--The "American Family Drama"

“I was interested in the double meaning of the word—appropriate/appropriate—and people keep asking which it is. All my plays have these titles that are oddly tricky. I like that something can look like one thing, but mean two different things. Language is really unstable in that way. Obviously both words have the same root; it was historically a term of ownership, about belonging. “Appropriate” [and Appropriate] is essentially about belonging.”

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

            American drama for the past century has been largely fixated on the American family.  These plays have customarily used the relationships between spouses, parents, and children of traditional families to investigate the American experience in what has become a formulaic fashion.  As playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins notes, “I found myself judging these ‘family dramas’ and writing them off because of their conventional storytelling form. So I asked myself, ‘Why am I doing that?’ I believe that form is really powerful—almost sacred—because it’s all we have as writers. This is what’s handed down to us, there are these forms, but for some reason—up until this moment—I’d been valuing some over others.” One possible reason that the form has been sometimes overlooked is that the American Family Drama has been just as exclusive an endeavor as the American Dream has for much of our history.  Plays which explore the familial relationships of nontraditional or non-white families have regularly been categorized as “social” or “race” dramas and excluded from the family drama canon. 

With Appropriate, Jacobs-Jenkins uses the traditional form of the American Family Drama, complete with a “traditional” southern white family, while introducing social issues and ideas about race and racism.  He says, “I was thinking about ‘blackness’ as a dramatic material, in the same way that you might think of ‘suspense’ or ‘red herrings’ or something. Race—or, rather, ‘difference’—seems to be a funny device in the theatre that does funny things to stories and situations.”  In this way, the playwright has appropriated, if you will, the form of the American Family Drama to present material that has frequently been sidelined in the genre.

            Furthermore, Appropriate is a domestic drama, and not simply in the sense that it takes place entirely within the confines of a house, dealing with issues of family relationship.  As with the dual implications of the title, one can infer many meanings from the term “domestic.”  As an adjective, it can mean “of, relating to, or made in your own country” as well as “relating to or involving someone's home or family,” whereas when used as a noun it can become “a servant who is hired to work in someone's home: a domestic servant” or even “a fight between members of a family or household.”  It is not uncommon for plays set within the domestic sphere of a house to reflect issues pertinent to our domestic sphere as a nation.  The quarrels and conflicts within and among those household members tend to strike a chord on a much larger scale.  In this sense, Appropriate offers an opportunity to examine issues and relationships within the context of our national culture. 

            Jacobs-Jenkins has crafted an American Family Drama that acknowledges many of the conversations about race and history and legacy that are generally avoided but are increasingly important to address. As is the case with the Lafayette family and their absent patriarch, these dialogues become especially significant as we continue to move forward from our collective past and determine the legacies that we wish to bestow upon future generations.

Amanda S. Lassetter

Further Reading:

Coming Home Again: American Family Drama and the Figure of the Prodigal by Geoffrey S. Proehl

Family in 20th Century American Drama by Thaddeus Wakefield

“It's All Relative: The American Theater Family” by Farrell Parker, Eugene O’Neill Festival at Arena Stage

30 Greatest American Family Dramas, by Timeout New York