ATHENS, Ohio – April 10 – April 19, Ohio University’s Vibrancy Theater presents a production of Bootycandy, a play written by Robert O’Hara and directed by Devin Ty Franklin as their M.F.A. thesis production.

A Black queer odyssey navigating childhood and sexuality, O’Hara’s semi-autobiographical comedy offers us rage, reflection, and… a rack of ribs. What lengths are you willing to take to be embraced as you are, and does safety always outweigh authenticity?

DRAMATURGICAL NOTE
Comedy has always been integral to our performance traditions, with playwrights and artists leveraging it for social and political commentary and serving as a societal equalizer. West African Yoruba performances employed masquerade and parody to subtly undermine solemn rituals, while the Greek playwright Aristophanes openly ridiculed specific individuals in his comedies. Molière’s French farces comedically questioned the boundaries between self and performance.

In 15th-century Japan, kabuki performers used parodic drag to create comedic role reversals that challenged samurai culture and the status quo. The Korean kut, a shamanistic ritual historically performed by women, served as a “safety valve” for the oppressed to mock their oppressors without fear. From Yoruba to ancient Greece, from French farce to the kut, comedy has proven to be an essential tool for playful ridicule.

Robert O’Hara’s semi-autobiographical and provocative subversive comedy, Bootycandy, premiered at Woolly Mammoth in 2011. The play unfolds the experiences of Sutter, a young gay Black man, on a fearless journey through his childhood home, church, bars, and motel rooms. At times moving, shocking, humorous, and insightful, Bootycandy showcases a vibrant variation of vignettes, sermons, sketches, and audacious meta-theatrics. From scene to scene, the play humorously shifts back and forth across space and time, with O’Hara utilizing four other actors to portray various characters from Sutter’s life. O’Hara employs biting and hilarious social satire to explore the interplay of pain and pleasure while taking a candid look at views on homosexuality within Black culture.

In Bootycandy, O’Hara capitalizes on the historical use of comedy while building on his own lexicon of performance traditions. Performance scholar Julinda Lewis argues that the play draws on Africanist aesthetics, suggesting it operates with a polycentric rhythm that allows for quick shifts between comedic and serious elements, often employing both simultaneously. O’Hara also draws from the theatrical traditions of his mentor, George C. Wolfe, whose play The Colored Museum utilized “signifying” as a rhetorical strategy for Black gay men.

As scholar Charles I. Nero defines it, signifying plays with language to convey its message subtextually and subversively, as seen in the wit and wordplay found in “reading” and camp practices in Harlem ballrooms. This signifying is evident throughout the play, whether in the double entendre found in the “Ceremony” scene or in the ludicrous wordplay and irony that occurs over a “Happy Meal.”

What ultimately results in Bootycandy is what theatre scholar Isaiah Matthew Wooden describes as a “dramaturgy of the defamiliarizing,” where familiar social categories (such as Blackness, gayness, masculinity, family, etc.) are reinterpreted as strange and disordered. These social constructs are revealed as restrictive and ripe for humorous critique and new understanding.

Bootycandy playfully mocks, challenges, and interrogates our cherished beliefs, what we often accept uncritically, and what causes us the deepest pain. In doing so, the play allows for the reclamation of self beyond the myth of personal perfection and the constraints of respectability politics.

O’Hara describes his theater as one where “everyone is welcome, and no one is safe.” And to that, we conclude: welcome.
– Tyler Adams, Dramaturg

DATES
April 10 – 12 & 16 – 18 @ 8pm.

April 12 & 19 @ 2pm

The Elizabeth Evans Baker Theater, Kantner Hall, 19 South College Street, Athens, OH 45701
Talk-back after the show on Thursday 4/17.
There will be one 10-minute intermission.

TICKETS
Arts For Ohio provides FREE Student Rush tickets with an OU ID for each performance at the venue provided tickets are not sold out.

CONTENT ADVISORY
“Bootycandy” contains sexually explicit material.