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Pregnancy seems to be experienced as the radical ordeal of the splitting of the subject: redoubling up of the body, separation and coexistence of the self and an other, of nature and consciousness, of physiology and speech. This fundamental challenge to identity is then accompanied by a fantasy of totality-narcissistic completeness-a sort of instituted, socialized, natural psychosis.
-Julia Kristeva, "Women's Time" 1
Shrouded in mystery, Adrienne Kennedy's poetic dramas present terrifying visualizations of tormented psyches. Their heroines are split personalities whose alter-egos and alternative "selves" coexist on stage. "My plays are meant to be states of mind," says the playwright, and Ruby Cohn agrees: "Her plays are acts of mind-tremulous or masterful, but always highly eloquent." 2
Although Kennedy's plays focus on the mind, their subtexts are riddled with references to the body and the reproductive process. Kennedy's plays may be seen as expressions of failed pregnancies-of pregnancies that end in miscarriage and madness. Due to ingrained racial and sexual oppression, Kennedy's subjects remain fragmented, existing as bitterly opposed selves, observing their own existence but unable to act, incapacitated by circumstances of birth. While Kennedy's plays sustain thematic metaphors of miscarriage, however, they also work as symbols of birth, fulfilling Elin Diamond's definition of "mimesis-mimicry" and thereby satisfying a theatrical metaphor for the womb. 3
Clara, the main character of A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, posits at the beginning of that play, "Each day I wonder with what or with whom can I coexist in a true union?" 4 Clara's concern conceivably could be voiced by any of Kennedy's characters; the question of such a union has permeated the playwright's dramas for thirty years. Yet a certain irony underlies this question even in its asking, for each of Kennedy's protagonists does coexist with a vast array of characters, each a part of herself. Each is fragmented, both physically and thematically; each dramatically portrayed as a series of selves who speak, act, and exist independently of one another. Sarah, the "Negro" of Funnyhouse of a Negro, literally faces her unlikely combination of four alter egos, listed in the cast of characters as "herselves": the Duchess of Hapsburg, Queen Victoria Regina, Jesus, and Patrice Lumumba. A Movie Star's Clara watches her life...