Appropriate/An Octoroon: Plays - by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Paperback)

About the Book

Two astonishing breakout plays from one of the theatre's most exciting and provocative young writers.

Book Synopsis

"The deftly crafted blend of shocking exaggeration and believability, politeness and fury...makes Appropriate land with the kind 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

A double-volume containing two astonishing breakout plays from one of the theatre's most exciting and provocative young writers.

In Appropriate, strained familial dynamics collide with a tense undercurrent of socio-political realities when the Lafayettes gather at a former plantation home to sift through the belongings of their deceased patriarch. An Octoroon is an audacious investigation of theatre and identity, wherein an old play gives way to a startlingly original piece.

Also includes the short play I Promise Never Again to Write Plays About Asians...

Review Quotes

"An Octoroon isn't just an alternative to the irony-free 'black American theater' of Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson; it's part of it--and part of many other things, too, because Jacobs-Jenkins's surrealism grows out of naturalism, the strange circumstances that make us open our mouths, hoping to be heard, even as we forget to listen."--Hilton Als "New Yorker on An Octoroon"

"An Octoroon is a meta-dramatic meditation and deconstructive masterpiece... Jacobs-Jenkins writes brilliantly about race in America, and the cultural legacy employed in the service of tyranny since the earliest days of this nation."--Chris Jones "Chicago Tribune on An Octoroon"

"Appropriate feels entirely original and upsetting in new ways... It asks audiences to understand the hatred, the anger and the pathologies that evolved as a result of our racist past. Eventually the [family's] house buckles under the weight of those emotions, underscoring the metaphor. The effect is visceral, reverberating for days afterward."--Joanne Ostrow "Denver Post on Appropriate"

"Appropriate is a highly charged and ambitiously sprawling drama... The author finds opportunities to startle us just as we're settling back to enjoy the familiar spectacle of flamboyant family dysfunction... There's no denying that Jacobs-Jenkins is one of the rising stars in the American theater."--Charles McNulty "LA Times on Appropriate"

"A coruscating comedy of resolved history... Strange as it seems, a work based on a terminally dated play from more than 150 years ago may turn out to be this decade's most eloquent theatrical statement on race in America today."--Ben Brantley "New York Times on An Octoroon"

"A very fine, subversively original new play... Appropriate is, at heart, a ghost story, in the most profound sense."--Ben Brantley "New York Times on Appropriate"

"A work that is infinitely playful and deeply serious and which dazzlingly questions the nature of theatrical illusion." --Michael Billington "Guardian on An Octoroon"

About the Author

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's plays include Everybody (Signature Theatre, Pulitzer Prize finalist), War (LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater), Gloria (Vineyard Theatre, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Appropriate (Signature Theatre, Obie Award), An Octoroon (Soho Rep., Obie Award) and Neighbors (The Public Theater). He is a Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre and under commission from LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, the Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan Initiative Grant, and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. His recent honors include the Charles Wintour Award for Promising Playwright from the London Evening Standard, a London Critics Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation Theater Award, the Steinberg Playwright Award, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award. He sits on the board of Soho Rep., and, with Annie Baker, is the Associate Co-Director of the Hunter College MFA Program in Playwriting, where he is also a Master-Artist-in-Residence.