Bootycandy
BootyCandy is a series of interconnected vignettes, often comedic and satirical, that explore themes of what it means to be a black gay man in America. Originally written as twelve separate short plays, O'Hara eventually wove them together into one play, bringing the character of Sutter out as the through line through most of the smaller scenes. O'Hara has said that while the play is in many ways autobiographical and the character of Sutter particularly mirrors his own experiences, it doesn't necessarily tell the exact story of his own life.
The play premiered at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, D.C., on May 30, 2011. It then moved to Playwrights Horizons Theater Company from August 22 through October 19, 2014. Here, it won the Obie Award's Special Citation shared between O'Hara and actors Philip James Brannon, Jessica Frances Dukes, Jesse Pennington, Benja Kay Thomas, and Lance Coadie Williams.
Two of the vignettes from BootyCandy – Dreaming in Church and Genitalia were developed and produced by Worth Street Theater Company at The Tribeca Playhouse as part of theirSnapshots 2000 series. Worth Street's artistic director Jeff Cohen was the director. Bruce Weber of The New York Times wrote: “Dreamin’ In Church is a comic monologue delivered from the pulpit of a black church. (It is) a carefully constructed piece with a warning against rumormongering – there are gays in the church choir, it is said – and mounts to its own joyous confession. Mr. O’Hara, who is black, is a promising and energetic playwright with a healthy sense of the comic possibilities of bigotry and racial stereotypes. He has a second offering here as well, a jokey skit in Wayans brothers’ mode about black women talking on the phone about the decision by one of them to name her baby Genitalia. In ”Dreamin" Mr. O’Hara shows off a gift for deft pacing, withholding the comic underpinnings of the story just long enough. Performed by Derek Lively with fervent, singsong mischief the monologue ends up thundering on some obvious points and once Mr. Lively strips off his robe to disclose his own secret his delivery is hilarious.”
