Kenneth Bernard, a playwright who rattled the expectations of audiences and critics with avant-garde works staged by the Playhouse of the Ridiculous and other theatrical groups in New York and beyond, died on Aug. 9 at a Manhattan nursing home. His son Lucas said the cause was hypertensive cardiovascular disease complicated by other health problems. By day Dr. Bernard was an English professor at Long Island University, a job he took in 1959 and held for more than 40 years. By night he was a central figure in the experimental theater movement that began bubbling up in the small performance spaces of Midtown and Downtown Manhattan in the 1960s. The first Bernard play staged by the troupe, “The Moke Eater” (1968), was about a man who tries to get his car repaired in a small town and ends up in a nightmarish sort of gantlet.

Source: New York Times August 20, 2020 16:41 UTC