Funnyhouse of a Negro

by Adrienne Kennedy

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The Play

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Funnyhouse of a Negro is the dreamlike enactment of Sarah’s internal struggle over who she is and where she belongs. Although many of the specific incidents in this one-act play are drawn from Adrienne Kennedy’s own life, the drama attempts, through the poetry of word and image, to enlarge these very personal conflicts and to make them relevant to problems in the culture at large. The style of this play is surrealistic, expressionistic, and absurdist. The plot of the play should not, therefore, be regarded as a credible or realistic story, nor should readers attempt to make literal sense of the dialogue or visual effects.

Although the play offers different specific settings such as Sarah’s room, the stair-case of the rooming house, Raymond’s room, and the jungle, the action depicted takes place inside Sarah’s mind. At the same time, this play is often quite openly theatrical in its use of space. From the opening scene, which has the Mother walk out in front of the drawn curtains, to the very end, in which walls fall away and the action jumps abruptly from one part of the stage to another, readers should try to imagine how the playwright intended the fully staged work to be seen and heard by an audience.

The play begins before the curtains have even opened. The Mother crosses in front of the white curtains. As she exits, the curtains part to reveal Queen Victoria Regina and the Duchess of Hapsburg, who converse about their (that is, about Sarah’s) life. All the while, there is a persistent knocking at the door; the knocking, they say, is their father, a black man who they say is dead but who keeps returning. Both characters are made up to appear as if they are black women trying to look white. Headdresses with thick black hair attached hide the fact that both characters seem to be going bald. Abruptly, lights fade. The Mother returns, this time carrying a severed bald head and saying that the black man has defiled her.

Lights come on to reveal Sarah in her room in a rooming house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She is wearing black, and her hair seems to be falling out. Her long monologue, delivered directly to the audience, describes her life, mixing the details of the real, external world with her troubled inner feelings. Implicit in her ramblings is her conflict between identifying with the white culture in which she has been raised and her realization that as an African American she is different from the white people whom she knows. Then, through a hole in the wall, four characters representing different parts of herself enter: the Duchess, the Queen, Jesus Christ, and Patrice Lumumba, represented as a black African whose bloody head appears to be split in two and who carries an ebony mask. Sarah addresses the audience again and in the same illogical way tries to describe who these characters are.

The Landlady (also described as the Funnyhouse Lady), who is now revealed at the foot of the rooming house staircase, seems to be talking to someone offstage about Sarah’s life. She seems aware that Sarah’s imagination has magnified the girl’s guilt about her father’s alleged suicide and has caused her delusions about who she really is. In spite of the seriousness of the subject, her speech is filled with maddened laughter.

The lights black out and rise again on a different setting, the room of Raymond, Sarah’s boyfriend, a white Jewish poet. The room is located upstairs in the same rooming house. Raymond, referred to in...

(This entire section contains 1140 words.)

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the scene as the Funnyhouse Man, laughs maniacally throughout his conversation with Sarah, who does not appear. Her role is played by the Duchess of Hapsburg. The two discuss Sarah’s parents: her black father, who has hanged himself, and her white mother, who has gone mad and been put into an asylum.

Again, lights black out. The knocking from earlier in the play rises, and an obscure, faceless figure carrying a mask emerges. He addresses the audience directly, talking about his fears. He says that his hair has fallen out and that this is symptomatic of an African disease. After another blackout, the scene changes to the Queen’s bedchamber, where Queen Victoria and the Duchess examine their heads for baldness. The balding Duchess attempts to take the hair she has gathered in a red paper bag and return it to her scalp. The figure from the previous scene returns. He is Patrice Lumumba, and yet, because he is in reality an extension of Sarah’s inner being, he speaks to the audience of her life and expectations, reiterating much of what Sarah mentioned earlier in the play. A bald head appears mysteriously, but his monologue continues. The various elements of his irrational rant reveal more about Sarah. She believes that she has betrayed both of her parents.

The next scene is set in the Duchess’s ballroom, where the Duchess receives Jesus, who carries the red bag of hair from the previous scene. Both are almost completely bald. After a quick blackout, the Duchess and Jesus attempt to comb their remaining hair, until the knocking at the door from earlier in the play begins once more. Both characters speak in unison about their (again, Sarah’s) father.

The scene suddenly shifts to the Landlady at the stairs. She describes Sarah’s relationship with her father and recalls a time when he came to see his daughter and the two tried unsuccessfully to reconcile. The scene then shifts again, returning to the chamber of the Duchess, where Jesus, the Duchess at his side, awakes from a deep slumber and speaks to the audience about Sarah’s inner fears and fantasies.

Following a blackout, the stage is consumed with a new set, the jungle. Here, in slow motion, the different characters who are really embodiments of Sarah’s fragmented mind emerge from the lush growth, speaking frenetically of Sarah’s father and his role in her life. The black missionary who went to Africa may be dead, but he keeps returning to haunt Sarah’s life. Her desire to destroy his memory and to obliterate both him and that part of her that he has created sends the four characters into maniacal laughter.

In a final tableau, a wall falls away to reveal a hideous statue of Queen Victoria. Nearby, Sarah’s father accosts his daughter, who is in fact hanging from a rope, dead. Raymond and the Landlady (the Funnyhouse Man and Lady) talk about Sarah’s suicide. Raymond suggests that much of what the characters have said has been invented, that Sarah’s father never killed himself, that he is alive, living somewhere in New York City.

The Play

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Funnyhouse of a Negro is a highly stylized theatrical piece. The setting of the play is the Negro-Sarah’s room. The space is dominated by dusty books, photographs, and relics. The other locales—the queen’s chamber, Raymond’s room, and the jungle—are all part of Sarah’s nightmare/fantasy. These are suggested environments, spaces created by lighting. The characters all represent facets of the Negro-Sarah’s fantasies.

Funnyhouse of a Negro begins with the stage in darkness. In front of a closed white curtain, a woman crosses the stage. She is wearing a white nightgown and carries a bald head. Her hair is “wild, straight, and black, and falls to her waist.” She is mumbling inaudibly. She crosses the stage and exits, and the curtain opens.

Queen Victoria Regina and the Duchess of Hapsburg are sitting in their chamber with their backs to the audience. They are dressed in the same ghastly white material as the curtain. Both have wild, frizzy hair and are missing patches of hair on the crowns of their heads. Their faces are white and immobile masks. A loud knocking is heard throughout the scene. They discuss their father, a Negro—the darkest of them all. He has come through the jungle to find them; he is knocking. He is dead, but he keeps returning. The lights black out.

The woman crosses the stage again, speaking about the black man whom she should never have let rape her. She is the mother. The lights come up again on the Negro-Sarah. She is very dark and faceless. She wears a hangman’s noose around her neck and is missing a patch of hair from her head. In a monologue, she reveals details of her life. She is a student and a writer, absorbed with writing in the style of Europeans. She lives in a brownstone in the West Nineties, and her boyfriend Raymond is a white man. Sarah must surround herself with whiteness, avoiding the reality of her blackness. Her only outstanding negroid feature is her hair. Sometimes she is herself, and sometimes she is Victoria Regina. The lights come up on the white Landlady in another area of the stage. She says that Sarah hides in her room, talks to herself, and thinks of herself as someone else. The lights go out.

The next scene takes place in Raymond’s room, which appears to be above the Negro-Sarah’s room. His room contains a bed and window blinds; the blinds cover a mirror. Raymond is talking with the partially disrobed Duchess of Hapsburg. The Duchess needs to hide from her father, who comes from Africa and pursues her. Throughout the scene, Raymond opens and closes the blinds and laughs. The Duchess is losing her hair, which resembles her mother’s hair. Her mother was of very light complexion, her father very dark; she is in between. She embraces Raymond “wildly” as the lights go out. A knocking is heard again in the distance.

The lights come up on a dark, faceless man carrying an ebony mask. He is Patrice Lumumba. He too is losing his hair; he dreams of his bald mother. After she was married, she became insane and her hair fell out. The lights black out. The lights come up in the queen’s chamber. In a dumb show, Queen Victoria awakens and discovers that her hair is falling out. The Duchess enters carrying a red paper bag; she removes hair from the bag and attempts to replace her own hair. Patrice Lumumba returns and delivers a monologue detailing his life. He is a student; his friends and surroundings all need to be white; he is losing his hair. A bald head on a string, and a wall are lowered onto the set.

The Negro-Sarah appears and speaks to the audience. Her mother worshiped her father; she wanted him to be Christ and save the race. This worship ended with the rape of her mother, who was committed to an asylum. Sarah says that she was in love with the light skin of her mother and rejected her father because of his dark skin. Her father hanged himself in a Harlem hotel.

The next scene is between the Duchess of Hapsburg and Jesus. In a dumb show, both discover that they are losing their hair, so they comb each other’s hair to hide their baldness. The Landlady appears and tells her version of the relationship between Sarah and her father: He came to see Sarah in New York, to beg her forgiveness, but she refused to talk with him. Jesus returns to tell the audience that he has tried to escape being black. He is going to Africa to kill Patrice Lumumba.

The scene changes to the jungle. The characters all appear wearing nimbuses. They talk together in overlapping speech about their father, who is the darkest of them all. He was supposed to be the savior. He was bludgeoned to death with an ebony mask, but he keeps returning. The speeches are first delivered very slowly, and then very quickly.

Another wall descends. The Negro-Sarah is in her room. A faceless dark figure comes to her. The lights black out; when the lights come up again, Sarah is hanging. The final scene is a conversation between Raymond and the Landlady. They talk about what a funny little liar Sarah was. Raymond points out that her father, still alive, is a doctor who lives in very elegant rooms and is married to a white whore.

Dramatic Devices

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Funnyhouse of a Negro invites the viewer into the mind of a very confused young black woman. The characters of the play are identified as facets of herself. She sees herself as omnipotent (Jesus), powerful (Queen Victoria, the Duchess of Hapsburg), and revolutionary (Patrice Lumumba). According to the dream logic of the play, these diverse characters all suffer from the conflict between their father, a black man, and their mother, a light-complexioned black woman who was raped and driven to insanity. The characters evoke the era of European colonialism, the zealotry of Christian missionaries, and the subsequent search for liberation by the peoples of Africa.

The strongest facet of the play is its use of language. The playwright has the characters repeat images, phrases, and in some instances entire speeches. One speech is performed by all the characters in unison at varying speeds. The language takes on a weight of its own through the sheer force of repetition. The characters speak of horrible acts—rape, patricide, and suicide—with words that have the force of blows.

Another strong element of the play is its vivid visual imagery. The contrast between light and dark, repeated in many different forms, contributes to the ritualistic quality of the action. The Duchess and Queen Victoria are both very white and expressionless. Jesus is a hunchbacked, yellow-skinned dwarf, dressed in white rags and sandals. Patrice Lumumba is a black man whose face appears split and who carries an ebony mask. Raymond and the Landlady, who are white, are dressed in black; Raymond’s attire suggests that he is an artist, and the Landlady wears a black and red hat. The Negro-Sarah is a faceless, dark character with a rope around her neck. The repeated blackouts between scenes reinforce the contrast between light and darkness.

The play is filled with bird imagery (a recurring motif in Kennedy’s work). There are ravens, great dark birds that fly through the queen’s chambers. Lumumba recalls his early relationship with his mother as a time when doves flew. The birds are a symbol of freedom.

The device of mirroring is integral to the play’s structure and action. All the characters are reflections of the Negro-Sarah. They are all losing their hair; they all perform the same activities. The scenes are similar, mirroring each other; the placement of characters onstage is often similar. The white characters, moreover, provide an alternate reflection of the information given by the black characters.

Historical Context

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In the United States, the early 1960s were characterized by significant social and political shifts. One of the most pivotal was the Civil Rights movement, which had long been advocating for the rights of African Americans.

At the start of the decade, the fight for civil rights manifested in various ways: sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, marches through segregated neighborhoods, and boycotts of discriminatory businesses. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) pursued numerous lawsuits to advance the civil rights agenda. There was great optimism that the newly elected President John F. Kennedy would deliver on his promises to enact civil rights legislation.

Tragically, Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 and didn’t get the chance to fulfill his agenda. However, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued to push for civil rights. In 1964, he signed several bills into law that ensured civil rights for African Americans and other minorities.

The most significant of these was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It guaranteed equal access to employment and public places such as hotels, theaters, and restaurants. Employment discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or national origin was prohibited.

The Civil Rights Act also provided the federal government with several tools to enforce the law. For instance, they could withhold funding from any lower-level government that failed to comply. The Justice Department was empowered to file lawsuits against those who violated the provisions.

In 1964, Johnson also signed the Equal Opportunity Act, aimed at creating jobs and combating poverty. Organizations like the United Steelworkers followed Johnson’s lead. The United Steelworkers, along with eleven major steel companies, agreed to eliminate racial discrimination within their industry.

Despite these efforts, implementing civil rights was often challenging. Schools and universities had been ordered to integrate as early as the 1950s, but resistance, especially in the South, persisted. The Civil Rights Act allowed the government to withhold funds from institutions that did not take steps toward integration.

Voting rights were also a key component of the Civil Rights agenda. State and local governments, particularly in the South, had enacted laws to prevent African Americans from voting, including poll taxes and voter tests. Poll taxes were abolished by the 24th Amendment to the Constitution in 1964.

Many civil rights activists traveled to Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to educate black voters about their rights and assist them in registering to vote. Numerous activists faced arrest, beatings, and even death.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent African-American leader in the civil rights movement who championed nonviolence, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also included a provision to ban employment discrimination based on gender. Although this part of the Act was not enforced for several years, the role of women in American society was already beginning to change.

More women began joining the workforce in larger numbers. By the early 1960s, around one-third of American women held jobs, typically in part-time, low-wage positions to help support their families or as educators.

In 1963, Betty Friedan released The Feminine Mystique, arguing that women could achieve personal satisfaction through employment. That same year, an equal pay bill was enacted.

The women's rights movement started to gain momentum and expand by the mid-1960s.

Literary Style

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Setting

Since Funnyhouse of a Negro is a surreal play that primarily unfolds within Sarah’s mind, only a few elements of the setting are ‘‘real.’’

Set in the early 1960s, the play is located in Sarah’s room within a New York City brownstone. Her room contains a large statue of Queen Victoria, various images of British monarchs, books, a bed, and a writing desk. Some of the ‘‘realistic’’ scenes occur on the landing and in Raymond’s room.

Different settings are designated for Sarah’s four personas. For instance, the Queen has her own chamber featuring a tomb-like mahogany bed, a chandelier, and wine-colored walls. The Duchess’s space is a ballroom with a chandelier, a marbled floor, artificial snow, and benches. In the concluding scenes, a jungle replaces these rooms, altering their symbolic significance.

Monologue

Funnyhouse of a Negro contains minimal action and dialogue; instead, much of the play consists of monologues. Kennedy utilizes the monologue format to allow characters to express themselves freely.

Sarah and her four inner personas use their monologues to convey different versions of Sarah’s family history and emotional turmoil. None of these versions are identical, highlighting her struggle to reconcile with her life.

In the Landlady’s monologues, she recounts stories about Sarah’s ‘‘real’’ life as she has observed and interpreted it. Raymond is the only character without a true monologue; all his lines are part of dialogues with other characters.

Symbolism/Imagery

Many concepts in Funnyhouse of a Negro are conveyed through a variety of symbols and images. The play is largely non-realistic, with even the characters serving as symbols.

Sarah’s four personas symbolize different facets of her identity: the Duchess and Queen Victoria wear masks or mask-like makeup and white attire reminiscent of funeral shrouds; Jesus is depicted as a yellow-skinned, hunchbacked dwarf; and Patrice Lumumba carries an ebony mask.

The character of Sarah’s mother is even more symbolic—she carries a bald head as she crosses the stage multiple times. Although Sarah’s mother is frequently mentioned, she speaks only once. She only flits through her daughter’s subconscious, meant to be discussed and interpreted rather than truly understood.

Kennedy’s stage directions call for numerous physical symbols and intricate images. For example, Sarah’s room is dominated by a statue of Queen Victoria, representing an unattainable ideal of purity and royalty. Sarah walks around with a noose around her neck and a bloody face before the audience learns of her death, underscoring her inner anguish and ultimate fate.

In the scene introducing Queen Victoria and the Duchess, black ravens circle above, creating a stark contrast with their pale, white-tinged faces and the bright white light. Raymond’s role as the Funnyman is highlighted by the mirrors behind the blinds in his room, which he continuously opens and closes. These are just a few of the symbols employed in the play to highlight Sarah’s mental state.

Compare and Contrast

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1964: The poll tax is abolished with the ratification of the twenty-fourth amendment to the Constitution. Throughout the summer, numerous volunteers travel to Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to advocate for voting rights for African Americans. In Mississippi, three civil rights activists are killed.

Today: African Americans are guaranteed the right to vote.

1964: Sixteen states, predominantly in the South, prohibit interracial marriages.

Today: Interracial marriages are not banned in any state.

1964: Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid leader, is sentenced to life imprisonment for his actions in South Africa.

Today: After spending twenty-six years in prison, Mandela was freed in 1990. He was elected as South Africa’s president in 1994 and has since retired from public life.

Bibliography and Further Reading

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Sources

Billings, Joshua. Review in The Nation, January 25, 1964, p. 79.

Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review: Glimpsing Solitude in Worlds Black and White," in The New York Times, September 25, 1995, p. C11.

Brown, Lorraine A. "'For the Characters Are Myself': Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro," in Negro American Literature Forum, 1975, p. 86.

Clurman, Harold. Review in The Nation, February 10, 1964, p. 154.

Simon, John. "Playing with Herselves," in New York, October 9, 1995, p. 82.

Taubman, Howard. "The Theater: Funnyhouse of a Negro," in The New York Times, January 15, 1964, p. 25.

Further Reading

Binder, Wolfgang. "A MELUS Interview with Adrienne Kennedy," in MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Fall, 1985, p. 99. This interview with Kennedy discusses race, culture, and her artistic growth.

Bryant-Jackson, Paul K. and Lois More Overbeck, eds. Intersecting Boundaries: The Theatre of Adrienne Kennedy, University of Minnesota Press, 1992, 254 p. A compilation of critical essays on Kennedy’s theatrical works.

Farber, David R. The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s, Hill & Wang, 1994, 296 p. Farber’s book provides a historical overview of the 1960s, covering political, social, and cultural history, including the civil rights movement.

Kennedy, Adrienne. People Who Led to My Plays, Alfred A. Knopf, 1997, 125 p. A nontraditional autobiography that uses vignettes and photographs from Kennedy’s life to delve into her influences and interests.

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