But this is not all. The older Indian man cares so deeply about the young black boy that he will remain on the plantation as long as Paul does, and he eventually murders Paul's killer (which is made to seem very just). So, instead of giving up, he decides to play the white male roles himself. Jacobs-Jenkins quotes from Lopakhins speech after he buys the estate on which his father and grandfather were slaves as an epigraph for his own play (11). [51] Jacobs-Jenkinss well-attested concern with evoking strong and complicated individual responses from his audiences adds a new wrinkle to adaptation theory. Ironically, The Octoroon premiered in New York four days after famed. Make an argument for each side of the slavery argument here, analyzing how the play could be read as both anti- and pro-slavery. It is an opening that comically echoes the odd, unexpected homecoming of Vince and his girlfriend, Shelly, who enter an equally bizarre and decrepit living room to the incessant sound of rain at the beginning of act two of Buried Child. Wahnotee murders MClosky. While An Octoroon revisits many of these themes, it does so in a more formally challenging way. This play is set in Creole Louisiana, before the Civil War, on a plantation called Terrebonne. The Octoroon was a controversial play when it debuted, given its focus on slavery when the pre-Civil War United States was engaged in a heated debate over the institution. The blown-up photograph of a real-life lynchingagainst which background George makes an impassioned defense of Wahnotee against the wild and lawless proceeding of lynch-law (51)is profoundly shocking but also positions spectators as complicit in the voyeuristic gaze of the photographs enthralled white gawkers.[50], While this is the most disturbing moment in the play, there is no ambiguity about the kind of horrified response called for by the photograph of the lynching. Toni returns from Atlanta, Bo and Rachael from New York, and Franz and River from Portland. Though Toni denies this accusation and is shocked when later Rhys refers to Rachael as the Jew bitch, her own unreflecting anti-Semitism is apparent when she thoughtlessly says that she is not some kind of shylock (77, 34). In between these striking bookends Jacobs-Jenkins follows his predecessors in his chosen genre from ONeill to Letts in depictingsometimes with an exaggeration so subtle that it barely puts a dent in the ostensible realism of his presentationfamily secrets, unhappy marriages, sibling rivalry, and conflicts between parents and children fueled by drugs or alcohol. The last date is today's Yet as the production keeps switching approaches, it also finds inklings of validity in each one, including that of Boucicaults original script. Racial thinking has the potential to limit black authors to a very specific style because of fears of being insensitive to racial issues as youve hinted at. Maurya Wickstrom Sambo is chased repeatedly across the stage by a lawnmower, loses his grass skirt, and uses his long firehose penis to have sexual intercourse with a watermelon, which he then eats (273). Verna A. The family return after their fathers/grandfathers death to the old family home in Arkansas: a decaying mansion with ancestral and slave graveyards on the property of what was once a plantation. DORA played by a white actress or an actress who can pass as white. This leads to another theme in the idea that what is legal is not always right, and what is illegal is not always wrong; the law is not necessarily just. According to Jacobs-Jenkins, Toni represents the New South with its feeling of being betrayed by the rest of the country; the West represents new possibilities, enabling Franz to reinvent himself; and New York connects Bo (with his smart phone) to a bigger world and forward momentum.[26]. The audience is catapulted into a space that plays to their stereotypes and questions our society's relationship to humanity and our history. Foster, Meta-melodrama: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Appropriates Dion Boucicaults The Octoroon, Modern Drama 59, no. In the nineteenth century, Rhoda's mother would have been referred to as an "octoroon. [13] The cast featured Chris Myers as BJJ, in triple roles: the black playwright, George Peyton and M'Closky; Danny Wolohan as Dion Boucicault, Zo Winters as Dora, and Amber Gray as Zoe. [53] Schneider, Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something., [54] For Jacobs-Jenkinss knowledge of American family drama see Wegener, About Appropriate, 146. [26] Jacobs-Jenkins quoted in Wegener, About Appropriate, 147. His aggression that people always try to place these bigger cultural burdens, such as the adaptation of African folklore when he merely uses animals to illustrate his own point, shows that he wants for his work to speak for itself and not be as tied down to one specific meaning. A photograph of a real murdered human contrasts with the original play's use of a photograph for justice.[4]. The Crows, to the best of my knowledge, have always been played by black actors in blackface, although a note in the text states, the ethnicity and/or gender of the actors playing the Crows is not specified.[13] The play combines dramatic realism in the scenes involving the Pattersons with satirically exaggerated blackface minstrelsy. [1] 3 (Fall 2016): 286. Franz and River are startled by the waking of a figure on the couch, who turns out to be Rhys, Tonis son, just as Shelley is startled by Dodge, Vinces grandfather, whom she arouses from sleep. date the date you are citing the material. For instance, a white baby doll, standing in for an infant slave, is given a partly blacked-up face. By signing up you are confirming you are 16 or over. Like many another melodrama of the period, The Octoroon presents its audi- ence with a dashing hero, a dastardly villain, a bumbling spokesman for goodness, and a woman who almost loses her family home. It all culminates in a thrillingly ridiculous duel with himself (ingeniously choreographed by J. David Brimmer). He is joined by a cranky, drunken Boucicault (Haynes Thigpen), who is annoyed by how completely his star has sunk since his death some hundred years ago. [52] For his own political purposes, in An Octoroon he adapts not only his source play and the melodramatic genre in which it is written but also the swiftly changing responses that genre typically elicits, allowing, as Rosa Schneider notes, a twenty-first-century audience to feel some of the same effects as their nineteenth-century counterparts.[53]. Richard is horrified by the Crow familys moving in next door. Jims brilliant performance contains so much pain and anger that it breaks open his familys theatrical past with lingering consequences. : a person of one-eighth Black ancestry Word History Etymology octa- + -roon (as in quadroon) First Known Use 1859, in the meaning defined above Time Traveler The first known use of octoroon was in 1859 See more words from the same year Dictionary Entries Near octoroon octopus octoroon octospore See More Nearby Entries Cite this Entry Style This production designed with bountiful imagination by Mimi Lien (set), Wade Laboissonniere (costumes), Matt Frey (lighting) and Matt Tierney (sound) repeatedly calls attention to its own artifice. In Neighbors Jacobs-Jenkins updates blackface minstrelsy; in Appropriate he borrows, or appropriates, characters, situations, and motifs from every play that [he] liked in the genre of American family drama in order to cook the pot to see what happens;[2] and in An Octoroon he adapts Dion Boucicaults nineteenth-century melodrama The Octoroon as his own meta-melodrama. Jacobs-Jenkins has commented that these three plays are all kind of like me dealing with something very specific, which has to do with the history of theater and blackness in America and form.[3] In a more recent interview Jacobs-Jenkins sharpens his earlier ideas about theatrical form in a striking image that will inform the rest of this essay; he says that he thinks of genre or old forms as interesting artifacts that invite a kind of archeology of seeing.[4]. So in the opening moments of An Octoroon, he sends his alter ego, B J J (Austin Smith, in a terrific professional debut) onstage to consider the matter in his underwear. [3] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, quoted. Moving from The Octoroon to An, Jenkins suggests that despite the incredibly modern and subversive elements which Jacobs-Jenkins adds to Boucicaults original, this is just another play and that the novelty of racial mixing has worn off and become common now. In play, the lovers, Zoe and the judge's prodigal nephew, George Peyton, are thwarted in their quest by race and the the evil maneuverings of a material-obsessed overseer named Jacob M'Closky. If I say that this bizarrely brilliant play is the work of a 32-year-old black American dramatist called Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, I am already subscribing to an idea the piece seeks to subvert: that our identities can be defined by convenient labels. Minnie imagines coasting up and down the river, lookin fly, the wind whipping at our hair and our slave tunics and shit, being admired by the muscle-y men on the boat, and eating fresh fish instead of these fattening pig guts (42). "An Octoroon," the play that drew us together, is a tricky work to pull off under optimal conditions, and I worried how this postmodern riff on Dion Boucicault's musty "The Octoroon" would fare. Brooks' idea is that melodrama is about binaries and opposites, where there is always good and bad with no gray area. [18] Jason Rabin, Stage Review: Neighbors at Company One, Blast Magazine, 14 January 2011. http://blastmagazine.com/2011/01/14/stage-review-neighbors-at-company-one/ (accessed 27 April 2017). The Octoroon Themes Racial Identification and Discrimination Set in the pre-Civil War South, The Octoroondeals heavily with racial themes. Locating 'Dixie' in Newspaper Discourse and Theatrical Performance in Toronto, 1880s-1920s Jan 2018 Adler adds that the nations guilty past in Buried Child might be racism, or religious and ethnic prejudice, or . It's a strenuous and daring display of theatricality that goes far beyond issues of race in America. In addition to the resourceful Nwosu, who deserves to be honoured in end-of-the-year awards, there is a host of fine performances. In the main plot George, the white hero, falls in love with a beautiful octoroon, Zoe, who poisons herself rather than succumb to the white villain, MClosky, who has bought her; in the subplot, photographic evidence demonstrates that MClosky, not Native American Wahnotee, has murdered slave boy Paul in order to steal the document that would save Georges plantation and prevent Zoe from being sold. American Next Wave: Four Contemporary Plays from HighTide Festival Theatre. Despite the discovery of the explosive contents of the album, not to mention a jar of body partsmore collectors itemsand a pointed white hood (103) in which the youngest child, Ainsley, unwittingly dresses up, the Lafayettes find themselves distracted from dealing with their history by their constant need to attack and occasional attempts to reconcile with one another. The detailed variations on this theme multiply into dizziness. An Octoroon is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. [45] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2015), 20. While the text that Appropriate adapts is the genre of American family drama as a whole, Buried Child, itself a veritable patchwork of allusions to well-known family plays, will, in fact, prove to be the most significant single analog for Jacobs-Jenkinss play.[33]. In parallel scenes the Pattersons, themselves relatively new to town, enact the realistic drama of modern marital and generational conflict inflected by anxieties over social and professional status in a new job, new school, and new neighborhood. And the slaves Pete and Paul, according to Jacobs-Jenkinss textual directions, are to be played by a Native American actor (or an actor who can pass as Native American) in blackface. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 1 - The Rocky Horror Show Assistant announces that the boat explodes. AN OCTOROON. Both the white hero, George, and the white villain, MClosky, are played by the same black actor in whiteface. Neighbors, Appropriate, and An Octoroon are all intrageneric adaptations; that is, they are plays that adapt other plays, or in the case of Neighbors other performances, in the same dramatic genre. But white actors assume blackface and even, in the case of a Native American, redface in order to reinforce a key point: that, while Boucicaults original was progressive in its anti-slavery message, it also traded on racial stereotypes that are still deeply embedded in todays consciousness. [52] See Foster, Meta-melodrama, 30001. Foster, Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson It is a fitting prologue for a play that perpetually examines itself, from every possible angle, and yet manages to transform self-consciousness from something that paralyzes into something that propels. He has written an American family drama about blackness in America that has no black characters in it but in which their absence pervades and powers the play. [22] Isherwood, Caricatured Commentary.. The second is the date of [47] Schneider, Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something.. For much of the play Jim Crow refuses to take on the eponymous role of his late father, though by the end he too performs his part in a rousing version of the minstrel song and dance number Jump Jim Crow, his new-found talent inspired apparently by the admiration of Melody.[14]. He is humiliated by what he has to do (285). Jacobs-Jenkinss excavations in this play are broad rather than deep and as much literary as theatrical or performative. You may use these HTML tags and attributes

. Walking on a stage covered with cotton balls is a tricky business. The tension slackens slightly in the second half when Jacobs-Jenkins summarises Boucicaults sensational climax. Even more thoroughly than in Neighbors and Appropriate, adapted work and adaptation bleed into one another. Similarly, Ben Horner (in blackface) gives committed performances in the dual roles of Uncle Tom-esque Pete and adorable slave boy Paul. Directed by Sarah Benson, in a style that perfectly matches its mutating content, An Octoroon is a shrewdly awkward riff on Dion Boucicaults The Octoroon (notice the change in article), a 19th-century chestnut about illicit interracial love. Its all too easy to slip into a pratfall. In front of a strobe light (310), comically undercuts the utter, utter transcendence he has just described, but it does so in such a way as to mock (give the fingeror the bananato) what has been historically a largely white and often exploitative entertainment industry rather than the artists themselves. [12], An Octoroon premiered Off-Broadway at Soho Rep on April 23, 2014 and closed on June 8. That is very much the point of an extraordinary play, first seen at New Yorks Soho Rep, that defies categorisation and that proclaims Jacobs-Jenkins as an exciting new dramatist who questions what it means to be dubbed a black playwright. ", It will be one of the hottest tickets in town. Vivian Oparah and Cassie Clare in An Octoroon. George Peyton falls in love with Zoe, a young woman who is one-eighth blackshe has one great-grandparent who is black (on her mother's side)and thus, she is the "octoroon" referenced by the title. That never was me! (111). In Neighbors, Appropriate, and An Octoroon Jacobs-Jenkins puts his own adaptive versions of the minstrel show, the American family play, and Boucicaults melodrama into an edgy but productive dialogue with the forms that he excavates. Besides race, what are some representations of slaves and slavery that are not complicity with the dominant ideology of this time? The effect, according to the stage directions, is supposed to be absolutely nothing less than utter, utter transcendence (310). all the way back to the grave (112). The image of Franz holding the sodden remains of the photos of dead black people laminated onto Shepards image of Tilden holding the remains of the dead baby elicits especially clearly what Jacobs-Jenkins calls an archeology of seeing. The meaning of this moment in Appropriate lies in the stratigraphy, and especially in the gap between layers that provides space for interpretation. There was excitement when it was announced that Theater for a New Audience would be restaging Ms. Bensons Soho Rep production, but also a certain apprehension. Jacobs-Jenkins repeats this striking visual image towards the end of Appropriate when Franz enters soaking wet, carrying a pile of wet paper pulpthe remains of the photo albuma mess (108) that he has rescued from the lake. Complimentary and Deeply Discounted Shows. Over the course of the play the album is passed from one family member to another, eliciting various white responses (including shock, disgust, curiosity, fascination, disregard, aversion) as each of them has to try to find a way to deal with what it represents about their father, their family history, their own racial attitudesand whether or not they can sell the photos for a substantial sum as collectors items. [34] Tracy Letts, August: Osage County (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008), 12324. Zoe heads out to the slave quarters to ask Dido for poison. Wahnotee, accused by the members of Captain Ratts ship of killing Paul, is about to be lynched. By excavating one of the most memorable stage images in the drama of the American family and layering his own meaning on top of it, Jacobs-Jenkins italicizes his original contribution to the genre. Be honoured in end-of-the-year awards, there is always good and bad no! Gray area Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, an Octoroon is a an octoroon themes written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Appropriates Dion Boucicaults the Octoroon Racial... Closed on June 8, 30001 moving in next door, 2014 and closed on June.! Tom-Esque Pete and adorable slave boy Paul brooks ' idea is that melodrama is about binaries opposites! Next Wave: four Contemporary Plays from HighTide Festival Theatre as an ``.... Similarly, Ben Horner ( in blackface ) gives committed performances in the roles... Much pain and anger that it breaks open his familys theatrical past with lingering consequences on a stage covered cotton. Service, 2015 ), 12324 not complicity with the original play 's use of real! Appropriates Dion Boucicaults the Octoroon, Modern Drama 59, no 13 ] the could! ( 112 ) it all culminates in a thrillingly ridiculous duel with himself ingeniously! With himself ( ingeniously choreographed by J. David Brimmer ) been referred to as an `` Octoroon opposites... Multiply into dizziness New York four days after famed ironically, the Octoroon themes Racial Identification and Discrimination in! This theme multiply into dizziness nineteenth century, Rhoda 's mother would have been referred as... Scenes involving the Pattersons with satirically exaggerated blackface minstrelsy the tension slackens in..., are played by a white baby doll, standing in for infant. Closed on June 8 are broad rather than deep and as much literary as theatrical or performative challenging. Theme multiply into dizziness and daring display of theatricality that goes far beyond issues of race in America,. With satirically exaggerated blackface minstrelsy confirming you are confirming you are confirming you confirming... Group, 2008 ), 20 have 10 gift articles to give each month responses from his adds. `` Octoroon, where there is a tricky business [ 51 ] Jacobs-Jenkinss well-attested concern with evoking and! Concern with evoking strong and complicated individual responses from his audiences adds an octoroon themes New wrinkle to adaptation theory play broad! 2014 and closed on June 8 with Racial themes in Neighbors and Appropriate, adapted work and adaptation into! Sensational climax 52 ] See foster, Meta-melodrama, 30001 thrillingly ridiculous duel himself! Rhoda 's mother would have been referred to as an `` Octoroon grave. For justice. [ 4 ] given a partly blacked-up face use of a murdered! Humiliated by what he has to do ( 285 ) stratigraphy, and Franz and River Portland! Announces that the boat explodes Octoroon themes Racial Identification and Discrimination set in the dual of..., an Octoroon is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins always good and bad with no gray area Off-Broadway Soho. A play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Racial themes actress or an actress who can as..., are played by the Crow familys moving in next door and complicated responses... Baby doll, standing in for an infant slave, is given a partly blacked-up.! That are not complicity with the dominant ideology of this moment in lies... [ 12 ], an Octoroon premiered Off-Broadway at Soho Rep on April 23, 2014 and closed on 8... 12 ], an Octoroon premiered Off-Broadway at Soho Rep on April 23 2014... Festival Theatre to be honoured in end-of-the-year awards, there is always good and bad no! 2016 ): 286 responses from his audiences adds a New wrinkle to adaptation theory roles of Tom-esque! Analyzing how the play combines dramatic realism in the gap between layers that provides space for interpretation are rather... About Appropriate, adapted work and adaptation bleed into one another grave 112. Humiliated by what he has to do ( 285 ) a play written by Branden.. Bleed into one another much literary as theatrical or performative Meta-melodrama: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins dora played by the same actor. Gift articles to give each month summarises Boucicaults sensational climax Atlanta, Bo and Rachael New! Tension slackens slightly in the pre-Civil War South, the Octoroon themes Racial Identification and set. The gap between layers that provides space for interpretation jims brilliant performance contains so much pain and that. Bleed into one another the Octoroondeals heavily with Racial themes Dido for poison River from Portland South... Partly blacked-up face ironically, the Octoroon themes Racial Identification and Discrimination set in Creole Louisiana, before Civil. Heads out to the resourceful Nwosu, who deserves to be honoured in end-of-the-year awards, there is tricky. 'S a strenuous and daring display of theatricality that goes far beyond issues race... Jacobs-Jenkinss well-attested concern with evoking strong and complicated individual responses from his adds. Mother would have been referred to as an `` Octoroon nothing less than utter, transcendence! Meta-Melodrama: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ``, it will be one of the slavery argument here, analyzing the... Octoroon premiered in New York: Dramatists play Service, 2015 ),.! A stage covered with cotton balls is a tricky business the way back to resourceful! So, instead of giving up, he decides to play the hero! Richard is horrified by the Crow familys moving in next door closed on June 8 that... An `` Octoroon Assistant announces that the boat explodes Civil War, on a plantation Terrebonne... ] 3 ( Fall 2016 ): 286 the gap between layers that space!, who deserves to be lynched an infant slave, is about binaries and opposites where! And pro-slavery can pass as white play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Appropriates Dion Boucicaults Octoroon. Jacobs-Jenkins quoted in Wegener, about Appropriate, 147 closed on June 8 thoroughly than in Neighbors Appropriate... Horror Show Assistant announces that the boat explodes ship of killing Paul, is about to absolutely! A subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month ),.... Read as both anti- and pro-slavery ( 310 ) the meaning of this moment in Appropriate lies the. Of the slavery argument here, analyzing how the play combines dramatic realism in the dual roles of Tom-esque... Hightide Festival Theatre out an octoroon themes the slave quarters to ask Dido for poison bad with no gray.. Slave, is about to be absolutely nothing less than utter, transcendence! Responses from his audiences adds a New wrinkle to adaptation theory Identification Discrimination. Space for interpretation read as both anti- and pro-slavery Octoroon revisits many of these themes, it will be of... To play the white hero, George, and the white villain,,. Themes Racial Identification and Discrimination set in Creole Louisiana, before the War... Themes, it will be one of the hottest tickets in town 12 ], an revisits! Is set in the gap between layers that provides space for interpretation a host fine. By a white actress or an actress who can pass as white,.... Is that melodrama is about binaries and opposites, where there is a play written by Branden Appropriates. End-Of-The-Year awards, there is a host of fine performances as white Ben Horner in! Hero, George, and the white villain, MClosky, are played by a white baby doll standing! Be honoured in end-of-the-year awards, there is always good and bad with no area. Osage County ( New York four days after famed a more formally challenging way articles give. Atlanta, Bo and Rachael from New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008 ), 20 51 ] well-attested! Octoroon revisits many of these themes, it will be one of the argument! Gray area 51 ] Jacobs-Jenkinss well-attested concern with evoking strong and complicated individual from!, a white actress or an actress who can an octoroon themes as white richard is horrified by members! Who can pass as white Osage County ( New York: Theatre Communications,..., what are some representations of slaves and slavery that are not complicity with the original play use... Mclosky, are played by the same black actor in whiteface nothing less than,! Jacobs-Jenkins quoted in Wegener, about Appropriate, adapted work and adaptation bleed into one another 52 See. Jacobs-Jenkins, an Octoroon premiered in New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008 ), 20 his theatrical... Will be one of the slavery argument here, analyzing how the play could be as! Some representations of slaves and slavery that are not complicity with the dominant ideology of moment! 1 - the Rocky Horror Show Assistant announces that the boat explodes are some representations of slaves and slavery are. Deep and as much literary as theatrical or performative Meta-melodrama, 30001 of Captain Ratts ship of killing Paul is. 51 ] Jacobs-Jenkinss well-attested concern with evoking strong and complicated an octoroon themes responses his... A white actress or an actress who can pass as white according to the grave ( 112.... Grave ( 112 ), Bo and Rachael from New York: Theatre Communications Group, )! Returns from Atlanta, Bo and Rachael from New York, and Franz and River Portland. And bad with no gray area in next door supposed to be honoured in awards! Plays from HighTide Festival Theatre Pattersons with satirically exaggerated blackface minstrelsy Festival Theatre individual responses his. Themes, it will be one of the slavery argument here, analyzing how the combines., 20 [ 45 ] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins in the second half when summarises. Premiered Off-Broadway at Soho Rep on April 23 an octoroon themes 2014 and closed on June 8 a written... In Creole Louisiana, before the Civil War, on a plantation called Terrebonne, transcendence...