ence. Somehow laughter gives you currency if you can throw
visual textures of race and made the choice to use black-
it on something else. I was reading it in relationship to Dave
ness as a “material” in my writing the same way you
Chappelle’s then-recent breakdown and was writing about
might use “suspense” or something. That blackness–
contemporary theatrical ideas of the “wrong” laughter. And,
or just “race” in general– or maybe the better word is
at one point, I realized I was the only person in this department
“difference”– is some sort of dramatic tool in a toolkit,
of fifty-five people who was African American who studied
and I could use it to manipulate feelings.
theatre. Everyone else was doing music or dance. My advi-
I started seeing it everywhere. Like in Tracy Letts’ August:
sor told me, “Well, the truth is that theatre begins for African
Osage County, there’s this Indian woman upstairs and that’s
Americans in a place of shame. It begins in minstrelsy, with an
never dealt with. There’s a huge motif in A Streetcar Named
idea of blackness.” He was right– the first appearance of
Desire about interracial mixing. And Long Day’s Journey is
blackness in the theatre was face paint.
about immigrants WASPing themselves up in order to fit in.
Signature: Which might explain why your teacher Daphne
“skipped over” minstrelsy.
BJJ: Right. Because if you’re actually going to talk about
theatre in America and blackness, you have to start in a
place of debasement. The only indigenous American theatrical form is blackface minstrelsy; you can argue musical theatre, but that has roots in operetta and other things. There’s
an amazing book by Eric Lott called Love and Theft that talks
Signature: Yet that’s not what people talk about when they
talk about that play.
BJJ: Right. They’re all “family dramas.” But when you look
at A Raisin in the Sun, or The Piano Lesson or Stick Fly, no
one ever treats them as plays about family. They’re “social
dramas” about history and “the black experience.”
Then I was reading Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of
about minstrelsy’s origins, which was actually a big inspiration
Others, looking for ways to think about audience reception
for Neighbors; that was my first full-length play.
and the morality of being an audience member and watch-
Signature: How did Neighbors launch your career?
called “Tragedy and the Common Man,” where he posits that
BJJ: When I’d first moved to New York, I saw the playwright
Adam Bock on this panel and he said all these things I actually listened to, one of which was: all the support in the industry– at least at that time– was for “emerging” playwrights, so
chase every opportunity you can before your first production.
He also said, “Write a play that’s your calling card.” Which
Neighbors sort of was for me. I thought if I crammed every
question I had about blackness and theatre into the play, no
one could ask me for a play about that ever again. I won a
ing people suffer. I also read this essay by Arthur Miller
theatre is descended from a time when people watched human sacrifices. That somehow we have this biological need
to watch life destroyed in order to value our communal lives.
Then I came across this essay by Hilton Als called “GWTW,”
in which he investigates what it means that he was asked to
write an essay for a book of photographs about dead black
people. He was essentially asking why is he qualified to write
about that– because he’s black? And that’s when Appropriate
really snuck up on me.
Princess Grace Award, got into the Emerging Writers Group
At first I thought I would adapt a Chekhov play but I was not
at the Public, and the writers group at Ars Nova, all really
feeling it. I don’t think I write family dramas, or naturalism. I
important steps in my career– thanks to that play.
read every single family play and was so bored with the form.
I judged them very quickly.
Signature: What did you learn from writing and working on
Neighbors that prepped you for writing Appropriate?
Signature: But then you fell in love with them.
BJJ: I’ve been saying that Appropriate feels like the end of a
BJJ: Oh, yeah. It was actually when I was reading Horton
sequence that is Neighbors, An Octoroon, and Appropriate.
Foote that I was like, “Wait a minute. Something kind of
They’re all concerned with genre and the act of seeing– the
cool is happening.” It was Dividing the Estate. I ended up
moral questions inherent in it– and what exactly is American
deciding I would steal something from every play that
about American theatre. They’re all very self-consciously
I liked, and put those things in a play and cook the pot
interested in audience.
to see what happens. The characters in Appropriate are
The divergent, impassioned responses to Neighbors (produced at the Public Theater in 2010) made it clear that
there’s something dense about race onstage. I learned
that race is a visual code and that it has a lot to do with
how much we rely on what we see to tell us what we think
we feel. Which is the power of the theatre, ultimately, and
what melodrama’s about, using visual and sensor H