“UNDER THE MOON” – IMAGES AND FORMS OF ‘FEMALENESS’ IN ADRIENNE KENNEDY’S PLAYS

Gabriella Tóth

doi:10.2478/genst-2013-0015

.blurhash-client-img { display: none !important; }

“UNDER THE MOON” – IMAGES AND FORMS OF ‘FEMALENESS’ IN ADRIENNE KENNEDY’S PLAYS

Gender Studies

Volume 12 (2013): Issue 1 (December 2013)

By: Gabriella Tóth

Open Access

|Feb 2014

Abstract

This paper sheds light on the challenging imagery of femaleness in Adrienne Kennedy’s plays. Reshaping dramatic forms, she deconstructs the traditional narratives of motherhood, child bearing and birth. Her plays link the images of reproduction and proliferation with that of death. Kennedy reconstructs the fragmented self through visions of the inner terrain of the psyche which is projected through the moon-like, ever changing female body.

References

Barnett, Claudia. 1996.“This Fundamental Challenge to Identity: Reproduction and Representation in the Drama of Adrienne Kennedy.” in Theatre Journal 2(48): 141-165.
Search in Google Scholar
Bigsby, W. E. Christopher. 2004. Modern American Drama 1945-2000. Cambridge: Grove Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Cohn, Ruby. 1982. New American Dramatists: 1960-1980. New York: Grove Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. “Of Our Spiritual Striving” in Souls of Black Folks [Online]. Available: http://www.bartleby.com/114/1.html [Accessed 2013, June 16].
Search in Google Scholar
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan. 1979. The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Kennedy, Adam P. and Kennedy, Adrienne. 1996. Sleep Deprivation Chamber. New York: Theatre Communications Group Inc.
Search in Google Scholar
Kennedy, Adrienne. 2001. “A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White” in The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Werner Sollors (Ed.). New York: Knopf Inc., pp. 62-78.
Search in Google Scholar
Kennedy, Adrienne. 2001. “Funnyhouse of a Negro” in The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Werner Sollors (Ed.). New York: Knopf Inc., pp. 11-26.
Search in Google Scholar
Kennedy, Adrienne. 2001. “Lesson in Dead Language” in The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Werner Sollors (Ed.). New York: Knopf Inc.,pp. 43-46.
Search in Google Scholar
Kennedy, Adrienne. 2001. “Motherhood” in The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Werner Sollors (Ed.). New York: Knopf Inc., pp. 228-233.
Search in Google Scholar
Kennedy, Adrienne. 2001. “Ohio State Murders” in The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Werner Sollors (Ed.). New York: Knopf Inc., pp. 151-173.
Search in Google Scholar
Kennedy, Adrienne. 2001. “The Owl Answers” in The Adrienne Kennedy Reader. Werner Sollors (Ed.). New York: Knopf Inc., pp. 30-43.
Search in Google Scholar
Langston, Hughes. 1927. “Mulatto” in Mixed Roots [Online]. Available: http://mixedroots.blogspot.hu/2008/08/mulatto-by-langston-hughes.html [Accessed 2013, May 10].
Search in Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni. 2004. Beloved. California: Vintage Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni. 2007. The Bluest Eye. California: Vintage Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Patsalidis, Savas. 1995. “Adrienne Kennedy’s heterotopias and the (I'm)possibilities of the (Black) Female Self” in Staging Difference Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama. Maurice Maufort (Ed) New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., pp. 301-19.
Search in Google Scholar
Schroeder, Patricia R. 1995. “American Drama, Feminist Discourse, and Dramatic Form: A Defense of Critical Pluralism” in Drama, Feminist Discourse, and Dramatic Form: A Defense of 263 Critical Pluralism in Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. Catherine Schuler and Karen Laughlin (Eds.). London: Associate University Press, pp. 66-79.
Search in Google Scholar