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Adrienne Kennedy Drama 3m, 5f Simple Set Written in 1964, this revolutionary 50-minute one act gave voice to Black Women across the United States. In the play, a Black woman, Sarah, 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. "Funnyhouse of a Negro, Adrienne Kennedy's 1964 one-act play set, essentially, inside the head of a disturbed young black woman named Sarah, catches perfectly that moment in time when the struggle could have gone either way: black identity might have been erased, or it might have reasserted itself. We know now what happened: black power, black is beautiful. That perspective makes Ms. Kennedy's play...doubly interesting. It's still a fearlessly innovative piece of theater." -The New York Times FEE: $35 per performance.
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