In His WordsPlaywright Robert O’Hara is one of the most exciting contemporary writers working in America today. The Tufts University graduate has made a name for himself tackling the personal and political with biting humor and a talent for the outrageous. We’ve gathered some choice words from the man himself on his work, his process, and his formative moments.

“ I always said, if you can look across water and see the South, then you’re in the South. But Cincinnati seems to think they’re in the North. But you can see Kentucky. So I always felt that I needed to get further away from Cincinnati and the craziness there, and fully reinvent myself and be who I wanted to be. I remember telling my guidance counselor, ‘I just want to go to either coast [for college], and I want it to be very hard for my parents to get there without my knowledge.’”

“ You want to make them laugh so that it goes down easier. I think humor is a fantastic way to find what I call the beauty and the horror of it all. I make it compelling to watch as I try to eviscerate certain ideas. That’s how I work.”

“ Well, I question anything that says it’s “reality.” As a writer, I know that’s not true. Everything on television is built to tell a story. But what really interested me was the overwhelming amount of “reality” episodes that dealt exclusively with White People… Watch the white guy go around the world and eat. Watch the white guy renovate a house. Watch the white guy fix a car. Watch the white guy cook. As if people of color don’t eat, renovate houses, fix cars, or cook.”

“ Nothing that I write is built from a conventional concept. I’m not interested in convention. There are enough writers who are, that I don’t need to add to [it]. While I never know everything that is going to happen in my work before I start creating it, there are always a cavalcade of Questions that I’m exploring as I write. I’m not interested in Answers. I’m interested in asking provocative Questions. What’s the most exciting versions of Why, Who, What and Where that I can find, and have all those questions bumping up against each other in a story.”

“ When I was probably in the third grade, my ink pen burst in my pants and the boys said I had gotten my period and I didn’t know what they meant and when I got home I asked my mother what a period was and she looked at me dumb founded and then said, ‘Look it up, that’s what I bought you that dictionary for.’“

“ What the hell is a first act curtain created for if not to upend expectations? Who wants to see a show that ends its first act exactly as expected? Why stay for the second act if the first act led to exactly what you were expecting? Why on earth would I be a writer to create stories that folks expect? That sounds foolish. An audience should trust that they will be taken on a journey that they don’t expect.”COMPILED BY

A. NORA LONG

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