Short answers, pulled from the story.
Dennis Kennedy, born on the 1st of November 1940 in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the Samuel Beckett Professor of Drama and Theatre (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin. He is known for his scholarly books on Shakespeare, theatre history, and performance, including Foreign Shakespeare and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, which became the standard reference works in the field.
The Samuel Beckett Chair of Drama and Theatre is a professorship at Trinity College Dublin. Dennis Kennedy was appointed its inaugural holder in 1994 and held the position until his retirement.
Kennedy's Shakespeare books include Looking at Shakespeare, which argued that visual design is as important as spoken text in performance; Foreign Shakespeare, which emphasised performance outside the English language; and Shakespeare in Asia, co-edited with Yong Li Lan and published by Cambridge University Press in 2010.
Kennedy won the Freedley Award for theatre history twice, the Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award at the University of Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania Arts Council Award for playwriting, and three major awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was also elected to the Academia Europaea and the Royal Irish Academy.
Kennedy directed Shakespeare's As You Like It in Beijing in 2005. He also directed Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle in Dublin in 2006.
Fossil Light: A Novel in Films was published by Blackrock Press Dublin in 2023. The form of the book, a novel structured around films, reflects Kennedy's long engagement with the relationship between live performance and visual media.