Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, first presented in New York in 1859, bears more than a striking resemblance to its better-known stage sister, George Aiken's adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which premiered in 1852. Boucicault portrayed Wahnotee, and in his play Jacobs-Jenkins explores the connection between a person and their identity as artist. Instead of performing themselves, they put the (real) audience on display: We watch them. [22], From May 18 to July 1, 2017 An Octoroon was performed at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London[23] in a production directed by Ned Bennett and designed by Georgia Lowe. . His comments in interviews on the generic affiliation of Appropriate suggest that Jacobs-Jenkins assumed that audiences would already be sufficiently familiar with American family drama to interpret this plays complex stratigraphy without further pedagogical intervention on his part. But Toni says, I always liked Grandmas stories. 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. 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). Dido replies, "No. Myers gives a tour de force in his triple roles as the blas black playwright, the charming leading man, and the mustachioed villain. In the nineteenth century, Rhoda's mother would have been referred to as an "octoroon." Themes. Ed. It uses satire and archival re-creation, jolting anachronisms and subliminally seductive music (performed by the cellist Lester St. Louis) to try to get at its horrible, elusive center: the imponderably far-reaching legacy of American slavery. By uprooting every plank in the stage to create a pit for a slave auction, Ned Bennetts inventive production and Georgia Lowes ingenious design also create a needless hiatus. Nataki Garrett directed the first production of An Octoroon outside of New York with Mixed Blood Theatre Company in the fall of 2015. From the get-go, Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins is cannily exploiting the assumption of false identity that is the starting point for theater, to make us question who is who or who is what. [17], Company One Theatre in Boston co-produced the play with ArtsEmerson, directed by Summer L. Williams. Since I have discussed Jacobs-Jenkinss adaptation of The Octoroon at length elsewhere, I shall confine my remarks in this essay to a brief examination of the ways in which in An Octoroon the playwright extends to almost every feature of the play the archeological techniques he develops in Neighbors and Appropriate. 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). Old times there, it seems, are not forgotten at all. In both plays the buried secrets are discovered to be dead bodies. By presenting characters in whiteface, blackface, and redface, Jacobs-Jenkins can look at "blackness and how to represent social constructs onstage that are so tied to a specific culture of nation. 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. A theatrical, melodramatic reality is created to tell the story of an octoroon woman (a person who is black) named Zoe and her quest for identity and love. [19] Nancy Grossman, Company One Wants You to Meet the Neighbors, Broadway World, 17 January 2011. http://www.broadwayworld.com/boston/article/Company-One-Wants-You-to-Meet-the-Neighbors-20110117 (accessed 5 December 2016). He gives it a try but quickly realizes that getting white, male actors of today to play evil slave owners is not an easy task. The technique is explicitly pedagogical and in An Octoroon inventively meta-adaptive as the contemporary playwright BJJa stand-in for Jacobs-Jenkinsis joined by the Playwrightthe author of the source play Dion Boucicault in teaching the audience how they should respond to the adaptation. BJJ stops the action of the play. [7] Grard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). [1] Jeff Lunden, One Playwrights Obligation To Confront Race And Identity In The US, All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 16 February 2015. But Jacobs-Jenkinss adaptive strategy in this play is less explicit than it is in Neighbors or An Octoroon, in which he incorporates explanations of the genres or texts he adaptsin the Crow familys comments on their work in Neighbors and in educational addresses to the audience from dramatist BJJ and Dion Boucicault himself in An Octoroonfor the benefit of those who might not be familiar with his sources. But even if your response is an emphatic "No", you should still check out this superb play that employs black, white, and redface in unexpected ways while reclaiming a lost gem of the American stage. Maybe they giggle (319). Zoe and George are presented very sympathetically, however, as characters who are good and moral, and this seems to indicate that the author recognizes and approves of their love. [22] Jacobs-Jenkinss final direction for Topsy, And maybe it ends with her masturbating with a banana. "The Octoroon - Themes" eNotes Publishing The tension between the old forms and the new meanings layered onto them generates uneasy and uncertain laughter that engages audiences in a much-needed, if in the theatre implicit, dialogue of their own about racial attitudes in contemporary America. [26], An Octoroon was staged by the Georgia Southern University Theatre & Performance Program from November 8 to November 15, 2017.[27]. Pete sends Paul to go find a letter that would promise enough money to save Terrebonne. [11] Jacobs-Jenkins grew up in a home full of black memorabilia such as mammy dolls and Colored Only signs, according to Laura Collins-Hughes in Provocative Play Sees the Faces Behind the Blackface, The Boston Globe, 16 January 2011. http://archive.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2011/01/16/neighbors_exposes_racial_history_on_stage/ (accessed 5 December 2016). Esther Kim Lee 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. 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]. Note: When citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. Yet in its current incarnation, An Octoroon feels even richer and more resonant than it did before, both funnier and more profoundly tragic. the Vietnam War. Repetition and Regression in Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child, 121. The acting swings wildly in technique, from the grotesque (and comically inspired) affectedness of Mary Wiseman as a snooty Southern belle to the wrenching sincerity of Ms. Gray, who created the title role at Soho Rep. And then the female house servants pricelessly played by Maechi Aharanwa, Pascale Armand and Danielle Davenport describe life as 19th-century chattel in the manner of 21st-century African-American girlfriends gossiping. Our Essay Lab can help you tackle any essay assignment within seconds, whether youre studying Macbeth or the American Revolution. Intrageneric adaptation has received less theoretical attention than intergeneric or intermedial adaptation. This wish to use preexisting material to simultaneously move past these experiences because of the multiple levels of the plays presentation and humor. Then Playwright and Assistant put on redface and blackface paint. Throughout the play the Crows rehearse and quarrel about who should do what in their upcoming show. 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. "You're melodramatic," BJJ screams into a mirror. Jacobs-Jenkins is speaking here of Everybody (2017), his adaptation of the medieval morality play Everyman. 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. 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. Excavating American Theatrical History: Branden Jacobs-Jenkinss Neighbors Appropriate, and An Octoroon by Verna A. 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. Beth Osborne 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. You wouldn't want to miss that by dismissing it at face value. 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 . [31] Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 170. Jacobs-Jenkins pulls the camera back to capture the angst-ridden playwriting process itself: A monotone young black playwright, BJJ (Chris Myers), stands before the audience in his undies and recalls a therapy session. Eventually, Zoe takes the poison and runs off. The debt-ridden, lost plantation over which the family quarrels evokes A Streetcar Named Desire and Dividing the Estate, as well as the play that lies behind both of them, The Cherry Orchard. all the way back to the grave (112). 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. The device of racial cross-casting inevitably creates a gap between actor and character, superimposing the stylization of Brechtian distance on the stylization of melodramatic stereotyping. [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. [44] Lisa Merrill and Theresa Saxon, Replaying and Rediscovering The Octoroon, Theatre Journal 69, no. An Octoroon, quite appropriately, ends in the dark. http://www.signaturetheatre.org/News/An-Archeology-of-Seeing.aspx (accessed 19 May 2017). Richard believes that Agamemnon, a new breed of Achaean, should have resisted and saved hisRichard, distraught, slips and says, mydaughter (292, 293). The diverse ways in which Jacobs-Jenkins excavates old forms in these three plays both reveal and create new layers of historical meaning that call for new ways of seeing and thinking about Americas racial heritage. [3], Jacobs-Jenkins recommends the play be performed with 8 or 9 actors,[4] with male characters played using blackface/whiteface/redface, and female characters portrayed by actresses that match the characters' race.[1]. Since 2000, scholars such as Linda Hutcheon and Julie Sanders have extended the discussion to adaptations of other literary genres, myth, visual art, history, and biography in multiple media. Most of the black works we have read that touch on race have been incredibly serious dramas, but Jacobs-Jenkins is able to depict racial issues while still giving the reader a good laugh. Jacobs-Jenkins further makes The Octoroon fit for its twenty-first century theatrical environment through the adaptive processes of transmotivation, transfocalization, and transvalorization described by Genette. [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]. Cellist Lester St. Louis helps create the dun dun dun with his live accompaniment, which underscores much of the show. First performed at the Public Theater in New York in 2010, and subtitled an epic with cartoons,[12] Neighbors depicts what happens when the Crows, a family of minstrels played by actors in blackface, move in next door to the PattersonsRichard, a black classics professor, Jean, his white wife, and Melody, their teenage daughter. Besides, it was being almost entirely recast for the new production, and there was concern that the original chemistry might evaporate. Its even worse than the first time I got sold! And Minnie replies, Yeah, I didnt wake up thinkin this was where my day was gonna go (41). [40] The photo album in Appropriate, by contrast, belies the apparent absence of blackness in the play by embodying and giving it an explosive motivating power that forces the white characters to confront a legacy of racism that they prefer not to acknowledge. 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