Book contents
Chapter 1 - Adrienne Kennedy and Cecil Taylor
“With Whom Can I Co-exist in a True Union?”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 November 2025
Summary
A comprehensive examination of the plays and prose of Adrienne Kennedy, with particular focus on two works she premiered in 1976: A Rat’ s Mass / Procession in Shout, an operatic adaptation of her early play A Rat’ s Mass, composed and directed by the jazz composer and pianist Cecil Taylor; and A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, a play derived from Kennedy’s fascination with Hollywood film and her memory of her brother’s devastating car accident. The chapter also explores Kennedy’s experiments in visual art, with particular attention to her own and her mother’s scrapbooks, her assemblage of photographed objects ("Cherished Objects from the Past"), her use of quotation, and the mixed-media nature of her manuscripts.
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- American Performance in 1976The Evolution of an Avant-Garde, pp. 44 - 103Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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