{"id":1883,"date":"2019-09-05T00:27:10","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T23:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1883"},"modified":"2019-09-05T14:43:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T13:43:32","slug":"propwatch-the-photo-album-in-appropriate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2019\/09\/propwatch-the-photo-album-in-appropriate.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the photo album in Appropriate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Can\u2019t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?<\/em>, her graphic memoir about her parents\u2019 old age, the New Yorker cartoonist Ros Chast has some advice about hoarding. Don\u2019t hold onto anything you don\u2019t want your kids to have to sort through once you\u2019re gone. In her case, plastic tchotchkes beyond number. In my case, look forward to old theatre programmes and a surprising quantity of wooden spoons. For the Lafayette family in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins\u2019 Appropriate<\/a> <\/em>(at London\u2019s Donmar), it\u2019s myriad faulty table lamps, a rocking horse and, oh yes, an album stuffed with vintage photos of lynchings from the American south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t Jacobs-Jenkins\u2019 first tangle with such incendiary material. Grainy, but more than graphic, photos of similar scenes are projected towards the end of An Octoroon<\/a><\/em>. After what has been an often riotously provocative play, an audience is joltingly confronted with a racism which wasn\u2019t satirised or framed through theatrical audacity, but as stark historical fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The middle-aged Lafayette siblings \u2013 together for the\nfirst time in decades as they sort through their late father\u2019s silo of clutter\nand prepare his house for auction \u2013 aren\u2019t great on objective fact. Their\ncurrency is grievance, reproach and hurling blame at each other for their\nvariously messed-up and unfulfilled lives. When a child comes across the album,\nit becomes the rancid focus of their squabbling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Monica Dolan, Steven Mackintosh and Edward Hogg as the Lafayette siblings. Photos: Marc Brenner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of stuff on Fly Davis\u2019 richly cluttered set \u2013 a lot<\/em>. It\u2019s overwhelming, even for Propwatch. Tankards, stuffed birds, a rocking horse. In Ola Ince\u2019s production, the actors have to negotiate tight paths through the junk to cross the stage. The album itself (see photo, top) is bound in a rich but faded red \u2013 blood red, guilt red. Even in this intimate space, we can\u2019t see what is on the pages \u2013 especially as most of the characters hold it close, casting appalled, covert glances at the photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appropriate<\/em>: such a great title. So, what is\nappropriate and being appropriated in Appropriate<\/em>? Is it appropriate to\npossess a collection of such repugnant images? To look at them? To have your\nchildren look at them? To destroy them? Or \u2013 ooh, here\u2019s a thought \u2013 to profit\nfrom them? The family\u2019s arguments rapidly escalate with their own inappropriate\nenergies, as they eviscerate each others\u2019 lives, drag family history into harsh\nlight, exchange unforgivable insults and racial slurs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for whether they are appropriating the photographs by\nretaining them or considering how to sell them \u2013 well, that\u2019s a discussion that\ntroubles them far less. For the cash-strapped, affection-challenged Lafayettes,\nappropriation merely represents a welcome financial solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an American tradition of squabbling family plays, often centered around property or inheritance \u2013 from Hansberry\u2019s A Raisin in the Sun<\/em> to Miller\u2019s The Price<\/em>, from O\u2019Neill\u2019s Long Day\u2019s Journey<\/em> to Letts\u2019 August: Osage County<\/em>. Dividing the spoils, staking a claim, shelving the blame \u2013 these are the rites that barge through the fractious families of American drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacobs-Jenkins appropriates these predominantly\nwhite-authored tropes \u2013 both giving them rackety new life and questioning their\ndeadlock hold on theatrical attention. Holding on to the thing that holds you\nback isn\u2019t just the plot of Appropriate<\/em>, it\u2019s also its form and its argument.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s something that the Lafayettes don\u2019t have to appropriate, but which they don\u2019t realise is already in their possession \u2013 white America\u2019s responsibility for the nation\u2019s racism. We\u2019re used to seeing plays about racism through the eyes of those who experience it most overtly \u2013 but Jacobs-Jenkins uses his all-white characters and the photo album, this noxious piece of property, to remind us that the history of hatred sits in white America\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lafayette house sits beside two graveyards, inextricable\nslices of American history (one for the civil war fallen, another for victims\nof slavery). Their history belongs to both, if from radically different\nperspectives \u2013 as does the murderous history chronicled in the album. What to\ndo about that \u2013 well, it isn\u2019t solely black America\u2019s problem. As the\nLafayettes discover about appropriating America\u2019s vexed heritage \u2013 you take it,\nyou pay for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Can\u2019t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, her graphic memoir about her parents\u2019 old age, the New Yorker cartoonist Ros Chast has some advice about hoarding. Don\u2019t hold onto anything you don\u2019t want your kids to have to sort through once you\u2019re gone. In her case, plastic tchotchkes beyond number. In my case, look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[695,691,690,143,692,693,694,322,321,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1883","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-an-octoroon","9":"tag-appropriate","10":"tag-branden-jacobs-jenkins","11":"tag-donmar","12":"tag-fly-davis","13":"tag-ola-ince","14":"tag-photo-album","15":"tag-props","16":"tag-propwatch","17":"tag-theatre","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1883"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1889,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883\/revisions\/1889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}