American playwright and director Robert O’Hara has written four shows including Insurrection: Holding History, Bootycandy (Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Drama), Barbecue, Mankind. O’Hara was nominated for the 2020 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for his contribution to Slave Play.
He lived with his mother, who had him when she was seventeen, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He began attending Catholic school in the third grade, where he was one of the few African-American students. His step-father moved in with them when he was twelve. He attended Walnut Hills High School, a nationally recognized public academic magnet school, where he was active in the theater program. He later attended Tufts University in Boston and graduated in 1992. Initially he majored in political science and wanted to become a lawyer. However, he quickly realized he was much more interested in theatre and changed his major to drama. While at Tufts he started the Tufts Black Theatre Company, for which he directed and wrote work. After graduating from Tufts, he received his master’s degree in directing at Columbia University (1996). He interned, while attending Columbia, at the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Joseph Papp Public Theater, and was mentored by notable African-American playwright George C. Wolfe, author of The Colored Museum.
As a director, O’Hara has received the NAACP Best Director Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, two Obie Awards and the Oppenheimer Award. He has also directed the world premieres of Nikkole Salter and Danai Gurira’s In the Continuum, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays (Part 2) and Colman Domingo’s Wild with Happy, as well as his own plays Bootycandy and Insurrection: Holding History. Two of his plays, Zombie: The American and Barbecue, have world premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theater and New York Shakespeare Festival, respectively.
I love plays that capture the imagination, that take you on a ride and an adventure.
As a playwright, his work is produced all over the country and has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, Steppenwolf, the Public Theatre, LaJolla Playhouse, McCarter Theater, Mark Taper Forum and Woolly Mammoth Theater. He has written screenplays for Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jon Avnet, HBO, ABC, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, New Line/Fine Line Cinema and Artisan Entertainment.
See Barbecue November 17 – 21 at CCBC Essex, Robert and Eleanor Romadka College Center, F. Scott Black Theatre.
Performance Dates: November 17 at 11:10 a.m., November 18, 19 at 7 p.m., November 20 at 3 p.m. (ASL Interpreted), and November 21 at 10 a.m.
General admission $10, Seniors, Students, CCBC Faculty/Staff/Alumni $5, FREE for CCBC Students with current ID
Purchase tickets online at www.ccbctickets or call the Box Office at 443-840-ARTS.
Please note, Barbecue deals with characters struggling with drug addiction, and therefore contains extensive drug references and simulated drug usage, smoking. In addition, it contains mature language, and simulated tasering.
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