Barbecue Play Summary

In the play Barbecue the main central conflict in the first half of the play is that a girl named Barbara has a drug and alcohol problem that her siblings are trying to help her overcome. Her sister Lillie Anne plans a fake barbecue party at a local park because Barbara’s favorite parties are barbecues. The party she is putting on is actually an intervention for her sister to try and stop her drug and alcohol addiction by sending her to rehab in Alaska. It’s clear that the family is very dysfunctional from their constant arguing and also prevalent that Barbara has had little family support for her addiction. During the play the members of the barbecue party are dancing and “partying” when Barbara shows up to the park and Barbara overhears everything that they had planned beforehand. They then tie her down and duct tape her mouth as the intervention begins. The costume design from the play was done quite well and helps distinguish the personalities in the play. The family in the play is full of alcoholics and drug abusers that aren’t very wealthy and all of their clothing reflects that since the clothing is pretty simple and not very upscale. They mostly have on

The white family is there and they look quite disheveled and trashed while the black family is done up nicely with almost no flaws. The central conflict, which revolves around these 2 separate families of different race, is somewhat solved by allowing the families to realize that race or ethnicity doesn’t determine your situations in life. Technically Barbara never goes to rehabilitation or receives help for her problems and resorts to compounding lies to get a movie made about the family's half true lives. When Barbara talks to her family about what the producers are doing with their story, Lillie Anne questions that the producers will find out they are lying. Barbara then says yes if they find out about the lie then they will just keep