Robert O’Hara
(Cincinnati)
Robert O’Hara is one of Ohio’s most acclaimed and best-known contemporary playwrights. This book includes the plays Barbecue and Bootycandy.
Barbeque (2015), which Hilton Als praised as his “idea of an American classic,” is a satire contrasting two dysfunctional families—one white, one Black, and both named the O’Mallerys—staging an intervention at a barbecue in “Middle America.”
Bootycandy (2011)a romp on race and sexuality, also seemingly takes place in Middle America. The New York Times praised the play as a “searing and sensationally funny comedy about the sometimes poisonous attitude toward homosexuality in black culture.”
Describing his childhood in Cincinnati for The Buckeye Flame, O’Hara said, “[O]f course it was traumatizing being a black gay kid and not really knowing you were a black gay kid in Cincinnati” but also that “a lot of my work harkens back to the things I would do as a kid […] making up plays and songs with my family members.”
If you enjoyed Barbeque / Bootycandy, we suggest these Ohio side trips:
- Deborah Brevoort’s The Women of Lockerbie
- Mac Wellman’s A Murder of Crows
- Jerome Lawrence’s and Robert E. Lee’s Inherit the Wind
- Theresa Rebeck’s and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros’ Omnium Gatherum