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Monday, May 7, 2018

Montclair’s Studio Players caps season with the NJ premiere of “Appropriate”

Appropriate

Appropriate
winner of the 2014-2015 Obie Award for Best New American Play
by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins himself the recipient of a 2016 MacArthur “Genius” Grant

WHEN: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00pm, Sundays at 3:00pm, from May 11th through 25th.
WHERE:
Studio Playhouse is located at 14 Alvin Place, off Valley Road near the Acme, in Upper Montclair.
TICKETS: $20 for adults and $17 for students and seniors; discounts available for groups of 20 or more that prepay.  Opening night tickets are buy 1, get one 1 free.  Tickets can be purchased online at www.studioplayhouse.org/tickets or by calling 973-744-9752. 

Appropriate, which Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins, the rising African-American playwright, notes is both and adjective and a verb, is his experiment to write in “white voice.” It dramatizes every estranged member of the Lafayette clan descending upon their crumbling Arkansas homestead to settle the accounts of the newly-dead patriarch. As the three adult children sort through a lifetime of hoarded mementos and junk, a disturbing discovery surfaces among their father’s possessions, and the reunion takes a turn for the explosive, unleashing a series of crackling surprises and confrontations. Collisions over clutter, debt, and a contentious family history involving race relations, religious tension, identity, sexual impropriety, and substance abuse—to name but a few—surely keep the audience spellbound in this exciting new work.

Appropriate ​is directed by Mark Liebert and Bill O’Brien and stage managed by Kevin Ohlweiler.

(IMAGE: François “Franz/Frank” Lafayette (center, Michael Turner of Hawthorne) explains to the family (L to R: Emily Miller of Bloomingdale, Debra Carozza of Wyckoff, Nadia Nale of North Bergen, Deshja Driggs-Hall and Bill Barry of Montclair, and Madelyn Barkocy of Rockaway) what happened to some dangerous photos. Photos courtesy of John Fraissenet)