Original language English First performance 1965 Place premiered Westport | Date premiered 1965 | |
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Characters SheBastard's Black MotherGoddam FatherThe White BirdThe Negro ManShakespeareChaucerWilliam the Conqueror Subject Race-relationsMortalityMemoryIdentity Similar Funnyhouse of a Negro, The Ohio State Murders, Sleep Deprivation Chamber, Dutchman | ||
The Owl Answers is a short one-act experimental drama by Adrienne Kennedy. It premiered in 1965 at The White Barn Theatre in Westport, CT. The play was Kennedy’s second, coming one year after her most famous piece, the Obie award-winning, Funnyhouse of a Negro. Subsequent productions have been produced as part of a two act show, Cities in Bezique, along with another one-act of Kennedy's; A Beast Story.
Contents
Summary
An African-American girl dreams of establishing a heritage and imagines she is applying to bury her father in Westminster Cathedral. Historical figures scorn her: whoever heard of a black person with such a heritage? Her father was white, she protests, and her mother was his family's cook. As a child she had to enter through the back door when she wanted to visit him.
Characters
Setting
The scene of the play travels seamlessly between a New York subway, the Tower of London, a Harlem hotel room, and St. Peter's. In each case, the scene is shaped like a subway car, filled with the sounds of the subway and utilize the common structures of a subway car.
Themes
Identity, mortality, memory, and race relations.
Reception
Though being a companion piece to Funnyhouse of a Negro, The Owl Answers is most commonly seen in tandem with another of Kennedy's plays; A Beast's Story. This tandem was subsequently renamed Cities in Bezique when it traveled to Off-Broadway.
“With Beckett gone, Kennedy is probably the boldest artist now writing for the theatre.” -Michael Feingold, critic for the Village Voice, on The Owl Answers.
Walter Kerr reviewed the Off-Broadway production for the New York Times. He had this to say, "It is conceivable that this is a kind of theatre and that by simply immersing ourselves in it, without asking rational questions of it or trying to force it into some other shape, we might find ourselves clothed by the rain of images, fed by the accumulating overlay. I wouldn't rule the possibility out, any more than I'd wave away Miss Kennedy as a writer: There is a spare, unsentimental intensity about her that promises to drive a dagger home some day."
After a 2016 incarnation of the play, in which The Owl Answers was paired with Dutchman, at the Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, MN, reviewer from Minnesota Monthly, Laura Schmidt, had this to say, "The Owl Answers, directed by Talvin Wilks, is bold but unconventional, addressing gender, race, and identity. With the script’s opening direction of “The scene is a New York subway car is the Tower of London is a Harlem hotel room in St. Peter’s,” it’s clear that playwright Adrienne Kennedy created an impossible world to stage. And this staging of The Owl Answers comes about as close to Kennedy’s wild imagination as possible. With a rotating stage, lifting panels, and fall-away walls, the subway car becomes supernatural. Masked figures with wings creepily saunter around the stage in elaborate costumes, their echoing voices filling the stage. But despite these elements and an emotional performance from Van as the character of She, the nonexistent narrative of Kennedy’s incredibly abstract text weighs down the production, making it almost incomprehensible by the end." She goes on to say that, "In the 60s these shows were meant to boil blood, to provoke, to push back against violent racism. It feels like both these shows have accomplished the same task almost 50 years later, even if one succeeds in addressing this more strongly than the other."