Character Analysis Of Clara In A Movie Star Has To Star In Black And White

In her play A movie Star Has To Star In Black and White, Kennedy portrays Clara's suffering for self-identification through projecting into three Hollywood movies. Through the play, Clara is a promising playwright who writes her first literary work. Yet what she is writing really is her autobiography. Like Fornes, Kennedy uses autobiographical writing as a release for the heroine's feelings and as an expression of her psychic fragmentation. By writing her autobiography, Clara reveals her struggle to build her identity as a black female in a white male dominated society. Although at the beginning of the play she is assigned as a 'bit role', yet she is the central and major in her autobiographical work. Hence, Clara uses writing to articulate

In her writings, Clara expresses her fear that motherhood may be an obstacle that threatens her writing career. So motherhood can be the cause of her identity split into two. The first identity is that of a mother, while the second is the ambitious creative writer who aims to fulfill her desire to be well-known writer. Through her autobiography, People Who Led to My Plays, Kennedy illustrates this idea affirming that once a woman becomes a mother, people refuse to see her as anything else. They refuse to see her as a woman or as a writer. Kennedy

She expresses her feelings about people's attitude toward her and her husband saying "I get jealous of you, Eddie. You're doing something with your life"(68). She feels that her motherhood ties her to her husband and subjugates her to him. Motherhood also ties her to the fixed roles assigned to her by the patriarchal society. She is obligated to stay married to her husband although she feels desperate to get divorce. However, economically and socially, Clara is obligated to her fixed role as a wife because of her motherhood. She express her anguish and distress for