Barbecue / Bootycandy

by Robert O'Hara

"Searing and sensationally funny... As raw in its language and raucous in spirit as it is smart and provocative."—The New York Times

"Funny, smutty and enticingly subversive. . . . A toxically satiric portrait of American life."—Washington Post

"When I told my mother that a theater was putting on my play Bootycandy, her response was, 'What?! Bootycandy? These white folks are going to let you put on a play called Bootycandy?!? Are they crazy???' And my response was, 'Yes. Yes indeed.'"—Robert O'Hara

Sutter is on an outrageous odyssey through his childhood home, his church, dive bars, motel rooms, and even nursing homes. The journey uncovers characters who are at once fascinating, zany, controversial, and even a bit smutty, painting a portrait of life as a societal outlier. Based on the author's personal experience, Bootycandy is a kaleidoscope of sketches that interconnects to portray growing up gay and black. This subversive, uproarious satire crashes headlong into the murky terrain of pain and pleasure and . . . BOOTYCANDY!

Robert O'Hara is a playwright and director. His play Antebellum received a world premiere production from Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, and earned him a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play. He reworked The Wiz for its revival at La Jolla Playhouse. He wrote and directed the world premiere of Insurrection: Holding History (Public Theater, Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Play). As a director, he has won an Obie Award and an NAACP Best Director Award and has worked at acclaimed theaters throughout the United States.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 31, 2014

Reviews

[Daniel]

Some of the funniest contemporary writing I’ve read.

BBQ act one is blindingly funny: an intervention that goes completely off the rails, coupled with interesting alternating race casts. Act 2 is a whole other play that I don’t think works quite as well; it’s certainly less funny and I’m not sure he play has set us up for the probing that act 2 seems to want to do.

Bootycandy lives in its vignettes, but boy are they crackling.

[Huia Max Rose]

I’m confused

[Lizzie]

3 stars bc i didn’t read bootcandy. I didn’t know i could log the plays i read for work on here so im gonna start doing that OKAY?

Barbecue actually made me laugh while i read it which is maybe the highest praise i’ve ever given a play.

[hannah bradley]

read this one for grad school audition prep and I just can’t do it justice in typed out words… call me if you want a good story. I was however very entertained

[Sean]

Yeah I'm not entirely sold on the 2nd half of 'Barbecue' (especially given how enjoyable things are up to the 'twist'). But O'Hara commits to it. And I can't say I disagree with what he's trying to say...

[Alexandra Fulcher]

loved the reversal of stereotypes!! great play!!

[Ian Carpenter]

I loved both these plays. Barbecue a little more. They're both smart, inventive, manipulative, playful and the ear for dialogue and voice is astounding. O'Hara has lots to say and does so in two of the most pointed and hilarious plays I've read in years.

[Doug]

Reading these 10 short vignettes was kind of like how I feel about being around black people using the N word; it made me feel uncomfortable and distinctly out of place; which may have been the point. I suppose that O'Hara, being both gay and black himself, can 'get away' with his outrageous goings-on (e.g., a piece entirely about a mother intending to name her baby girl 'Genitalia Lakeitha Shalama Abdul'), but had anyone else written them, they would have been accused of being both racist and homophobic. And while some of the pieces worked better than others, I didn't think it really coalesced into anything greater than the individual scenes.

[Wei Han]

I saw Bootycandy in Boston several years ago but missed out on the chance to see Barbecue. Both plays are wonderfully and laugh-out-loud incendiary, taking advantage of the liveness of theater to bait-and-switch an audience. They're both whiplash smart and layered in their own ways. Barbecue ends up being about stories, who owns them and who tells them, plus the deliberate decisions made around race and characters forces a certain grappling with the big question at the heart of the play that wouldn't necessarily have been the case had O'Hara swapped the races of the characters. Coming back to Bootycandy, a play I remember fondly for being confrontationally brilliant, I think part of the brilliance of the play is to take the sketch-like nature of George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum (another of my favorites!) and leave just enough connective tissue to ask what kinds of stories a Black playwright can tell, and how a playwright can write about themselves. Even on the page, the two texts were strong enough to provoke several gasps and laughs from me as I read them. I get that Robert O'Hara has a great directing career right now, but I'm just craving another new play from him to blow up even more theatrical conventions in my face.

[Michael]

Robert O'Hara's two plays, Barbecue and Bootycandy are fun and irreverent, and play with the traditional structure of a play in a way that can be surprising. Barbecue in unique in that it has two casts, one white and one black, playing the same characters and alternating their scenes. The reason for this is revealed in Act 2, which a fun surprise. It's funny and over-the-top, and I imagine it would be a riotous production.

Bootycandy is much more in-your-face, and is structured as a series of vignettes with a slight thread stringing them together. It's definitely a commentary on sexuality and race, and is probably not for the uptight reader/viewer.

All-in-all a fun read, but they probably translate much better on stage. I give it 3 1/2 stars, but you can't do half stars here on Goodreads, so I'm giving it 3.

[Kenny Pelphrey]

Barbecue is an Excellent play. Beautifully explores the interplay between realism and unrealism, racial dichotomies, and the truth vs how it is presented. These are all expressed through exceptionally character driven action. O’Hara excels at providing a lens for the audience to view these characters. To see how their traits, motivations, and tactics impact the world and action of the play. The play is generally masterfully crafted, with opportunities for unique and novel staging techniques. I would love to see it produced!!!

[Jeff]

I only read "Barbecue," and I can say that it is certainly one of the most audacious plays I have read in a long time. What he dives into the fact that race is not just a construct but multiple constructs of a construct, a palimpsest of sort upon which layer upon layer builds, without erasing the ones beneath. Incredibly funny as well--in that genuinely uncomfortable way that all great theatre operates.

[Theo Chen]

barbecue was so genius with its twists... so much food for thought.
do plays have to give answers to the questions they ask?

bootycandy... again, a play i finally managed to read after years of wanting to. such a blur of vulnerability, raucous humor, and a genuine reckoning with a life lives - all its attendant pain, pleasure, ecstasy, and agony.

[Kristen Lo]

The end of Act one made me really mad at first, but I forgave it at the end of Act two. Probably can't say much more without spoiling. I also appreciate O'Hara's Forward about playing the truth of the moment rather than playing the script for laughs.

[Lena]

(I only read Barbecue just to be clear)

This play is amazing I love metacommentary and not knowing what to believe. It reminds me a lot of synecdoche New York and other total mindfuck movies but in play form and while making a great commentary on race relations

[Ethan Ksiazek]

annoying, inconsequential

[Abby]

I only read Barbecue, but they don't have a single listing for that. It was a crazy good time though. It will keep you guessing.

[Kat Abraham]

Barbecue was truly one of the best books I’ve ever read.

[Emily’s Paige]

I read barbecue by o’hara and honestly i loved the meta-theatrical version of it all and definitely got interested fast

[Sam Dyer]

I actually only read Barbecue because I bought a copy from the publisher...

Still raucous and radical, though.

[Owen Boyce]

only read bbq…

[Evie Dittmann]

HIGHLY recommend both of these shows. thank you for putting this in your curriculum, pace university. (school i do not attend)

[Theo]

I love Robert O’Hara and these plays. I liked barbecue more but both wonderfully theatrical. I love how these plays are pieces of theatre and use the medium so well.

[reon te aorangi]

have only read barbeque. so much potential for all theater elements to play with the surrealism

[caroline!]

this is the theatre version of inception.

[Leila Soltani]

read that since I am going to see the play in SF playhouse!
I liked the Barbecue, but didn't like the Bootycandy.
It is written that the play is a true example of American classics. I believe it used some good elements, symbols and motifs, specially when considering the recent American plays!

[Megan]

So glad I got to see this show. Writing is really interesting, but the play on stage was hilarious and an amazing work.

[Robert Rauschenberg]

Recommended by Tyler Whidden (Ensemble Theatre).

[Phanesia Pharel]

Pretty good play. Well written and has a really lovely arc.