“The Hardest Role I’ve Ever Played”: Your First Look at Audra McDonald in Ohio State Murders

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Audra McDonald returns to the stage in a moving play from Adrienne Kennedy—who is making her broadway debut at 91.

Kenny Leon.

In 1989, Adrienne Kennedy was commissioned to write a play by her hometown playhouse—the Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland. The resulting work was in part inspired by her experience as an undergraduate at Ohio State University as a Black woman in the 1940s. That play,winds and weaves through the memories of Suzanne Alexander—an avatar for Kennedy—as she returns to her alma mater as a guest lecturer, confronting racism and loss as a dark mystery unravels.

At 91 years old, Kennedy makes her Broadway debut as a playwright with the production, despite a thriving and exciting career, championed by fellow playwrights like Edward Albee and winning an Obie award in 1964 for her playKennedy succinctly explained why she’s only now making her Broadway debut as a nonagenarian: “It’s because I’m a Black woman.

“I feel a huge responsibility to make sure that I am telling the story to the best of my ability,” McDonald says. “And especially for [Adrienne Kennedy], since this is her Broadway debut, to make sure that we're infusing it with as much of the truth and capturing the spirit of Suzanne Alexander, the character, but at the same time, I'm wanting to capture the spirit of who Adrienne Kennedy is as well.

And in an effort to make sure that no deserving Black playwright has to wait 90 years to make a Broadway bow,

 

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