In 2022, Kennedy received the Gold Medal for Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters;[3] given every six years, it has been awarded to only 16 people, including Eugene O'Neill.
[4] Kennedy has been contributing to American theater since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her haunting, fragmentary lyrical dramas.
Exploring the violence racism brings to people's lives, Kennedy's plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation.
"[5] Kennedy is noted for the use of surrealism in her plays, which are often plotless and symbolic, drawing on mythical, historical, and imaginary figures to depict and explore the African-American experience.
"[7] In 1995, critic Michael Feingold of the Village Voice wrote that, "with Samuel Beckett gone, Adrienne Kennedy is probably the boldest artist now writing for the theater.
[13] The play draws on Kennedy's African and European heritage as she explores a "black woman's psyche, riven by personal and inherited psychosis, at the root of which is the ambiguously double failure of both rapacious white society and its burdened yet also distorted victims.
Kennedy used the alias Adrienne Cornell for the short story "Because of the King of France", published in Black Orpheus: A Journal of African and Afro-American Literature in 1963.
[10] In 2022, Kennedy made her Broadway debut with the opening of her 1992 play Ohio State Murders at the James Earl Jones Theatre[24][25][26] on December 8, starring Audra McDonald, and directed by Kenny Leon.
[30] Speaking in an interview with Time Out magazine about what she hopes audiences will take away from seeing the play, Kennedy stated: "I want them to realize that they're listening to a very articulate, thoughtful American Black woman and, perhaps, they should pay attention to what she's saying.
She Talks to Beethoven, Ohio State Murders, The Film Club, and The Dramatic Circle are collectively known as the Alexander Plays, and were published together under that title in 1992.
[46] In July 1995, Kennedy was named playwright in residence for the September 1995–May 1996 season with the Signature Theater Company in New York City.
[55][56] The Dramatists Guild's president, Amanda Green, said in a statement: "Adrienne Kennedy has used her immense storytelling skill with beautifully brutal imagery to share her theatrical dreamscapes with the world....From 1964's Funnyhouse of a Negro to 2018's He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, Adrienne has inspired countless young writers by remaining true to herself and her voice, knowing that what she had to say would resonate.