An Octoroon is based on the play The Octoroon by Dion Boucicault which. Made its debut in America in 1859. The play was an adaptation of a. Novel entitled The Quadroon, which told the story of a slave that was. 1/4 th black, raised as a white child on a plantation, and in love with the. White plantation owner. In The Octoroon, Boucicault. ‘An Octoroon' is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, it is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault's 1859 classic melodrama ‘The Octoroon' The original play which opened at the Winter.
What is an octoroon?
octoroon
[ok-tuh-roon]
noun Older Use: Offensive.
a person having one-eighth black ancestry, with one black great-
grandparent; the offspring of a quadroon and a white person.
- Addie lyn.
The following photographs were taken in New Orleans in the 1860's for the purpose of raising funds for an organization that intended to educate emancipated slaves. The slave children with light complexions are octoroons, quadroons, one-sixteenth black or possibly less.
WHY IS THE PLAY CALLED AN OCTOROON?
An Octoroon is based on the play The Octoroon by Dion Boucicault which
made its debut in America in 1859. The play was an adaptation of a
novel entitled The Quadroon, which told the story of a slave that was
1/4 th black, raised as a white child on a plantation, and in love with the
white plantation owner. In The Octoroon, Boucicault changed the slave
character's racial background to 1/8th black. Some feel he made the
change to play up the tragedy of the story about the slave character's
unfeasible love for the white plantation owner.
Boucicault's play was met with much acclaim in America and ignited
discussions about the abolition of slavery. Although actors in the
production performed in blackface, the practice of darkening an actor's Tor browser 2020.
skin to portray roles of non-white characters was an acceptable practice
in theatre during the time period.
In his studies of the theatre, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins took great interest
in Dion Boucicault as a playwright, especially the play The Octoroon. In Airdrop iphone 11.
an interview with American Theatre, Jacobs-Jenkins expounded on
Boucicault's influence on An Octoroon and his perspective as a
playwright:
'I became really obsessed with Boucicault. He's actually like our
first American dramatist, because he's this Anglo-Irish guy that
came over here and wrote one of the first, most important plays
about American life. It was this huge sensation and a direct
response to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is this hugely important flag
in the history of American theatre. I was interested in how
Boucicault would rewrite his plays depending on his
audiences—like for The Octoroon, he had two different endings:
one in which the heroine died (for American audiences) and
another where she didn't (for the British audiences). To me, that
did not square up against the idea of an 'responsible artist.' An
artist had to make an artistic choice and stand by it. The idea that
he would be commercially reworking his work just to make
money was just… I don't know.
But as I dug deeper, I realized that's not actually how it shook
down. He tried his original ending in London and the audiences
wouldn't deal with it. He wrote like all these pamphlets and
editorials defending his ending as 'truthful' but in the end,
perhaps a little out of spite, he rewrote the ending. I think a lot of
people see this as some sort of… weakness on his part, but I think
it's telling that he burned that draft—that it's not even in the
public domain anymore. Then he made a cut version for the
printing, which was never actually produced and I thought, 'This
is so amazing.'
I did all this crazy archival research at the New York Public
Library and I found this insane unfinished essay he wrote on the
art of dramatic writing. One thing I've always lamented is that
playwrights never really write down what they think in a real
way. I love Arthur Miller's theatre essays—this is me being
academic and ridiculous. So I find this Boucicault essay and it says
how the whole enterprise for us is creating the dramatic illusion.
We're just trying to create the most perfect illusion, because that
is where catharsis begins with audiences. And the way we get that
illusion is that we create the most believable illusion of someone
suffering. And I was, like, obsessed with this essay and that kind of
one in which the heroine died (for American audiences) and
another where she didn't (for the British audiences). To me, that
did not square up against the idea of an 'responsible artist.' An
artist had to make an artistic choice and stand by it. The idea that
he would be commercially reworking his work just to make
money was just… I don't know.
But as I dug deeper, I realized that's not actually how it shook
down. He tried his original ending in London and the audiences
wouldn't deal with it. He wrote like all these pamphlets and
editorials defending his ending as 'truthful' but in the end,
perhaps a little out of spite, he rewrote the ending. I think a lot of
people see this as some sort of… weakness on his part, but I think
it's telling that he burned that draft—that it's not even in the
public domain anymore. Then he made a cut version for the
printing, which was never actually produced and I thought, 'This
is so amazing.'
I did all this crazy archival research at the New York Public
Library and I found this insane unfinished essay he wrote on the
art of dramatic writing. One thing I've always lamented is that
playwrights never really write down what they think in a real
way. I love Arthur Miller's theatre essays—this is me being
academic and ridiculous. So I find this Boucicault essay and it says
how the whole enterprise for us is creating the dramatic illusion.
We're just trying to create the most perfect illusion, because that
is where catharsis begins with audiences. And the way we get that
illusion is that we create the most believable illusion of someone
suffering. And I was, like, obsessed with this essay and that kind of
became the guide for Octoroon. I wanted to talk about the illusion
of suffering versus actual suffering and ask, 'Is there a
relationship between the two?'
Read his full interview here.
Blog content provided by Adah Pittman-DeLancey.
Images provided by SohoRep: http://sohorep.org/glossary-oc..
An Octoroon Themes
As both the most recent text of the course as well as our last, I think Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's 'An Octoroon' points to the complex hope of a world in which black artists can create works which are separate from the recycling of previous black narratives in America. 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 '[doesn't] 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. 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.
This wish to use preexisting material to simultaneously move past these experiences because of the multiple levels of the play's presentation and humor. Most notably with its racially swapped casting, Jacobs-Jenkins uses this practice as a means to show that race is somewhat arbitrary and a social construct. 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. Even the title shows this sense of exhaustion with the abundance of the race question and critics viewing his work through a racial lens. Moving from 'The Octoroon' to 'An,' Jenkins suggests that despite the incredibly modern and subversive elements which Jacobs-Jenkins adds to Boucicault's original, this is just another play and that the novelty of racial mixing has worn off and become common now. His use of humor during the play most clearly shows Jacobs-Jenkins's belief that there is now enough time passed between the days of 'The Octoroon' and his own time that not only can he adapt and deconstruct the themes of the original play and its context, he can laugh at it. Although this concept for a play sounds controversial on paper, I don't think that he explicitly makes these changes just to make an audience for his work because of mere curiosity. Jacobs-Jenkins has clearly done his research, and makes a hard case for the reader that we still have to talk in certain ways about certain topics. The fact that has the audience laughs at slavery and BJJ even encourages that laughter shows his belief that not only can these experiences can be joked about, they can also stop overshadowing African-American art to allow new black artistic forms to come into being.
An Octoroon Review
Looking back over the semester, I thought it was only fitting to end on 'An Octoroon.' Not only does it apply multiple themes from across the class, even going all the way back to January, but it brings all this history together to put his own spin on it, making parts of the play nearly incomprehensible without the proper context of these older texts and plays.
