APPROPRIATE // SEPTEMBER 24 - OCTOBER 26, 2023
THE COAL MINE THEATRE PRESENTS THE CANADIAN PREMIERE OF:
APPROPRIATE
By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Ted Dykstra
Associate Director Matthew G Brown
Appropriate is a full-length drama by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. In this searing comic drama, the estranged members of the Lafayette family return to their crumbling Arkansas plantation home to settle the accounts of their recently deceased patriarch. As they sort through a hoarded lifetime of mementos and junk, they discover a gruesome relic that sends them spiraling into a dark history of repressed memories and family secrets. A breakout play from one of the theatre's most exciting and provocative young writers.
"…very fine, subversively original… [Jacobs-Jenkins] honors the time-tested recipes of those who have gone before him, combining them into a crafty narrative… But he also brings a culinary self-consciousness to the mix that makes you savor the ingredients anew, while pondering why they have dominated American theater for so long …Appropriate is piercingly clear, with carefully drawn characters who speak in crisp and fluid dialogue. [Jacobs-Jenkins] enjoys his quarrelsome characters, and he has achieved the difficult feat of making them all both unlovable and impossible not to identify with… remarkable and devious."
– The New York Times
"…prodigiously gifted… [Branden Jacobs-Jenkins] effortlessly and believably taps into a white family's dysfunction, infuses the script with unforced, viperish humor …Appropriate is an uncommonly deft dramatic and technical achievement."
– Entertainment Weekly
Appropriate premiered in 2013 at the Actors Theater of Louisville during the Humana Festival of New American Plays, followed by regional premieres at professional theatres across the US, including Victory Gardens Theatre (Chicago), Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington DC), and Signature Theatre (New York, Off-Broadway). The play was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play, and won the 2015 Obie Award for Best New American Play. Since then it has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.
