Daniel OConnell, Frederick Douglass, and Intersectionality, Public vs. . At the beginning the incessant chatter of cicadas fills and sweeps the theater in pulsing pitch-black waves (13), assaulting the audiences senses in an almost Artaudian manner for what seems like an unbearably long time; at the end alternating darkness and light represent the passing of many years as the house falls apart and the cicadas fall silent. Jacobs-Jenkins introduces Jims real feelings. Jacobs-Jenkins here invites audiences to engage in an act of complex seeing, requiring them simultaneously to cheer Jim for his newfound expertise and to censure his embodiment of his nominal stereotype, to admire aesthetically what they must also condemn historically. 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. This strategy is most apparent in his depiction of the enslaved female characters, who are little more than comic props in The Octoroon. I can't afford one." Tracey Elaine Chessum
2023 . The whole of An Octoroon (first produced in 2014 and remounted in 2015 by Soho Rep in New York) works through an even more radical process of layering and drawing attention to the gaps between layers to produce this kind of multiple seeing. [1] Jeff Lunden, One Playwrights Obligation To Confront Race And Identity In The US, All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 16 February 2015. Transcript. [8] An adaptation may criticize either the assumptions of the adapted text or the adapters own society or both. Stuart Hecht The unseen album, telling its symbolic story of a long line of corpses (112), of incest and infanticide, prefigures the more shocking album of lynchings and dead black bodies that mesmerizes the Lafayette family in Appropriate. We then launch into a condensed rewrite of Boucicaults original: a mortgage melodrama in which the Peyton familys Louisiana plantation seems destined to fall into the unscrupulous hands of its former overseer, MClosky. Bo hated the plantation with its bugs and its endless stories about Civil War ancestors. Richard explains that the origin of Agamemnons tragedy lies in events that occurred before the action of the play begins. Stacy Wolf, Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Make an argument for each side of the slavery argument here, analyzing how the play could be read as both anti- and pro-slavery.
For Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins has deliberately built his play on slippery foundations, the kind likely to trip up any dramatist, performer or theatergoer. Download the entire The Octoroon study guide as a printable PDF! The two scream expletives at each other Marina- and Ulay-style before BJJ gives up and they begin the play in earnest. [9] Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, xvii, 6, 21. The owner, Mr. Peyton . Research Playwrights, Librettists, Composers and Lyricists. 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. Moments later, he reveals, "Just kidding. An Octoroon's central taboo-defying conceit cocks a snook at the concept of "colour-blind casting", which is the theme of a bracing opening monologue by the playwright's alter ego BJJ . In "An Octoroon," the projection of a lynching photograph grounds this playfully postmodern riff on Dion Boucicault's "The Octoroon" in historical horror. Where Boucicault cleverly uses a photograph of the real murderer of Paul to prevent a miscarriage of justice, Jacobs-Jenkins has to go further to produce a similarly sensational effect for his contemporary audience. Enjoy live events at insider prices. Sign up today to unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. Paulwith the mailbagsstops to take a photo of himself with Georges camera. [7][8] It was originally directed by Gavin Quinn of the Irish theatre company Pan Pan, but Jacobs-Jenkins took over the role after Quinn quit several weeks into rehearsals. So B J J puts on whiteface, the better to portray both the hero (the idealistic young heir to a plantation) and villain (a wicked, lust-ridden, newly rich overseer). This wish to use preexisting material to simultaneously move past these experiences because of the multiple levels of the plays presentation and humor. Orange Tree, RichmondBranden Jacobs-Jenkinss extraordinary play is both an adaptation of a 19th-century melodrama and a dazzling postmodernist critique of it. 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). Jacobs-Jenkins shines a light on the politics of the plays stratigraphy by explaining directly to his audience the features of the genre he is adapting. Thats race as a subject that no one can get a comfortable hold on. Unlike most of the plays of the time, however, the central "tragic action" of the play centers not around the fate of a 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. 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. Anyone can read what you share. 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]. An Octoroon is weird in all the right ways, but it's also just so clever! 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. (No.) In this finale Jacobs-Jenkins deprives his audience of their collectivity and requires them to question their own individual reactions to his play. BJJ, Playwright, and Assistant explain the significance of the fourth act, the sensation scene in melodrama. The actor who plays BJJ - in this case, the astonishing Ken Nwosu - goes on to don whiteface and appear as both the heroic George and the villainous M'Closky. At the beginning of his performance, dressed in straw hat, striped suit, and enormous bowtie, Jim looks ridiculous, but also amazing (285). [7] Often transmotivation, transfocalization, and transvalorization work together. Richard, however, blames the sacrifice not on the gods (standing in for white people in his mind) but on the demands of Agamemnons uncouth, country-ass soldiers with no self-control, sitting in the port raping women and drinking all the time and aint got no jobs and dont talk Greek good (292)clearly, for Richard, a version of the Crows. [5] Jacobs-Jenkinss innovative work makes possible a fresh and experiential interracial discussion of race relations in Americaa discussion that is much needed in the present tense political climate. [45] Similarly, the old slave Pete (in blackface) clearly performs his role as loyal house slave. The tension slackens slightly in the second half when Jacobs-Jenkins summarises Boucicaults sensational climax. Beth Osborne For instance, a white baby doll, standing in for an infant slave, is given a partly blacked-up face. "The Octoroon - Themes" eNotes Publishing Yu Chien Lu, Administrative Producer, 2019 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center 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. 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. At the same time by theorizing and teaching his audience about the history of blackface entertainment through the dialogue of the minstrels themselves, Jacobs-Jenkins invites a more dispassionate Brechtian evaluation of the emotionally charged minstrel show devices he depicts. George proposes to Dora, but Zoe confesses their love, which turns off Dora. Like stratigraphic layers in archeology, the layering of past and present in Neighbors requires complex seeing. 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. An Imperative Duty is a short realist novel by William Dean Howells published in 1891. In An Octoroon Jacobs-Jenkins excavates and adapts both a specific play text whose racial content would otherwise preclude performance in the twenty-first century and the now unfamiliar genre of nineteenth-century melodrama to which it belongs, including the theatrical/performative features of that genre: sensational plot, stereotypical good and bad characters, mix of comedy and pathos, spectacle, tableaux, and mood music. The womens fantasy, however, will prove ephemeral. Complimentary and Deeply Discounted Shows. Intrageneric adaptation has received less theoretical attention than intergeneric or intermedial adaptation. So, instead of giving up, he decides to play the white male roles himself. Eventually, Zoe takes the poison and runs off. Last Updated on June 19, 2019, by eNotes Editorial. His use of humor during the play most clearly shows Jacobs-Jenkinss 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. Photos 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. [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. 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. [3] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, quoted. [43] In all three plays Jacobs-Jenkins adds innovative techniques to the toolbox available to theatrical adaptation and further wrinkles to adaptation theory. [1] Jacobs-Jenkins considers An Octoroon and his other works Appropriate and Neighbors linked in the exploration of theatre, genre, and how theatre interacts with questions of identity, along with how these questions (such as "Why do we think of a social issue as something that can be solved?") Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. Again, Wahnotee and Paul are presented so sympathetically (especially Wahnotee) that it seems to confirm the author's approval of their feelings and characters. As both the most recent text of the course as well as our last, I think Branden Jacobs-Jenkinss 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. Since Boucicault will be playing an American Indian, he slaps on redface. Ironically, The Octoroon premiered in New York four days after famed. Ariel Nereson What does your taste in theatre say about you? The novel explores the idea of "passing" through the racially mixed character of Rhoda Aldgate, a young woman whose aunt informs her that she is one-sixteenth African American. The book is about a "Tragic Mulatta" character, a stereotype used by 19th-century American authors to explore racial miscegenation. [47] Their voices (borrowed from the dialect of contemporary sitcom) are the most vibrant and compelling in the play. 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. 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). [55] See Collins-Hughes, Provocative Play Sees the Faces Behind the Blackface, and note 11 above. Throughout the play the Crows rehearse and quarrel about who should do what in their upcoming show. In the plays final sequence, representing an indeterminate period of time marked by stylized blackouts followed immediately by the lights coming up again, the audience bears witness as the house, established by now as a representation of America, is casually inhabited by various strangers and literally falls apart. A panel of scholars and artists discuss the contemporary relevance and themes of Branden Jenkins-Jacobs play "An Octoroon"Featured panelists are:Dr. Theda Pe. The photo albums in Buried Child and Appropriate reveal what has been kept hidden. [11] By exaggerating the embodiments of blackness and the comic and musical routines characteristic of the minstrel shows to the point of an absurdity so explosive that laughter becomes problematic, Jacobs-Jenkins launches a savage satiric attack on racist stereotypes. [17], Company One Theatre in Boston co-produced the play with ArtsEmerson, directed by Summer L. Williams. "Branden is like a performer whose material is text," Benson observes. [21] At the same time, as Charles Isherwood of the New York Times notes, Jacobs-Jenkinss contextualization of the performances of these later artists within Topsys act suggests that they too can be seen as just another form of minstrelsy. While An Octoroon revisits many of these themes, it does so in a more formally challenging way. 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. In the very end, this music finally gives us the respite for contemplation that we desperately need to process the madness we've just witnessed. [33] Stephen J. 3 (Fall 2016): 286. eNotes Editorial. [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. For Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins has deliberately built his play on slippery foundations, the layering past. 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