Unraveling the Landscape
In December 2017, as rehearsals began for He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box at Theatre for a New Audience, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins spoke by phone with Adrienne Kennedy from her home in Virginia.
BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS: How did this play emerge?
ADRIENNE KENNEDY: I wasn’t expecting to write a play. Not in the least bit. I write loads and loads of journals, but somehow this play just emerged. Because I got angry—I was angry at my grandson’s high school in Virginia. It so reminded me of Ohio State in the ’50s, and that made me very angry.
What was going on with your grandson’s high school?
Well, there were few Black kids, and they seemed to stand out, in an uncomfortable way that I remember. I just couldn’t believe that they were going through the same thing, basically, that I went through at Ohio State. They felt very isolated.
I love stories about plays that just sort of “show up.” Did this emerge out of that journaling practice, or did it arrive fully formed as a play?
The room in my son’s house faces all these trees, and I’m just staring at all these trees—and I have loads of photographs. My mother kept all these photographs. I found a photograph
