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Appropriate |
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Appropriate
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DIRECTOR’S NOTE
When I chose Appropriate for Santa Paula Theater Center, I knew it was a risk - and that was precisely the point.
At first glance, the play looks familiar: a decaying Southern home, estranged siblings, a family gathering after the death of a father. But Appropriate quickly reveals itself as something far more unsettling. Beneath the surface is a fierce examination of race, inheritance, buried rage, and the stories families tell themselves to survive. Echoing the great American dramas of Arthur Miller and Edward Albee, the play works on two levels at once, the realism we recognize and the reckoning we can’t escape.
The Lafayette family reunites at their Arkansas plantation to settle an estate, only to uncover a legacy that refuses to stay buried. The question of what is “appropriate” - What has been taken, justified, excused, or ignored for generations? The ground keeps shifting, and the result is darkly funny, volatile, and uncomfortably familiar.
What struck me most in rehearsal is how much this play is driven by rage, racial, familial, generational, and gendered rage with nowhere to go. In Branden Jacobs - Jenkins’ masterful hands, it erupts, vanishes, and resurfaces in breathtaking ways. Alongside that fury is an equally piercing examination of vulnerability: how unequipped we often are to truly see one another, even (or especially) within our own families.
And yet, Appropriate is often laugh-out-loud funny. Humor becomes the doorway, disarming us just long enough for the truth to land. That tension, between comedy and confrontation, is what gives the play its extraordinary power.
At SPTC, I believe theater should do more than entertain. It should provoke reflection, invite conversation, and ask us to sit with discomfort. Appropriate doesn’t offer easy answers, but it insists that we look directly at what we inherit, and what we choose to carry forward.
This play scares me. And in my experience, that’s how you know it matters.
When I chose Appropriate for Santa Paula Theater Center, I knew it was a risk - and that was precisely the point.
At first glance, the play looks familiar: a decaying Southern home, estranged siblings, a family gathering after the death of a father. But Appropriate quickly reveals itself as something far more unsettling. Beneath the surface is a fierce examination of race, inheritance, buried rage, and the stories families tell themselves to survive. Echoing the great American dramas of Arthur Miller and Edward Albee, the play works on two levels at once, the realism we recognize and the reckoning we can’t escape.
The Lafayette family reunites at their Arkansas plantation to settle an estate, only to uncover a legacy that refuses to stay buried. The question of what is “appropriate” - What has been taken, justified, excused, or ignored for generations? The ground keeps shifting, and the result is darkly funny, volatile, and uncomfortably familiar.
What struck me most in rehearsal is how much this play is driven by rage, racial, familial, generational, and gendered rage with nowhere to go. In Branden Jacobs - Jenkins’ masterful hands, it erupts, vanishes, and resurfaces in breathtaking ways. Alongside that fury is an equally piercing examination of vulnerability: how unequipped we often are to truly see one another, even (or especially) within our own families.
And yet, Appropriate is often laugh-out-loud funny. Humor becomes the doorway, disarming us just long enough for the truth to land. That tension, between comedy and confrontation, is what gives the play its extraordinary power.
At SPTC, I believe theater should do more than entertain. It should provoke reflection, invite conversation, and ask us to sit with discomfort. Appropriate doesn’t offer easy answers, but it insists that we look directly at what we inherit, and what we choose to carry forward.
This play scares me. And in my experience, that’s how you know it matters.
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The CastToni - Cynthia Killion
Bo - Anthony Cantrell Franz - James James Rachel - Rosie Gordan River - Haley Abbott Rhys - Christopher Craven Cassie - Amber Shea Hodge Ainsley - Skylar Richards |
