Kennedy, Adrienne

Kennedy, Adrienne( 1931– ),
playwright of African-American heritage whose works exhibit the conflict between her inheritances—black father, light mother—especially in Funnyhouse of a Negro (1962), in which the main character, Sarah, discovers strands of herself in Queen Victoria and in a colored Jesus, but the play ends with Sarah hanging herself. She wrote expressionistic and surreal plays in the 1960s, more realistic ones in the 1970s, but came back to her earlier mode in 1976 with A Movie Star Has To Star in Black and White.