PRAISE FOR BARBECUE
“Siblings are held together and divided by addiction in Barbecue, Robert O’Hara’s new play . . . My idea of an American classic, or the kind of classic we need.”
—New Yorker
“This is a look at an America where real-life behaviors take their cues from reality TV . . . Barbecue is an examination of a new historical moment, filmed, framed, televised and tweeted, in which everything is in performance.”
—Hollywood Reporter
“O’Hara has written a comedy about getting reality to fit the truth we’ve previously constructed for it . . . A meditation on lying and how we all do it when we construct the narratives of ‘us.’”
—NBC
“O’Hara is a genius at scene-building, that deceptively difficult art of dancing backward and forward at once, and is also inerrant at locating the social experience of his plays at the intersection of voyeurism and minstrelsy . . . A hysterical new play.”
—Vulture
“A brash, taboo-flouting roast of race and representation.”
—Time Out New York
“O’Hara has proved he can pull a rabbit out of a hat. Barbecue is lousy with rabbits—and laughs . . . There are so many surprises in Barbecue that not much can be said about its content without giving them away.”
—Entertainment Weekly
PRAISE FOR BOOTYCANDY
“A searing and sensationally funny comedy about the sometimes poisonous attitude toward homosexuality in black culture . . . Bootycandy is as raw in its language and raucous in spirit as it is smart and provocative.”
—New York Times
“Insanely entertaining . . . Bootycandy is basically a spiritual autobiography through satire, loosely tracking the life of a gay black boy named Sutter from childhood through his professional success as a playwright.”
—Vulture
“Arrestingly original in so many ways . . . O’Hara deliberately walks an uncomfortable line between humor and its opposite, which lends added punch and an air of the unexpected to Bootycandy.”
—Boston Globe
“Funny, smutty and, on the whole, enticingly subversive . . . Bootycandy is a toxically satiric portrait of American life, as it is experienced by someone who is black and gay.”
—Washington Post
“Trashing and lashing out at racial, cultural and sexual stereotypes isn’t new. But this vision gets credit for its smarts and unruliness. O’Hara doesn’t scrub or sanitize his satire one bit . . . this show is delectably un-PC and potty-mouthed.”
—New York Daily News
“Largely inspired by writer Robert O’Hara’s own experience . . . Bootycandy is a raucous romp made up of a series of loosely connected vignettes . . . Sassy, saucy, occasionally graphic and irreverently funny.”
—New York Post
BOOKS BY ROBERT O’HARA
AVAILABLE FROM TCG
Barbecue / Bootycandy
Insurrection: Holding History
The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the 21st Century
Edited by Harry J. Elam, Jr. and Robert Alexander
INCLUDES Insurrection: Holding History
Barbecue / Bootycandy is copyright © 2016 by Robert O’Hara
Barbecue / Bootycandy is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights, including but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the author’s representative: Ron Gwiazda, Abrams Artists Agency, 275 Seventh Avenue, 26th Floor, New York, NY 10001, (646) 461-9325.
The publication of Barbecue / Bootycandy, by Robert O’Hara, through TCG’s Book Program, is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
O’Hara, Robert, 1970– author. | O’Hara, Robert, 1970– Barbecue.
Bootycandy; Barbecue / Robert O’Hara.
Other titles: Barbecue.
First edition.
ISBN 9781559368049 (ebook)
Subjects: BISAC: DRAMA / American. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies.
Classification: LCC PS3565.H296 A6 2016 (print) | LCC PS3565.H296 (ebook) DDC 812/.54—dc23
Book design and composition by Lisa Govan
Cover design by Jeff Rogers
First Edition, September 2016
CONTENTS
Preface
BARBECUE
BOOTYCANDY
Since Barbecue and Bootycandy are now published in the same book for the first time, I’d like to give a few thoughts that might be helpful for those who take the leap from reading to producing either of these plays.
I encourage you to trust that the “funny” is there. It is built in, and you don’t have to play it. Instead, just play the truth.
I think of it this way, if the entirety of the experience is “out of the box,” then there is NO “box” from which to come out. I would like to suggest that you “establish the box.”
A Normal Box. Pun absolutely intended.
Simple. Honest. Real interactions are what I have tried to craft using a bunch of mixed nuts who think they are as normal as anyone else walking the planet.
There may be a tendency to turn both of these works into SNL or In Living Color sketches, and while the audience may hoot and holler, they will ultimately miss the painful truth inside both of these pieces. And that truth is, we are all fucked-up.
But fucked-up people rarely believe they are fucked-up