1. Robert O'Hara attended Walnut Hills High School, a nationally recognized public academic magnet school in Cincinnati, where he was active in the theater program.
15 Facts About Robert O'Hara
1. 2.
Robert O'Hara later attended Tufts University in Boston, and graduated in 1992.
3.
Robert O'Hara is known throughout the theatre world for his career as a playwright and director.
4.
In 2013, O'Hara was one of 14 people awarded a playwright residency grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, and was Woolly Mammoth's playwright in residence from 2013 to 2015.
5.
In October 2020, Robert O'Hara was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for his direction of Slave Play.
6.
Robert O'Hara was featured in the 2022 book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, with a profile written by theatre scholar Faedra Chatard Carpenter.
7.
Robert O'Hara wrote the script to Micheaux, a biopic following the life of African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux that was to be directed by Spike Lee.
8.
Insurrection was written during Robert O'Hara's time interning at the Public Theatre.
9.
Robert O'Hara directed the play's premiere in 2001 at the Transparent Theatre Company in Berkeley, California.
10.
Originally written as twelve separate short plays, Robert O'Hara eventually wove them together into one play, bringing the character of Sutter out as the through line through most of the smaller scenes.
11.
Robert O'Hara has said that while the play is in many ways autobiographical and the character of Sutter particularly mirrors his own experiences, it doesn't necessarily tell the exact story of his own life.
12.
Mr Robert O'Hara, who is black, is a promising and energetic playwright with a healthy sense of the comic possibilities of bigotry and racial stereotypes.
13.
Robert O'Hara has a second offering here as well, a jokey skit in Wayans brothers' mode about black women talking on the phone about the decision by one of them to name her baby Genitalia.
14.
Robert O'Hara's work has often received polarized reviews from critics; he is often praised for his bold and daring themes, yet criticized in the execution of them.
15.
LA Times theatre critic Charles McNulty praised Robert O'Hara for "grappl[ing] with the conflicts and contradictions inherent in being a member of more than one oppressed group" and "tackling the challenge of writing about this experience in a culture that expects its minority playwrights to follow paths prescribed by white institutions" within his work.