http://assignment-partner.com/ .That's a sample paper - essay / paper on the topic "Robert o’hara’s insurrection holding history" created by our writers! Disclaimer: The paper above have been completed for actual clients. We have acclaimed personal permission from the customers to post it.

1. 1
Robert O’Hara’s Insurrection: Holding History
Robert O’Hara, the playwright and director best known for his “time-splicing historical
epics” debuted with Insurrection: Holding History in 1996 (20 Questions for Robert O’Hara)
and immediately attracted attention as the author touching upon such uneasy and controversial
aspects as the credibility of generally accepted historical discourse, black people’s identity with
concepts (or misconnects) forming it, homosexuality, and people’s roots and integrity. Robert
O’Hara grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and left home at the age of 18; which he recognizes today
as an “immediate escape” (20 Questions for Robert O’Hara). Having at first an ambition of
becoming a lawyer, he later got disappointed with studies in college and opted for a career of the
playwright and artistic director. The Public Theater and American Conservatory Theater became
O’Hara’s first “artistic homes” when they decided to produce his first professional play. Later
Woolly Mammoth Theater Company and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company were added to this
environment, as they both produced World Premiere productions of Robert O’Hara’s works
(Robert O’Hara: In Search of the Artistic Home).
At present, Robert O’Hara is a well-known dramatist and stage director with a number of
prestigious awards. In 2010, he received Helen Hayes Award for his new play Antebellum and an
OBIE Award for directing the premiere of the In the Continuum at Primary Stages, as well as the
2010 NAACP Best Director Award for the direction of Eclipsed by Danai Guiria. The
combination of O’Hara’s authorship and direction of the World Premiere of his Insurrection:
Holding History at the New York Shakespeare Festival contributed to its success: the stage
production received the Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Play and was published by
TCG and Dramatist Play Service. The Inheritance is O’Hara’s recent film writing and directing
debut. O’Hara’s ideas of the theater environment as “the artistic home” reveal his views of how

2. 2
much cooperation and combined artistic efforts of all those working in the theater matters for
making it an artistic event (Robert O’Hara: In Search of the Artistic Home). A prolific
playwright and director, Robert O’Hara is also currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU/TISCH
School of the Arts.
Insurrection: Holding History remains one of Robert O’Hara’s major works that makes
the audience laugh, wonder, marvel, sympathize, and, as intended by the author, “break the bread
of ideas, soak up the drink of entertainment and choke on the Truth”(Robert O’Hara: In Search
of the Artistic Home). The “rich, multifaceted discourse” of this time-bending stage fantasy
presents scenes from 1831 and 1996 existing side by side, with clashes of ideas and events of the
two different eras giving food for thought to both the main character of the play and the
audience. In his author’s note, O’Hara points out that “this play should be done as if it were a
Bullet through the Time” (O’Hara 6). Capitalized words render particular significance to the
author’s idea of penetrating historical layers and digging out the truth, no matter how
unappealing it may seem to some people. Drilling holes by shooting “bullets” may reveal the
facts that shed a different ray of light on generally accepted rules and concepts; however, only
such an approach can help us recognize the truth about ourselves and the world around us. The
main character in the play is Ron, a homosexual African American graduate student of Columbia
University who has to stand up to the canonized regulations and worldviews of his environment.
The play starts with the scene of Nat Turner’s 189th birthday; Ron writing his thesis on American
slave insurrections happens to be the great-great-grandson of T.J., a former slave who took part
in the famous 1831 revolt in Virginia. That tragic event claimed the lives of dozens of whites and
led to the executions and revenge killings of many black slaves. This character’s initials are the
same as O’Hara’s grandfather, the person to whose memory the book has been dedicated. The

3. 3
time dimensions in the play are presented as “now and then”; the place is “here and there”
(O’Hara 5).
One of the key questions suggested by the author is how people should understand and
interpret events of the past, to what extent “real” and “authentic” history can be regarded as
creditable narratives with “their assumptions regarding classifications of race, sex, and gender”
(Carpenter 186). Ronnie can hear his ancestor’s silent thoughts; he is transformed to the past to
get the first-hand information about historical events that he had previously interpreted in a
primitive and inadequate way, not being aware of his roots and complicated issues of historical
realities. Ronnie gets involved in a love affair with a slave, and in this way the author wants to
draw the audience’s attention to the fact that homosexuality existed in the antebellum South, the
point that was never touched upon before (Carpenter 187). Actually, today’s US black
community is reluctant to accept the fact maintaining a definitely negative position regarding
black male homosexuality. Reclaiming his roots helps Ron to achieve a better understanding of
his own identity. The graphic design of the book’s title page is a direct illustration to the question
and idea expressed in the title: can history be held? Can human hands (and mind) keep
something as fleeting as tokens of time? How can people preserve the truth about their roots and
the past, and how to learn the truth and pass it on to posterity?
Robert O’Hara’s acknowledgments starting with words of gratitude and devotion to the
author’s grandfather, mother, grandmother, and the entire O’Hara family are followed by the
address to the cast and crew of MFA Thesis production, those who provided him with the 1st
Artistic Home, the 2d Family who made the World Premier possible, the 3d Family who,
according to O’Hara, “let his spirits SPEAK”. All these people, as the author points out, were
motivated simply by the love of Theater (O’Hara vi-vii). Insurrection: Holding History was first

4. 4
performed in an Actors Equity Association-approved Showcase production as Robert O’Hara’s
MFA Directing Thesis in April 1995 by the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theater Studies,
School of the Arts, Columbia University (O’Hara vi-vii). Later the play has been produced
across the country including at Mark Taper Forum and American Conservatory Theater. The
play is also presented by the New York Shakespeare Festival, producer George C. Wolfe, at the
Joseph Papp Public Theater.
When asked by the interviewer what period of time he would like to be transformed to,
Robert O’Hara replied that he would have like to find himself somewhere in the future. He
believes that people there would be as “insane” as he is. His recommendation for making the
theater a more relevant and artistically profound place is simple and straightforward: “by doing
more plays that reflect the diversity of the society around them regardless of the race of their
subscribers” (20 Questions for Robert O’Hara). The theater should not shun problems and issues
the society is confronted with, and “if one wants to build an artistic home for others then [he/she]
must make [these] homes more… artistic” ” (20 Questions for Robert O’Hara). Insurrection:
Holding History, similarly to other Robert O’Hara’s works, is the play of the XXI century, with
its multi-layer, sophisticated artistic expressionism and popular magical realism that poses
important questions without giving unambiguous, straightforward answers and solutions to them.
This, however, requires, according to Shelby Jiggets-Tivony, a literary critic who wrote a preface
to Robert O’Hara’s book, more “bodaciousness” on the part of the author, for it is “as liberating
as it is initially shocking” (O’Hara vi). In the story of the magical coming back to the very non-
magical land of slavery with its harsh realities the author managed to unfold various thematic
banners. In some scenes, it is mostly the comedy of the absurd genre. In other scenes O’Hara
exposes his satiric bite, with the humor bearing the bitterness of the cartoonist. Such an approach

5. 5
to the topic is both understandable and creative, considering that slavery today seems something
unreal in its cruelty that is contrary to contemporary perception and required other than realistic,
linear manner of artistic treatment. However, O‘Hara managed to weave the horrendous realities
of slavery with elements of comedy letting the audience enjoy the music of spirituals and learn
the colorful elements of African American culture. The humor of the sitcom kind, most
successfully expressed via certain visual touches, for example, the microphone used to address
the rebels or the flashlight that is used as whip in the Public Theater production add to the visual
appeal and make the play not only instructive but enjoyable as well.

6. 6
Works Cited
“20 Questions for Robert O’Hara.” Theater Communication Group. American Theater. May-
June 2011. Web. 29 June 2012.
Carpenter, Faedra C. “Robert O’Hara’s Insurrection: “Que(e)rying History”. Text and
Performance Quarterly 23.2 (2003): 186-204. doi:10.1080/1046293032000141365. Print.
O’Hara, Robert. Insurrection: Holding History. New York: Theatre Communication Group,
1999. Print.
“Robert O’Hara: In Search of the Artistic Home.” Howl Round. A Journal of the
Theater Commons. 28 February 2012. Web. 29 June 2012.