Funnyhouse of a Negro

by Adrienne Kennedy

A Black woman awakens in a phantasmagoric rooming house where she is visited by the Duchess of Hapsburg, Queen Victoria, Patrice Lumumba and Jesus Christ. Only she and Lumumba are not dressed in white; she has a white fixation and wants to become whiter and whiter. She harangues against her father who gave her a jungle strain and then sold out to white harlotry, dreams of returning to Africa to save the continent, and hangs herself amid swirling conflicts and desires, a victim of a nightmare world.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Theatre, School, Read For School, 20th Century

28 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[jade]

kennedy’s language is bloated with absurdity and pain as she explores the conflicted mind of a mixed race woman. the fragments of sarah’s identity presents itself as grotesque imagery that lurks around , demeaning the existence of sarah as a rational human. there is no plot, no structure, no hope for the reader to escape into while witnessing sarah declare war on her mind. this play lacks harmony and mirrors how the distortion of the white consciousness in the late 19th and 20th c. played a direct part in the psychological deterioration of the Black mind. kennedy’s play comments on the emotional abuse of the color line as a Black woman in America. i love this play, a new favorite.

[Kristopher]

A powerfully intense drama that will blow you over even in reading. This is a play I fear I will never see, but am still grateful I was able to read it. A fearless investigation of race, gender, and identity in a uniquely symbolic expressionism. A very honest work and a daunting one to try to interpret. But that won't stop you from trying.

[Jeff Jackson]

The tragic mulatto subject matter may be dated, but the play's inventive structure makes up for it. The scenes are arranged like a dizzying hall of mirrors, recalling both Alain Robbe-Grillet's novels and Heiner Muller's fractured monologues. It's full of delirious repetitions, baroque playacting, and endless amounts of pulled hair.

[Sheila Packa]

This play has a curious structure that works like a long poem. There are odd and amazing repetitions in structure. The characters are deeply imagined. Brilliant work!

[Gelyssa]

SUPER DEEP. Definitely recommend!

[Sarah Dorothea]

4.5 out of 5 stars! ⭐️ This play is so so different from all the other plays I have read so far! I loved it!!! The plot was great and the idea of how the tragedy was presented was on point! This book is worth the whole nine yards. 📚😊👌🏻

[Phanesia Pharel]

Complex and amazing race theory. Bomb!!

[Bonique'a]

I don't know what to say. This one-act just blew my mind. I have to read it again!!!

[king bitchard 💜]

literally one of the most visceral things i've ever read

[gracie :)]

this is the type of fever dream writing i live for

[M Caesar]

Finally got around to this one, holy hell it was GREAT! has to be seen to be believed. When Patrice Lumumba showed up I knew it was gonna be goated.

[Morgan]

I feel like this is a play you watch, not read.

[Nicole Alexander]

this feels like the origins of the show “random acts of flyness” by terrance nance - early afrosurrealism

[veronika 소라]

it actually baffles me how underrated Adrienne Kennedy is. was reading an article on her scholarship and the author pointed out that outside of avant-garde scholars, Kennedy’s work is not as widely recognised, and it is actually insane.
this is my first play and for what it’s worth, the first ever work by her that i read but u can tell that this woman got a genius mind. Kennedy’s use of language, especially in theatre of absurd ‘conventions’ and whatnot, was just on a different level. the play is only 28 pages long with a big part of it being just fragments of repetitions, and she actually delivered with those 28 pages. like, it is insane how well the message––the madhouse that is racism––was articulated. yknow, theatre of absurd is just pretentious cus the language is fully abandoned and u need to do mind gymnastics to understand what playwright is tryna say. here, u still need to do the mind gymnastics but it just flows and makes so much sense and the writing is just beautiful (i was legit beefing w Beckett when reading waiting for godot).
i just wish more people knew about Adrienne Kennedy and her works and contributions to not only drama but literature as a whole were more widely recognised, amen.

[☁️]

But he is dead.
And he keeps returning. Then he is not dead.
Then he is not dead.
Yet, he is dead, but dead he comes knocking at my door.

like most plays, they're best experienced by watching as opposed to reading, so i don't understand the folks who negatively review a play because of their underwheming reading experience alone... what did you expect?
anyway, miss kennedy is razor-sharp; the play is deeply thought out and the perfect length for the amount of repetition it required

[sanjna]

confused, but poetic nonetheless

[lucy walter]

This was insane and totally worth the read.

[sofie poppleton]

bizarre-- definitely a play to see rather than read

[Phillip]

Like Beckett's plays (other than Waiting for Godot, which I love) I think I understand why Kennedy writes this as a dream play with the repetitions, divided self, and so forth. But it isn't my cup of tea. Maybe if I saw this performed well I would appreciate it more, but as a reader I find it hard to get myself psyched up about most plays that substitute psychology for plot. I suppose I am an Aristotelian in that sense. Even a more mixed play like Sleep Deprivation Chamber I enjoyed more than this one. The one moment I think I genuinely liked in the play was Raymond's revelation at the very end of the play, which I thought evoked the humor of the best moments of absurdist theatre, rather than the bleak existential angst of the worst.

[Rose]

A short and powerful read. This one act play is told in 24 pages and packs a punch. I understood the themes of blackness and sexuality clearly. The use of Patrice Lumumba as a character and representing a theme is the only aspect that confused me because I didn't know he was a real person. After I researched his name I was able to grasp further his significance. Other than that, I want to read more of Kennedy's work. What a kick in the pants this morning! And a good one too.

[Lily C.]

I had to read this play for my class on Greenwich Village and it was a bit hard to follow at first, at least when I read it by myself. When we discussed about it in class it was a bit more clearer but there were still a few moments throughout the play that left me going "Huh?"
I'd still give it a chance for anyone looking for something unconventional in their plays.

[Joshua]

An interesting, intense, and dreamlike meditation of self-hatred as it pertains to race and the self. At once horrifying and disorienting, Funnyhouse is an expressionistic interpretation of one woman's psychic battle to save herself and her identity.

[Shawna]

A remarkably powerful story of the "tragic mulatto" and her internal struggle with identity. A fine piece of absurdist theatre.

["JT" Marie]

I think I'll be dissecting this piece for a while.

[Not Mike]

Play.

Absurdiss, colorism, Blackness.

[Ann Reed]

EDIT: 2024 (3 to 5 stars)

[Tom Romig]

Last month I had the special opportunity to see four of Adrienne Kennedy's plays streamed in fine productions by the Round House Theater in association with the McCarter Theater Center. ("Ohio State Murders," "Sleep Deprivation Chamber," "He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box," and "Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side.") This made me want to experience her earliest success, "Funnyhouse of a Negro."

The surrealistic "Funnyhouse" is remarkably fluid with time, place, and character, which serves to underscore how the present is distorted and circumscribed by past and continuing racism. In Kennedy's always inventive telling, history drags on people like an anchor, violence is ever lurking.

Hilton Als wrote an illuminating essay on Adrienne Kennedy's unique vision in the February 5, 2018, New Yorker.

[nevaeh galluccio]

Wow. That ending section really got me. My entire perception of Sarah and this play completely changed with that final line. This is such a unique approach to discussing personal conflicts with racial identity. The array of famous figures who appear in Sarah’s room feels random, but they all end up making sense in context of why they are present. The repetition throughout really drives in Sarah’s emotional turmoil without feeling excessive or forced. The internalized hatred toward parts of her identity is also so well done - the division of lines between herself and the public figures adds certain emphasis to the sections she says herself. I would love to see a production of this play.

[Amelia Keese]

It was good, but I needed the class discussion to actually assign some meaning to the play. Highly recommend watching a performance of it while reading (or after reading) to help. It's a very rich, short, heavy work. I think there's a lot to do with "literary tradition" as a theme, which I enjoyed following, but it is also only minor to the overall subject. I wish we'd worked out the use of "white" throughout the play and how it compares to how "black" appeared. I reread this a few times because it's so short, and it got much easier to parse out with each reading. I learned a lot, too, based on how others interpreted lines/scenes. It was a good read.

[Chloë Jackson]

speedy lil brain fuck of a play and utter genius though i fear i don’t get moments of it. it gets cyclical the way it haunts you a true “funny house” but actually like you’re going mad. there’s this haunting portrayal of like the white construction of an africanist presence this expectation around children this factor of legacy and descendance and hair and also it’s all so quick so stage direction dependent so full of long monologues that while reading it you almost get lost in the words and then found at the end. or not even found at all. good and something you have to chew on for a while. 4 stars