Funnyhouse of a Negro

The Adrienne Kennedy play Funnyhouse of a Negro demonstrates the playwrights attempt to create a portrayal of a reality beyond human comprehension through the use of various dramatic tools. Setting is a crucial tool for the playwright as she provides us with the story of a young black female student who is tortured over her identity crisis. The product of a rape, her mother goes insane and her father commits suicide, as she will eventually do. Torn between various selves (Jesus, Queen Victoria, the Duchess of Hapsburg, and Patrice Lumumba), the settings are conflicting and separate as well: Queen Victoria's bedroom chamber, the chandelier ballroom of the Duchess of Hapsburg, a student's room in a New York brownstone boarding house, and an African jungle.

The various locales are meant to represent or symbolize the various state's of mind experienced by the character. Through makeup, lighting, setting, and dialogue we are presented with an environment that is dreamlike but often nightmarish. In the stage directions Kennedy notes "the middle of the stage must be lit by a white ligh

Category: Literature - F