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Appropriate/An Octoroon: Plays
"The deftly crafted blend of shocking exaggeration and believability, politeness and fury...makes Appropriate land with th ekind of thump you rarely encounter in the theater."--Chicago Tribune
"So energetic, funny, and entertainingly demented, you can't look away."--New York on An Octoroon
"Messy, bold, desperately funny, and deeply felt: Neighbors is worth getting to know."--Los Angeles Times
With deft attention to familial dynamics and a tense undercurrent of socio-political realities, Appropriate harkens the likes of Tracy Letts or Sam Shepard, but with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's unique flair for melodrama and touch of the absurd.
Themes of history and racial politics permeate much of this young playwright's astounding work. This collection also includes the acclaimed play An Octoroon, a bombastic theatrical investigation of theater and identity, wherin an old play gives way to a startlingly contemporary piece. The third play, Neighbors, uses old minstrelsy tropes to challenge what makes contemporary society comfortable, and asserts pointedly that it shouldn't be.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's plays include An Octoroon, Neighbors, Appropriate, Gloria, and War. He is a playwright-in-residence at Signature Theatre. Recent honors include a 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play (An Octoroon and Appropriate).
"So energetic, funny, and entertainingly demented, you can't look away."--New York on An Octoroon
"Messy, bold, desperately funny, and deeply felt: Neighbors is worth getting to know."--Los Angeles Times
With deft attention to familial dynamics and a tense undercurrent of socio-political realities, Appropriate harkens the likes of Tracy Letts or Sam Shepard, but with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's unique flair for melodrama and touch of the absurd.
Themes of history and racial politics permeate much of this young playwright's astounding work. This collection also includes the acclaimed play An Octoroon, a bombastic theatrical investigation of theater and identity, wherin an old play gives way to a startlingly contemporary piece. The third play, Neighbors, uses old minstrelsy tropes to challenge what makes contemporary society comfortable, and asserts pointedly that it shouldn't be.Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's plays include An Octoroon, Neighbors, Appropriate, Gloria, and War. He is a playwright-in-residence at Signature Theatre. Recent honors include a 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play (An Octoroon and Appropriate).
209 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 9, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 23, 2021
looking for great books to read during black history month...and the other eleven months? i'm going to float some of my favorites throughout the month, and i hope they will find new readers!
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #6: Read a play by an author of color and/or queer author
i don’t really read plays. i only read this because challenge told me i had to read a play, and its blurbs sounded promising, with words like “funny,� “demented,� “fury,� etc.
i’m finally sitting down to review it, but i'm warning you: i’m bad at reading plays, i’m even worse at writing about them.
there are three plays in this collection.
END OF REVIEW.
fine, i will try.
reading these plays made me hope jacobs-jenkins would write a novel someday. which sounds insulting, but is not that way intended. here is a play i wrote to explain:
i like his writing, i like his humor, but i do not think i would enjoy attending a performance of these plays. however, i would be very interested in the how of it—again, i know nothing about theater, but these seem very ambitious, with elaborate stage directions that may or may not involve training rodents, and the expectation that the audience will be able to decipher what is meant by the volume and duration of recorded cicada-buzzing.
the stage directions my actually be my favorite part of these plays—i love how they deviate from the traditional or expected by being voicey, “But I guess I worry about the whole thing becoming too Brechtian. Though, does it matter? Also, can I help it?� or poetic, “Then moonlight happens,� or vague, “She takes a deep breath or something,� or highly specific, “Grace gets on the table holding her baby, which is, ideally, a white baby in blackface.� they almost function like the footnotes in —going off on their own journeys, not necessarily bound to what they’re meant to be explaining. his are full of asides, musings, and contradictions; details a live audience will never get to appreciate.
i’m torn between whether or not i would want to see these performed. i've probably gotten all the important bits out of the plays by reading them here in my home, but reading a play is a little like reading something in translation—you're left with the feeling there’s a piece of the work you haven’t been given access to.
however, my experience of going to plays is that i will either become self-conscious or sleepy (or better—self-conscious or unconscious, because i definitely dozed off during that albee play i was dragged to).
these plays might be too modern for me to appreciate. they’re maybe more for the post-narrative theater crowd, folks who dig the “theater experience,� who wanna leave a play feeling slightly rattled. i know that these are a million miles away from *actual* experimental theater, but while i loved encountering all of the metafiction flourishes strutting through them, i simply don’t have the patience for any theater of discomfort stuff (which i am pretty sure is a thing that exists with its own specific rules and characteristics, but i've learned my lesson about wasting time googling shit), so i’m for sure using the phrase wrong, but i'm okay with that. i'm using it to mean maybe artistic discomfort? "is this meant to shock or titillate me?"discomfort. something the disrupts the narrative with...whatever you want to call it when a “mostly—if not completely—naked� man applies whiteface (body painting optional) onstage, which procedure “should go on for some time� before he “very, very slowly and very, very stoically� gives himself “a powerful wedgie.� which i suppose won't be possible if the actor is completely naked, unless we are adding mime skills to the mix. i’m not offended by any of that, but i’m also not interested in paying money to see it if it doesn't serve the story. if i wanted to see naked dudes do weird stuff, i’d just get on the subway. which is no doubt the theater-philistine equivalent of “my kid could paint that,� but i’m truly not sophisticated enough a theatergoer to get any value out of something designed to test or provoke an audience or make them question their expectations of theater's possibilities or whatever shit like that is meant to do. i have no expectations to subvert; i’m a preschooler who wants to be told a story and given a juice box at intermission.
so although i enjoyed reading the plays, i think seeing them performed would range from excruciating—the first one with alla that yelling and the long monologues (okay, the one two-page monologue that seems long to me but maybe isn’t that long?), to exhausting: the third play’s energy and quickchange tone and long body-painting intervals. i suppose i’d goldilocks the middle play, but that can’t take more than twenty minutes to perform, so i’m not sure it counts.
anyway, here are some thoughts on the individual plays even though no one’s still reading this.
play #1: APPROPRIATE
in which a shitty white family is revealed to be even shittier when racist family secrets are exposed. it’s like when you buy an onion that looks normal, but the rot starts just under the surface and gets worse with each layer. with each scene, each act, everyone’s behavior gets progressively more toxic.
so much yelling, by people and cicadas.
it ends with two pages of stage directions that i absolutely love and think is a perfect ending to such a corrosive play. it almost reads like a short story in itself, particularly the cicada part that opens it, and this is why i want him to write something i’m better at reading:
how is this conveyed? i don’t know, but the theater is a space of infinite possibility, right?
play #2: I PROMISE NEVER AGAIN TO WRITE PLAYS ABOUT ASIANS�
this is a six-page monologue, so there’s not much to it, but it’s sharp and angry and very funny and SPOILER ALERT it ends with blood pouring out of the actor’s mouth, with the stage direction:
This goes on for as long as it can.
play #3: AN OCTOROON
this is a wild adaptation of a play by boucicault i have vague memories of reading in undergrad; an upgrade that changes everything from how it is cast—several actors taking on multiple roles, to some modern, anachronistic dialogue:
as well as the addition of several scenes and characters along the way, decked out in metafiction and spectacle and bre’r rabbit cameos.
this is my favorite of the three, despite those things i know would annoy me, like the wedgies and the extremely loud music, &etc. but this one almost NEEDS to be seen to be appreciated. it’s confusing to read several actors playing multiple roles, sometimes in the same scene, and the visual effects and fourth wall-breakage are flatter on the page thanÌýthey would be live.
but yes, this one was my favorite for the flaca-and-maritza relationship between minnie and dido;
their bullshit and banter, their scramble to make sure they get sold together; they make an excellent comedy duo.
however, this play’s more serious meta-scenes, where the playwright character gets to vent, are impressive and satisfying in a more lasting way, which is where i’m going to leave this “review,� because i’ve gone on a lot longer than i intended to, and i feel silly and self-indulgent, so here’re some words from an excellent writer who makes me wish i liked theater.
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #6: Read a play by an author of color and/or queer author
i don’t really read plays. i only read this because challenge told me i had to read a play, and its blurbs sounded promising, with words like “funny,� “demented,� “fury,� etc.
i’m finally sitting down to review it, but i'm warning you: i’m bad at reading plays, i’m even worse at writing about them.
there are three plays in this collection.
END OF REVIEW.
fine, i will try.
reading these plays made me hope jacobs-jenkins would write a novel someday. which sounds insulting, but is not that way intended. here is a play i wrote to explain:
EXCELLENT BAKER: would you like a freshly-baked scone?
ME: no thank you. i do not care for scones. i prefer muffins. do you have any muffins?
EXCELLENT BAKER: no, i only bake scones, but i am an excellent baker and they are full of things you like: cinnamon and blueberries and nuts and everyone else loves them. try one. (hands ME the scone)
ME: okay, fine, but i really do not enjoy scones. (eats of the scone, tentatively) okay, i'll grant you—as far as scones go, this is pretty good, but if these flavors were in a thing that i like very much—say, a muffin—i bet it would be even better. will you make me a muffin?
EXCELLENT BAKER: no, i will murder you instead! (stabs ME)
ME: NOOOOOOOOO! (dies)
FIN
i like his writing, i like his humor, but i do not think i would enjoy attending a performance of these plays. however, i would be very interested in the how of it—again, i know nothing about theater, but these seem very ambitious, with elaborate stage directions that may or may not involve training rodents, and the expectation that the audience will be able to decipher what is meant by the volume and duration of recorded cicada-buzzing.
the stage directions my actually be my favorite part of these plays—i love how they deviate from the traditional or expected by being voicey, “But I guess I worry about the whole thing becoming too Brechtian. Though, does it matter? Also, can I help it?� or poetic, “Then moonlight happens,� or vague, “She takes a deep breath or something,� or highly specific, “Grace gets on the table holding her baby, which is, ideally, a white baby in blackface.� they almost function like the footnotes in —going off on their own journeys, not necessarily bound to what they’re meant to be explaining. his are full of asides, musings, and contradictions; details a live audience will never get to appreciate.
(M’Closky jumps up on his chair, throws money in the air, and makes it rain—perhaps literally, perhaps figuratively—the theater is a space of infinite possibility)
i’m torn between whether or not i would want to see these performed. i've probably gotten all the important bits out of the plays by reading them here in my home, but reading a play is a little like reading something in translation—you're left with the feeling there’s a piece of the work you haven’t been given access to.
however, my experience of going to plays is that i will either become self-conscious or sleepy (or better—self-conscious or unconscious, because i definitely dozed off during that albee play i was dragged to).
these plays might be too modern for me to appreciate. they’re maybe more for the post-narrative theater crowd, folks who dig the “theater experience,� who wanna leave a play feeling slightly rattled. i know that these are a million miles away from *actual* experimental theater, but while i loved encountering all of the metafiction flourishes strutting through them, i simply don’t have the patience for any theater of discomfort stuff (which i am pretty sure is a thing that exists with its own specific rules and characteristics, but i've learned my lesson about wasting time googling shit), so i’m for sure using the phrase wrong, but i'm okay with that. i'm using it to mean maybe artistic discomfort? "is this meant to shock or titillate me?"discomfort. something the disrupts the narrative with...whatever you want to call it when a “mostly—if not completely—naked� man applies whiteface (body painting optional) onstage, which procedure “should go on for some time� before he “very, very slowly and very, very stoically� gives himself “a powerful wedgie.� which i suppose won't be possible if the actor is completely naked, unless we are adding mime skills to the mix. i’m not offended by any of that, but i’m also not interested in paying money to see it if it doesn't serve the story. if i wanted to see naked dudes do weird stuff, i’d just get on the subway. which is no doubt the theater-philistine equivalent of “my kid could paint that,� but i’m truly not sophisticated enough a theatergoer to get any value out of something designed to test or provoke an audience or make them question their expectations of theater's possibilities or whatever shit like that is meant to do. i have no expectations to subvert; i’m a preschooler who wants to be told a story and given a juice box at intermission.
so although i enjoyed reading the plays, i think seeing them performed would range from excruciating—the first one with alla that yelling and the long monologues (okay, the one two-page monologue that seems long to me but maybe isn’t that long?), to exhausting: the third play’s energy and quickchange tone and long body-painting intervals. i suppose i’d goldilocks the middle play, but that can’t take more than twenty minutes to perform, so i’m not sure it counts.
anyway, here are some thoughts on the individual plays even though no one’s still reading this.
play #1: APPROPRIATE
in which a shitty white family is revealed to be even shittier when racist family secrets are exposed. it’s like when you buy an onion that looks normal, but the rot starts just under the surface and gets worse with each layer. with each scene, each act, everyone’s behavior gets progressively more toxic.
so much yelling, by people and cicadas.
it ends with two pages of stage directions that i absolutely love and think is a perfect ending to such a corrosive play. it almost reads like a short story in itself, particularly the cicada part that opens it, and this is why i want him to write something i’m better at reading:
The cicadas? They just go on singing—singing loudly, singing incessantly—a long, enormously complicated, deeply layered, entirely improvised, ancient song, which is mostly about the morning, but also about the evening and the day but also the night and the sun but also the moon and about waking up and flying around and what it is like to fly around and about loving each other and hating each other and fucking each other and hurting each other but also about trying to find each other in order to hurt and/or fuck each other but also about falling asleep and then waking up again and the quiet and the noise that accompany each day and the sounds of each other’s voices and the occasional music but mostly about the noise and the grass and the sky and the air and the water but also the water in the air and the heat in the air and the dry in the air and the birds in the sky and the birds on the grass and the birds on the branches and always birds—birds always—but also the sap in the branches and the sweetness of the sap in the branches of the trees but also the trees themselves on the grass and the grass on the dirt but also the dirt itself and how they miss the dirt and how they miss their homes in the dirt, the palaces where they came from, and the feeling of missing the thing you can never go back to and the mystery of the way one moves away from it and through the present and the mystery of the present and the mystery of the movement itself and the leaves on the branches and the birds in the leaves on the branches and the branches on the trees and the trees on the grass and the grass on the dirt and dying.
And we can’t understand any of it.
how is this conveyed? i don’t know, but the theater is a space of infinite possibility, right?
play #2: I PROMISE NEVER AGAIN TO WRITE PLAYS ABOUT ASIANS�
this is a six-page monologue, so there’s not much to it, but it’s sharp and angry and very funny and SPOILER ALERT it ends with blood pouring out of the actor’s mouth, with the stage direction:
This goes on for as long as it can.
play #3: AN OCTOROON
this is a wild adaptation of a play by boucicault i have vague memories of reading in undergrad; an upgrade that changes everything from how it is cast—several actors taking on multiple roles, to some modern, anachronistic dialogue:
MINNIE: You ever thought of running away?
DIDO: Aw, hell naw. What am I going to look like running through this hot-ass swamp? Uh-uh.
MINNIE: I know, right? Grace’s ass always talking about running away now that Massa dead and I’m like, “Bitch, you need to calm your busybody ass down.�
as well as the addition of several scenes and characters along the way, decked out in metafiction and spectacle and bre’r rabbit cameos.
this is my favorite of the three, despite those things i know would annoy me, like the wedgies and the extremely loud music, &etc. but this one almost NEEDS to be seen to be appreciated. it’s confusing to read several actors playing multiple roles, sometimes in the same scene, and the visual effects and fourth wall-breakage are flatter on the page thanÌýthey would be live.
but yes, this one was my favorite for the flaca-and-maritza relationship between minnie and dido;
their bullshit and banter, their scramble to make sure they get sold together; they make an excellent comedy duo.
MINNIE: Girl, is it just me or has it been really quiet?
DIDO: You know, I was just thinking the same thing.
MINNIE: Right?
(Beat.)
(As they work) Even all these white people are being really quiet. I wonder what’s going on today. I couldn’t read that sign out front, because I can’t read.
DIDO: I can’t read it, either. You know it’s illegal for us to read.
MINNIE: Yeeuh, but I was hopin� you wuz one of them secret readin� niggas. You know, like Rhonda.
DIDO: Rhonda can read?!
MINNIE: Shh, girl! It’s a secret.
however, this play’s more serious meta-scenes, where the playwright character gets to vent, are impressive and satisfying in a more lasting way, which is where i’m going to leave this “review,� because i’ve gone on a lot longer than i intended to, and i feel silly and self-indulgent, so here’re some words from an excellent writer who makes me wish i liked theater.
I believe an important part of being a good artist is recognizing your limits.
So I can respect the pussies who pussy out of a project.
I respect it when they get their “people� to be all like, “Well, such-and-such doesn’t really get the stuff about slaves.�
I’m like, “What is there not to get? It’s slavery.
And I’m not even asking you to play the slaves.
You’re playing the goddamn slave owner.�
I mean, God forbid you ask a black guy
to play some football-playing illiterate drug addict
magical negro Iraq vet with PTSD who’s
secretly on the DL with HIV but who’s
also trying to get out of a generic ghetto with his
pregnant obese girlfriend who has anger-management issues
from a history of sexual abuse�
in fact, everyone’s been sexually abused
and it all climaxes with someone’s mother having a
monologue
where she’s snotting out of her nose and crying everywhere
because she’s been caught smoking crack
and fired from her job as a hotel maid�
(Beat)
(I just made that up…Dibs.)
(Beat)
God forbid any actor of color not jump at the chance
to play an offensive bag of garbage
so far from his own life
but which some idiot critic or marketing intern is going
to describe as
a gritty, truthful portrayal of “the black experience
in America,� but the minute you ask a white guy
to play a racist whose racism isn’t
“complicated� by some monologue
where he’s like,
“I don’t mean to be racist!
It’s just complicated!�
he doesn’t return your phone calls?
Then my therapist was like,
“Don’t you think you ought to not shit where you eat?�
and I was like
“Well, what happens if I shit where I starve?�
December 6, 2020
Endlessly inventive with a new idea every minute but always funny, always engaging
March 7, 2024
Among the worst plays I've ever read (and I've read my share of bad plays).
Starting over a decade ago, 'Appropriate' had some high-profile regional and even off-Broadway productions. At long last, it is now on Broadway, receiving added acclaim. Go fig.
On the page, the play begins with a prologue all about the overpowering sound of cicadas that reads like a novel and that hits like a tiresome sledgehammer. (We get it, we get it; cicadas are loud.)
Characterizations are either superficial or clichéd. The tone is generally forced.
The play ends - again like a novel - with an almost dialogue-free epilogue detailing, in blackout snapshots, the gradual decline of the play's mansion. Theatrically dead.
In between, there's a nothing-all-that-new-added play about family dysfunction which (with, occasionally, an effective line of dialogue) has got nothing on the ambitious likes of 'August: Osage County' (though it appears to have the aim of being the new 'A:OC') and serves to remind that the exemplar of dysfunction is the infinitely better-written 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'.
I skimmed the other two works in the volume. Meh.
Starting over a decade ago, 'Appropriate' had some high-profile regional and even off-Broadway productions. At long last, it is now on Broadway, receiving added acclaim. Go fig.
On the page, the play begins with a prologue all about the overpowering sound of cicadas that reads like a novel and that hits like a tiresome sledgehammer. (We get it, we get it; cicadas are loud.)
Characterizations are either superficial or clichéd. The tone is generally forced.
The play ends - again like a novel - with an almost dialogue-free epilogue detailing, in blackout snapshots, the gradual decline of the play's mansion. Theatrically dead.
In between, there's a nothing-all-that-new-added play about family dysfunction which (with, occasionally, an effective line of dialogue) has got nothing on the ambitious likes of 'August: Osage County' (though it appears to have the aim of being the new 'A:OC') and serves to remind that the exemplar of dysfunction is the infinitely better-written 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'.
I skimmed the other two works in the volume. Meh.
December 19, 2016
Appropriate cuts with a rusty razor-edge. Not for the faint of heart, but totally captivating.
Read
December 20, 2023so.... plays are actually really good.... can you hear the sound of me eating my words.... it is audible far and wide..... i shed one single cinematic tear that i cannot see sarah paulson as toni.... one day.... god willing....
from appropriate:
"The cicadas? They just go on singing--singing loudly, singing incessantly-- a long, enormously complicated, deeply layered, entirely improvised, ancient song, which is mostly about the morning, but also about the evening and the day but also the night and the sun but also the moon and about waking up and flying around and what it is like to fly around and about loving each other and hating each other and fucking each other and hurting each other but also about trying to find each other in order to hurt and/or fuck each other but also about falling asleep and waking up again and the quiet and the noise that accompany each day and the sound of each other's voices and the occasional music but mostly about the noise and the grass and the sky and the air and the water but also the water in the air and the heat in the air and the dry in the air and the birds in the sky and the birds on the grass and the birds on the branches and always birds--birds always--but also the sap in the branches and the sweetness of the sap in the branches of the trees but also the trees themselves on the grass and the grass on the dirt but also the dirt itself and how they miss the dirt and how they miss their homes in the places where they came from, and the feeling of missing the thing you can never go back to and the mystery of the way one moves away from it and through the present and the mystery of the present"
BIBLE!!!
from appropriate:
"The cicadas? They just go on singing--singing loudly, singing incessantly-- a long, enormously complicated, deeply layered, entirely improvised, ancient song, which is mostly about the morning, but also about the evening and the day but also the night and the sun but also the moon and about waking up and flying around and what it is like to fly around and about loving each other and hating each other and fucking each other and hurting each other but also about trying to find each other in order to hurt and/or fuck each other but also about falling asleep and waking up again and the quiet and the noise that accompany each day and the sound of each other's voices and the occasional music but mostly about the noise and the grass and the sky and the air and the water but also the water in the air and the heat in the air and the dry in the air and the birds in the sky and the birds on the grass and the birds on the branches and always birds--birds always--but also the sap in the branches and the sweetness of the sap in the branches of the trees but also the trees themselves on the grass and the grass on the dirt but also the dirt itself and how they miss the dirt and how they miss their homes in the places where they came from, and the feeling of missing the thing you can never go back to and the mystery of the way one moves away from it and through the present and the mystery of the present"
BIBLE!!!
April 18, 2025
A collection of three short plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that I thoroughly enjoyed. Apart from the fact that the playwright has an excellent double-barrelled surname, he does a really good job of turning theater as a medium on its head. Particularly in Appropriate he used micro-level relationships and social dynamics to explore macro-level social concepts of familial conflict and how we should deal with racism when it comes to our ancestors, grandparents and parents. An Octoroon was surprising in its own way - Jacobs-Jenkins manages to really play with the concept of theater and the architecture of theatrical storytelling. It‘s compelling even though I‘ve only read it on the page, so I‘d really love to see both of his plays performed on a stage to see his ideas literally come to life.
February 15, 2025
BJJ creates frantic works whose neurotic characters present themselves perfectly as objects of audiences' projection of racial exasperation. His stage direction is beautiful in and of itself.
January 27, 2024
I’m short on time these days so rather than see the current Broadway production of Appropriate at Second Stage Theater starring Sarah Paulson, Elle Fanning, and a few others, I decided to read it. Branden Jacobs Jenkins develops bold, nuanced, and crazy characters all while covering multiple interpersonal topics - even some history - in the interesting setting of an old Arkansas estate. Since I’m familiar with the mannerisms of most of the actors in the Broadway production, I was able to “hire� these actors in my head to play the parts. Really enjoyed that. There’s so many funny and thought provoking moments in this play. I highlighted many relatable and profound lines.
The second play in this book, An Octoroon, was above my head. BJJ took a play that was wildly popular in its time alongside Uncle Tom’s Cabin and adapted it. It was hard for me to put myself in that time period and still appreciate the story - which he does end up commenting on. I’m surprised this work was published alongside Appropriate since the type of story, dialogue, and characters felt so incredibly different.
All in all these were my first BJJ plays and I’m happy I read them. Can’t wait to see what he does with Prince in the upcoming production of Purple Rain.
The second play in this book, An Octoroon, was above my head. BJJ took a play that was wildly popular in its time alongside Uncle Tom’s Cabin and adapted it. It was hard for me to put myself in that time period and still appreciate the story - which he does end up commenting on. I’m surprised this work was published alongside Appropriate since the type of story, dialogue, and characters felt so incredibly different.
All in all these were my first BJJ plays and I’m happy I read them. Can’t wait to see what he does with Prince in the upcoming production of Purple Rain.
November 21, 2019
Both "Appropriate" and "An Octoroon" are stimulating reads. As someone who appreciates Sam Shepard's plays, especially "Buried Child," Jacobs-Jenkins's "Appropriate" resonates of how far people will go to deny the basics truths of family's past generations. It's not meta in the performance, but it is a ribald critique of the entire ecosystem of family melodramas that circle around the theatre ("August, Osage County" being a particular example). "An Octoroon," meanwhile, expands and adapts an 1850s play about race in the South and discusses the difficulties inherent to modernizing these for the theatre today.
Each is very, very good.
Each is very, very good.
December 27, 2020
Golllly, BJJ is really something else. These three plays are dizzyingly creative, hilarious, and incisive. Appropriate has a scene toward the end of Act 2 that stopped me in my tracks, and An Octoroon is the first text in a while to make me laugh enough to put the book down for a breather.
BJJ is elbow-deep in allusions to and reinterpretations of dramatic history of which I know little. That much of his wit still lands is a testament to his talent. I hope to reread, either with a group or more dramatic knowledge. Would love to see any of these performed.
BJJ is elbow-deep in allusions to and reinterpretations of dramatic history of which I know little. That much of his wit still lands is a testament to his talent. I hope to reread, either with a group or more dramatic knowledge. Would love to see any of these performed.
March 18, 2025
a)Appropriate - probably 4.5/5 stars
b)I Promise Never Again to Write Plays About Asians
c)An Octoroon - probably 3 stars
APPROPRIATE
Appropriate was amazing and awful and horrifying. I'd love to see it performed on stage. The framing of the play by starting with the definition of "appropriate" gets you to think about the various meanings of the word, particularly the less obvious meanings (of appropriate as a verb - to steal or take without consent). The idea of racism being passed down through the family is well exemplified in this quote from Cassidy: "How do you think the baby cicadas learn the song? Is it just something that's programmed in them? Or maybe they just pick it up somewhere, listening when they're eggs. Maybe they're hearing it in their sleep, and that's how they learn? And their parents are dead, but they have this memory of a song that they think is just a part of them..."
Themes:
-the sister, Toni, constantly having the burden of domestic labor - taking care of the house/funeral/general family matters even though there are two other brothers (Toni mentions that she's known both her brothers their whole lives and remembers holding them - but then she says "there's no one alive who's held me")
-irony of closure (or lack thereof) for the father and this family, despite how the individuals depicted in the photos did not get closure/justice (being l*nched)
Quotes:
-Or is family just a bunch of mismatched memories--stories you tell yourself when you need an excuse to explain how trapped you feel or broken or cheated?
I PROMISE NEVER AGAIN TO WRITE PLAYS ABOUT ASIANS:
I love a good metafiction (or in this case play/monologue). The dialogue about how "Asian plays don't pay" in the same way that "Black plays" do is fascinating, as well as the consideration of how/why we assign racial status to a work of art.
-...Chow talks about the "politics of ethnicity" in the context of increasing capitalist commodification, and focuses on how exactly consumers/audiences understand any text to be, quote-unquote "ethnic" in the first place... what makes a "Chinese" novel or move or play actually "Chinese." Is it the author, the content, the marketing, or what exactly?...in what are artistic claims of resistance by an ethnic group on the basis of their ethnicity complicit with the macro social structures that created the very category of ethnic subjects themselves, e.g. capitalism?
AN OCTOROON:
I hesitate because I think much of An Octaroon went over my head. I enjoyed how "meta" it was and the overall commentary on the antebellum south. I think many of the racial nuances with who the actors are and who they are portraying was missed by reading instead of watching the play. I always find it difficult to remember the traits of all the characters when reading plays anyways oops. There's an interesting discussion about how we don't know what slaves actually spoke like, so Jacobs-Jenkins has them speak in modern language/AAVE.
Also the part about how using a photo to find catch the murderer works in the original plot of The Octoroon (Boucicault) but doesn't work in the modern portrayal because photographs are boring and cliche... this leads to the mention of how "the theater is no longer a place of novelty. The fact is we can more or less experience anything nowadays. So I think the final frontier, awkwardly enough, is probably just an actual experience of finality, I think [death]." The scene (4) ends with "The whole point of this thing was to make you feel something. What does that mean? I have no idea, but I came here to tell you a story.
Quotes:
-God forbid any actor of color not jump at the chance to play an offensive bag of garbage so far from his own life but which some idiot critic or marketing intern is going to describe as a gritty, truthful portrayal of "the black experience in America"
b)I Promise Never Again to Write Plays About Asians
c)An Octoroon - probably 3 stars
APPROPRIATE
Appropriate was amazing and awful and horrifying. I'd love to see it performed on stage. The framing of the play by starting with the definition of "appropriate" gets you to think about the various meanings of the word, particularly the less obvious meanings (of appropriate as a verb - to steal or take without consent). The idea of racism being passed down through the family is well exemplified in this quote from Cassidy: "How do you think the baby cicadas learn the song? Is it just something that's programmed in them? Or maybe they just pick it up somewhere, listening when they're eggs. Maybe they're hearing it in their sleep, and that's how they learn? And their parents are dead, but they have this memory of a song that they think is just a part of them..."
Themes:
-the sister, Toni, constantly having the burden of domestic labor - taking care of the house/funeral/general family matters even though there are two other brothers (Toni mentions that she's known both her brothers their whole lives and remembers holding them - but then she says "there's no one alive who's held me")
-irony of closure (or lack thereof) for the father and this family, despite how the individuals depicted in the photos did not get closure/justice (being l*nched)
Quotes:
-Or is family just a bunch of mismatched memories--stories you tell yourself when you need an excuse to explain how trapped you feel or broken or cheated?
I PROMISE NEVER AGAIN TO WRITE PLAYS ABOUT ASIANS:
I love a good metafiction (or in this case play/monologue). The dialogue about how "Asian plays don't pay" in the same way that "Black plays" do is fascinating, as well as the consideration of how/why we assign racial status to a work of art.
-...Chow talks about the "politics of ethnicity" in the context of increasing capitalist commodification, and focuses on how exactly consumers/audiences understand any text to be, quote-unquote "ethnic" in the first place... what makes a "Chinese" novel or move or play actually "Chinese." Is it the author, the content, the marketing, or what exactly?...in what are artistic claims of resistance by an ethnic group on the basis of their ethnicity complicit with the macro social structures that created the very category of ethnic subjects themselves, e.g. capitalism?
AN OCTOROON:
I hesitate because I think much of An Octaroon went over my head. I enjoyed how "meta" it was and the overall commentary on the antebellum south. I think many of the racial nuances with who the actors are and who they are portraying was missed by reading instead of watching the play. I always find it difficult to remember the traits of all the characters when reading plays anyways oops. There's an interesting discussion about how we don't know what slaves actually spoke like, so Jacobs-Jenkins has them speak in modern language/AAVE.
Also the part about how using a photo to find catch the murderer works in the original plot of The Octoroon (Boucicault) but doesn't work in the modern portrayal because photographs are boring and cliche... this leads to the mention of how "the theater is no longer a place of novelty. The fact is we can more or less experience anything nowadays. So I think the final frontier, awkwardly enough, is probably just an actual experience of finality, I think [death]." The scene (4) ends with "The whole point of this thing was to make you feel something. What does that mean? I have no idea, but I came here to tell you a story.
Quotes:
-God forbid any actor of color not jump at the chance to play an offensive bag of garbage so far from his own life but which some idiot critic or marketing intern is going to describe as a gritty, truthful portrayal of "the black experience in America"
May 21, 2022
Weird and fucked up in the best way. I'd seen of An Octoroon and while I enjoyed reading it through I did feel the absence of the theater at times. For example, it was harder for me to "see" some of the most impactful moments when the vaudeville abruptly (and disturbingly) shifts to realism, but then I'm not super familiar with melodrama. Also, Act 4 reads as very meta/postmodern on the page, but the photograph this production used made the whole thing extremely visceral and upsetting, and not at all too-cool-for-it-all as I think I might otherwise read the text. I'd still recommend An Octoroon highly to anyone whether or not they've seen it played out on stage.
Appropriate reads very much like a dialogue-heavy novella; it's clearly a take on the Great American Living Room Play, also known as Dysfunctional Family Members Shouting At One Another Play, but it subverts expectations with each eerie revelation of the rot at the family tree's root.
Appropriate reads very much like a dialogue-heavy novella; it's clearly a take on the Great American Living Room Play, also known as Dysfunctional Family Members Shouting At One Another Play, but it subverts expectations with each eerie revelation of the rot at the family tree's root.
August 24, 2019
Incredible plays...BJJ is clearly a genius and one of the greatest playwrights of his generation. 'Approriate' covers a family reunion of white southerners dealing with their difficult history and heritage. Jenkins claims he wrote the play as a generic white family drama almost as a send up but the writing crackles and hisses and the plot keeps revealing itself....undeniable page turner. 'An Octoroon' is a reworking of a 19th-century play set on a Louisiana plantation featuring broad villainy and cliched racist portraits. BJJ blows up the 4th wall in the first and fourth acts as well as in the casting (a black actor in whiteface plays the white protagonist and the white antagonist) to create a mood, an experience. The plot is secondary, the characters and the dramatic inventiveness is all.
November 12, 2020
Un-freaking-believable. I'm speechless. How can a writer be this brilliant? I'm literally stunned. I can't move. This play is....I can't find the right word, genius? Incredible? Profound? Everything. I need to go take a cold shower.
July 8, 2022
Genius. I saw An Octoroon twice and loved it so it was fun to revisit. Appropriate was entirely different but still masterful and thought-provoking.
December 20, 2023
Appropriate: 3 stars
An Octoroon: 3.5 stars
An Octoroon: 3.5 stars
April 18, 2024
"Appropriate" was stunning. "An Octoroon" was also good but had a little bit too much going on.
March 6, 2025
BJJ is a legend� it’s giving Percival Everett erasure vibes bc of their similar implementation of humor??
December 9, 2022
This is a collection of three great plays!
April 18, 2020
I will buy and read anything Jenkins writes sight unseen for probably the rest of time.
July 25, 2024
saw one; read both.
both are so aware of great theater that came before them but forge their own path.
In "A", I think the relationship between Toni and anybody is the best. I hate Toni so much but she's so incredibly written that I couldn't look away (hell, it is worth studying). I love Rachael.
In "AO", I think the confines of story-within-story(-within-story?) are pushed to some wildly fun limits. I love Zoe, and the portrayal of Dido and Minnie.
both are so aware of great theater that came before them but forge their own path.
In "A", I think the relationship between Toni and anybody is the best. I hate Toni so much but she's so incredibly written that I couldn't look away (hell, it is worth studying). I love Rachael.
In "AO", I think the confines of story-within-story(-within-story?) are pushed to some wildly fun limits. I love Zoe, and the portrayal of Dido and Minnie.
July 15, 2024
I'm so sorry I missed seeing this on Broadway. The words just vibrated off of the page. So powerful.
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