date the date you are citing the material. eNotes.com, Inc. . [38] Verna A. The Octoroon is a drama of plantation life and miscegenation in antebellum America, written by an Irishman who visited the South. While respecting her familys traditional show pieces, Topsy feels they are too commercial. She sees herself as a more forward-looking artist and expresses her own ideas about how art should deal with the shared human experiamentience. She presents to the audience summa the stuff she has been working on, which turns out to be the history of African Americans onstage crammed into three spectacular minutes of music, video projections, dance, etc., etc. Foster is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at Loyola University Chicago. But Jacobs-Jenkins finds a good balance between drama and comedy, which shows that he can maneuver previous ideas set by racial thinking to fit his own style while still being respectful to his predecessors. "The Octoroon - Themes" eNotes Publishing It is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, which premiered in 1859. "An Octoroon" begins with BJJ an onstage realization of the melodrama's playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins talking to his imaginary therapist about the public's tendency to view most of his. Although this concept for a play sounds controversial on paper, I dont think that he explicitly makes these changes just to make an audience for his work because of mere curiosity. The play, based on a 1859 melodrama by the Irish-Anglo playwright Dion Boucicault, tells the story of a young man who's about to inherit a plantation and falls in love with a woman who is an. Word Count: 465. This place has historyour history.[25] If the plantation clearly symbolizes Americas history, the members of the Lafayette family represent its contemporary cultural geography. Pete pleads for MClosky to not be lynched, so George demands that M'Closky be taken away, not revenged by Wahnotee, but M'Closky escapes and sets fire to the boat. As a symbol, the album suffuses the consciousness of both characters and audience. An Octoroon, you see, is all about race in these United States, as it was and is and unfortunately probably shall be for a considerable time. Research Playwrights, Librettists, Composers and Lyricists. The show was directed by Peter Hinton and designed by Gillian Gallow. They represent for him his worst nightmare about how his white neighbors might perceive him despite his education and professional, middle-class standing: People will see them and . publication in traditional print. A plate from George's camera is presented, showing both Paul sitting, and MClosky murdering him is presented and proves M'Closky's guilt. Already a member? Neighbors, Appropriate, and An Octoroon enable the multiple-layered seeing that Jacobs-Jenkins is talking about because they require comparative viewing across the adapted and adaptive works themselves and across the cultures or historical periods that produced them. This is not the first time Jacobs-Jenkins has grappled with race: His 2010 show Neighbors featured a cast of white actors playing an offensively stereotypical black family. [13] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Neighbors. In scenes added to Boucicaults play Jacobs-Jenkins humanizes Dido, Minnie, and Grace by giving them distinct backgrounds and personalities and voices, desires, and agency of their own. An Octoroon most closely adheres to, though it also transcends, Hutcheons definition of an adaptation as an extended, announced, deliberate revisitation of a particular work of art. Neighbors and Appropriate expand the parameters of adaptation in other ways, the former by adapting and recontextualizing an historical form of popular entertainment, the latter by adapting not a particular play, but an entire dramatic subgenre. Join StageAgent today and unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. 1 (New York: New Directions, 1971), 249, 377. Toni complains that she has always done most of the work; Rachael believes that her father-in-law was anti-Semitic. [31] Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 170. "[2] This examination of race as a social construct is also in Appropriate and Neighbors. Subsequent references are indicated in parentheses. In the mid-twentieth century, much of the pioneering work consisted in studies, both practical and theoretical, of the adaptation of novels into film. Meanwhile Zip Coon suavely charms Jean, encouraging her to talk about herself and taking an interest in her poetry in contrast to Richards obsession with his own career and status. [2], Jacobs-Jenkins also cites Peter Brooks' The Melodramatic Imagination as an inspiration for his approach to melodrama. [19], Dobama Theater in Cleveland Heights, Ohio presented An Octoroon from October 21, 2016 to November 13, 2016, directed by Nathan Motta[20], The first West Coast premiere of An Octoroon was held at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, directed by Eric Ting with Sydney Morton in the title role. The evil overseer M'Closky (Myers) desires Zoe for himself and plots to re-enslave her to Terrebonne and buy her at a forthcoming creditors' auction. In both plays the buried secrets are discovered to be dead bodies. Director Sarah Benson pushes a breakneck pace to squeeze Boucicault's four acts, as well as Jacobs-Jenkins' metatheatrical frame, into 2 hours, 15 minutes. The plantation is in dire financial straits, but could be saved if George were to marry Dora (Zo Winters), a wealthy young heiress from a neighboring estate. The show pauses to note how the theater used to manipulate its audiences with jerry-built plots and plot-hole-covering sensationalism. England, England, Accessibility Statement Terms Privacy |StageAgent 2020. Nataki Garrett directed the first production of An Octoroon outside of New York with Mixed Blood Theatre Company in the fall of 2015. Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve, Managing Editor: Jess Applebaum Into the familiar dramatic context of this white familys absorption in its own dysfunction Jacobs-Jenkins inserts the photo album as a reminder of the familys and Americas deadly legacy of racism. The plays opening sequence, however, invites the audience to adopt a critical stance to what they are about to see, especially in those moments when Jacobs-Jenkinss layering of a new meaning over an old motif makes itself most sharply felt, giving Appropriate its revisionist edge. publication online or last modification online. Jordan Schildcrout Maybe they giggle (319). New York NY 10016. And try to guess who that is dressed up as a Beatrix Potter-style rabbit. American Next Wave: Four Contemporary Plays from HighTide Festival Theatre. One, simply called BJJ, explains the dilemmas facing a writer of colour whose every word is mined for its racial significance; the other figure, representing Boucicault, is a drunken showman who has no such self-doubt. Myers gives a tour de force in his triple roles as the blas black playwright, the charming leading man, and the mustachioed villain. [12] Charles Isherwood, Caricatured Commentary: Minstrel Meets Modern, The New York Times 9 March 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/theater/reviews/10neighbors.html (accessed 1 May 2017). 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]. Strange as it seems, a work based on a terminally dated play from more than 150 years ago may turn out to be this decades most eloquent theatrical statement on race in America today. Zoe and George are alone, and George confesses his love for her. Foster, Suzan-Lori Parkss Staging of the Lincoln Myth in The America Play and Topdog/Underdog, Journal of American Drama and Theatre 17, no. "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. [36] Sam Shepard, Buried Child. This is Terrebonne, a Louisiana plantation that George Peyton (Myers in whiteface) inherited after the death of his uncle, the Judge. The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 112. [44] Lisa Merrill and Theresa Saxon, Replaying and Rediscovering The Octoroon, Theatre Journal 69, no. [46] In Definition Theatre Companys 2017 production of An Octoroon in Chicago, Pete and Paul were played by an African-American actress in blackface, producing an even more pointed Brechtian comment on the absurdity of Boucicaults racist and gendered characterizations. . [41] Bottoms suggests that Buried Child is dealing metaphorically with Americas collective tendency to bury the intolerable memories of its bloody history of slavery and genocide, and so forth (The Theatre of Sam Shepard, 176). Richard explains that the origin of Agamemnons tragedy lies in events that occurred before the action of the play begins. Csar Alvarez of The Lisps has composed additional music, some of which sounds straight out of Ken Burns' The Civil War, to create the world of the Old South. Ed. [10] Vallejo Gantner, artistic director of PS 122 along with theatre critics Elisabeth Vincentelli and Adam Feldman, argued that although it was not unethical to publish the email, it may not have been "nice" to publish it. [37] Thomas P. Adler, Repetition and Regression in Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child, in Matthew Roudan, ed. MClosky announces that Terrebonne is for sale and plots to steal Zoe; because she is an octoroon, she is a piece of property and therefore a part of the estate. Significantly, the character of Zoe loses the definite article she has in Boucicaults title to become simply an octoroon: one of many rather than a symbol of her race. Three Plays (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 76. with Siobhan OFlynn (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 170. Richard is horrified by the Crow familys moving in next door. In his own defense, Jacobs-Jenkins writes in the stage direction, "I don't know what a real slave sounded like. As act 1 begins . In this moment Jacobs-Jenkins blurs illusion and reality by introducing the actors as actors and by inviting any spectators present (or at least readers) to imagine what the attitude of the twenty-first century actor playing Jim Crow might really be towards the part he has played. 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. Its all too easy to slip into a pratfall. The steamboat blows up, and as I have remarked elsewhere, The two women are trapped inside Boucicaults plot just as Tom Stoppards reimagined Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are trapped inside Hamlet and Dido and Minnies real-life counterparts were trapped in the institution of slavery.[48] Nonetheless, as Merrill and Saxon cogently observe, by focusing on Dido and Minnies hopes and fears for themselves instead of on Zoes tragic death in the plays last scene and by granting them critical insights into their condition, Jacobs-Jenkins forces todays audiences to refocus their attention on the material conditions and lives of ordinary black women rather than the eponymous octoroon.[49], Jacobs-Jenkins similarly reconfigures and overlays Boucicaults sensation scene with a more relevant one of his own. . In A Streetcar Named Desire only an unseen photograph of Belle Reve denotes Stellas past for the people she now lives among in New Orleans, and they are not much impressed. This cultural stratigraphy is especially apparent in the sequence late in the play in which the Crows encourage Jim not to be nervous in the upcoming show because, Mammy says, the audience luvs evathang we does (317). His prologue perfectly shows how Jacobs-Jenkins feels trapped by his works being put into a different box because he is a black playwright although he [doesnt] know exactly what that means, and he just wants to create works to tell human stories, not necessarily always dealing with the race issue in America. In talking directly to the audience about the show they are watching, Topsy serves an educational function, metatheatrically drawing attention to Jacobs-Jenkinss work of theatrical excavation. The two scream expletives at each other Marina- and Ulay-style before BJJ gives up and they begin the play in earnest. The superimposition of hero and villain upon one another suggests that the moral difference between them is less clear-cut than melodramatic stereotypes would have it and illustrates, as Lisa Merill and Theresa Saxon note, the uncomfortable similarity between desire to own, master, or marry Zoe. BJJ explains, with the help of Boucicault, how melodrama works and how it has been necessary for An Octoroon to adapt some of the melodramatic features of the earlier play. That, however, is only the bare outline of a work that is infinitely playful and deeply serious and which dazzlingly questions the nature of theatrical illusion. [12], An Octoroon premiered Off-Broadway at Soho Rep on April 23, 2014 and closed on June 8. Rhoda lived her whole life "passing" as a white person. Stay abreast of discount offers for great theater, on Broadway or in select cities. This is the type of play I would love to dissect for a thesis project! Instead of performing themselves, they put the (real) audience on display: We watch them. Boucicaults melodrama was a great hit in its day but is now almost never performed, except possibly as a camp diversion for private amusement. Jacobs-Jenkins uses Melody and Jean to introduce the audience to the Crow family as people rather than cartoons. A romantic relationship develops between rebellious Melody and shy Jim Crow, beginning with the awkward tenderness of the moment when Jim gently removes an eyelash from Melodys face (232). By signing up you are confirming you are 16 or over. This point goes all the way back to our early readings of Gilroy and theory, so Jacobs-Jenkins uses these well known texts as his foundation for An Octoroon, while also moving drastically past these notions. [45] Similarly, the old slave Pete (in blackface) clearly performs his role as loyal house slave. About their apparently imminent sale, for example, Dido says, This is about the worst damn day of my life! Otherwise, the execution perfectly matches the quicksilver skill of the writing. To Dora's consternation, however, George is in love with Zoe (Amber Grey), the octoroon ( black) daughter of the Judge and one of his slaves. The Octoroon was a controversial play on both sides of the slavery debate when it debuted, as both abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates believed the play took the other camp's side. Tracey Elaine Chessum This play is set in Creole Louisiana, before the Civil War, on a plantation called Terrebonne. And his assistant (Ian Lassiter), who looks rather like a Native American, blackens up to embody both an old family retainer and an addlebrained boy slave. Jacobs-Jenkins reframes Boucicault's play using its original characters and plot, speaking much of Boucicault's dialogue, and critiques its portrayal of race using Brechtian devices. 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. The latter is so sickeningly sweet and endearingly dumb, especially with his Indian sidekick Wahnotee (Wolohan in redface), he could have his own family television series circa 1955 (think antebellum Lassie). in Ben Brantley, A Squabbling Family Kept in the Dark, New York Times, 16 March 2014. http:www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/theater/in-appropriate-branden-jacobs-Jenkins-subverts-tradition.html?-r=o (accessed 12 August 2015). Zip Coon, very well-dressed, sporting a top hat, and walking jauntily and dandily (250, 230, 238) is the classic dandy of nineteenth-century minstrel shows; Mammy, ample of bosom (301) and forceful of manner, channels Hattie McDaniels character in Gone with the Wind (310), while Topsy is both picaninni and a version of Josephine Baker. I washed it away (97). Though she is legally a slave and the property of Mr. Peyton, she has not been treated as one; he tried to free her, not realizing that a legal loophole prevented it. Effectively, he adapts melodramas audience for his own meta-melodramatic and political purposes. Adaptation has increasingly become a major object of study by literary scholars. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: 'theatre is about controversial ideas', Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. In addition to the resourceful Nwosu, who deserves to be honoured in end-of-the-year awards, there is a host of fine performances. References External links. date the date you are citing the material. That never was me! (111). Anyone can read what you share. [7] Grard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). The debate is not, for starters, simply a matter of black and white. Maurya Wickstrom 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. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins An Octoroon is a whirlwind of images and dialogue that leaves no one out of the conversation and makes no apologies for asking the hard questions. 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. What a real slave sounded like the members of the play in.! 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