The Transmediality of the Self:

Desubstantiation, Fantasy and Terror

in and through
Adrienne Kennedy’s Characters
Attila Kiss
REGCIS
Research Group for Cultural Iconology and Semiography
Department of English
University of Szeged
 The Transmediality of the Self

1. The postmodern anti-memory theater (”I was

Hamlet.” – Heiner Müller)
2. The multimedial fabrication of the social self
3. The thematization of heterogeneity: strategies
of fantastication
4. Strategies of involvement
5. Fragmentation and desubstantiation
6. The stage of the mind and consciousness
7. Unsettling the category of the (dramatic)
character as medium
The Art of Memory in the Theater
 Giulio Camillo”s memory theater: L'Idea del Theatro,
1550
 „all things that the human mind can conceive and which we cannot see
with the corporeal eye…may be expressed by certain corporeal signs…
and it is because of this corporeal looking that he calls it a theatre.”
Viglius Zuichemus to Erasmus, 1532.
Postmodern Anti-Memory Theater
 A scene from the
1968 Paris production
of Funnyhouse of a
Negro.
 http://www.americanr
epertorytheater.org/in
side/articles/theater-a
drienne-kennedy
 July 28, 2011
 The 1969 New York Shakespeare Festival
production of The Owl Answers in Cities in
Bezique.
 http://
www.americanrepertorytheater.org/
inside/articles/theater-adrienne-kennedy
The Thematization of Heterogeneity

 http://
theportholeplayoffs.bl
ogspot.com/
The Thematization of Heterogeneity
 the first playwright
to represent the self
in multiple
characters, an apt
metaphor for her
experiences as both
an African American
and a woman in
society
(Caroline Jackson Smith)
The Mediality of Cultural Imagery
 http://theater.nytimes
.com/2006/01/25/the
ater/reviews/25funn.h
tml
 Willie E. Teacher and
Suzette Azariah Gunn
in Adrienne Kennedy's
"Funnyhouse of a
Negro."
From left, Monica Stith, Suzette Azariah Gunn and Trish McCall in "Funnyhouse of a Negro."
http://theater.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/theater/reviews/25funn.html
THEATER REVIEW | 'FUNNYHOUSE OF A NEGRO'
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The Nightmare Within: Battling the Internalized Color Line
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By NEIL GENZLINGER
Published: January 25, 2006
 The Mediality of Cultural Imagery
 Funnyhouse of a Negro

 white nightgown, black hair,

ghastly white curtain, unreal and
ugly white light on center stage,
unnatural blackness on back
stage, dark monumental bed,
wine-colored walls, great black
ravens, white pillow, dark
undistinguishable object, royal
gowns of cheap white satin, white
headpieces, wild kinky black hair,
whitish yellow masks, dark eyes,
red mouth, powered faces
 ”How dare he enter the castle,
the one who is the darkest of
them all, the darkest one?”