Robert O’Hara’s elegantly conceived, ferocious, hilarious plays speak to history and question the past. Alluring and disturbing, the work is both raucous and sobering, a world where laughter precedes merciless critique. An African-American gay man who challenges himself - and his audiences – to wade waist deep into the complicated issues of race, O’Hara interrogates how Americans think about history, family, sexuality, addiction, representation, as well as the conventions of American domestic drama itself. Unleashing contradictions and collisions – or, in his words, creating “Beauty in the Horror” - with an incredible rhythmic ear, he invokes naturalism and extravagant hallucinatory parody and wields reversals upsetting theatrical conventions of time, sustained narrative, and character, as well as spectators’ sacred (if unconscious) expectations. His motto? “Everyone is Welcome. No One is Safe.”

photo: Brian McConkey