Film Noir as a Key to Adrienne Kennedy’s Style

AMERICAN THEATRE: Troupe, a Black music scholar, peers through the curtains of his brownstone window at the apartment across the street. There sits a woman named Etta, one of his former colleagues. Night after night she incessantly calls him to warn him of an upcoming murder. She’s a prominent Black writer—a playwright—who has a history of warring with her sister. Or possibly she’s warring with herself. Troupe is thrust into a role akin to a detective from a film noir, with a deep compulsion to discover more of what led to Etta’s madness.