Ann Dunnigan

Ann Dunnigan Kennard (July 17, 1910 – September 5, 1997) was an American actress, teacher, and translator of 19th-century Russian literature. Born in Los Angeles County, she spent much of her early life in San Francisco before relocating to Illinois to attend Principia College in Elsah. She subsequently settled in New York, where she pursued a stage career that included two Broadway productions and several Off-Broadway performances.

Dunnigan's first Broadway credit came in 1934, when she originated the role of Suzanne Barres in the premiere of Hatcher Hughes's three-act comedy The Lord Blesses the Bishop, which ran from late November through December at the Adelphi Theatre in Manhattan. Four years later, she appeared at the Fulton Theatre in All the Living, a drama Hardie Albright adapted from Victor Small's 1935 novel I Knew 3,000 Lunatics, produced by Cheryl Crawford. In that production, Dunnigan played the role of Jessie Travis.

Following her stage work, Dunnigan taught speech before her engagement with the plays of Anton Chekhov drew her to study the Russian language. She translated 26 of Chekhov's short stories and novellas, published by New American Library in two anthologies: Anton Chekhov: Selected Stories (1960) and Ward Six and Other Stories (1965). Her volume Chekhov: The Major Plays (New American Library, 1964) brought together her translations of five of Chekhov's four-act works — Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard — each of which has received stage productions. Tennessee Williams considered her translation of The Seagull the finest available in English and used it as the primary reference for his 1981 adaptation, The Notebook of Trigorin.

Dunnigan extended her translation work to other major Russian authors in the late 1960s and early 1970s, producing editions of works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Ilya Tolstoy. Her translation of War and Peace (New American Library, 1968) was the first American English edition of the novel, and in 1970 she participated in a live centennial reading of it broadcast by WBAI in New York. Two further translations appeared in 1972: Tolstoy's Fables and Fairy Tales (New American Library) and Dostoyevsky's Netochka Nezvanova (Prentice Hall). Her translations have been used as the basis for numerous scholarly analyses of Russian literature.

In 1976, the New York Shakespeare Festival commissioned Jean-Claude van Itallie to produce an English translation of The Cherry Orchard, which premiered at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1977 to favorable notices in The New York Post, The New York Times, and The Village Voice. Dunnigan disputed the translation, contending that van Itallie's version closely replicated her own, and brought legal action against him. The settlement required van Itallie to accept responsibility for legal costs and to discontinue promotion of his version. Van Itallie later produced new translations of The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Three Sisters, and Uncle Vanya, stating in the introduction to Applause Books' 1995 compilation of these works that he had used a specially made literal English translation and a selection of French translations as his sources.

Dunnigan's final stage appearance took place at The Public Theater in a production of Sophocles' Antigone for the 1982 New York Shakespeare Festival. She died in her Manhattan apartment on September 5, 1997.