to Ghana that inspired her to include themes of African revolution and decolonialization in her early works. However, most of Brown's analysis focuses on Kennedy's autobiography. She does not further analyse Kennedy's incorporation of historical incidents in her plays from a theatrical perspective.

²Douglas Wilder was the first black governor of Virginia. He served one term, from 1990–1994.

³Despite its proximity to Washington, D.C., Virginia is a southern state and has a long history of racist ideology. For example, Virginia was one of the last states to remove antimiscegenation laws (Loving v.Commonwealth of Virginia, 1969).

⁴In the following paragraphs, we will use upper-case ‘actors’, ‘director’, ‘projectionist etc. to indicate members in this fictional troupe in Kennedy's play, to distinguish them from real-life theatre performers, directors and crew who participate in the production of the show.