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[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]. [37] Thomas P. Adler, Repetition and Regression in Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child, in Matthew Roudan, ed. The photograph album in Appropriate is particularly shocking because these photos are to be understood, not only as symbolic representations, but as literal artifacts of American history. Effectively, he adapts melodramas audience for his own meta-melodramatic and political purposes. [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. 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). Jacobs-Jenkinss plays variously demonstrate how adaptation operates creatively in producing new works and also critically and politically, not in this instance by reinterpreting the adapted texts, but by exposing how their damaging and supposedly outdated racial assumptions continue to inform contemporary racial attitudes. The book is about a "Tragic Mulatta" character, a stereotype used by 19th-century American authors to explore racial miscegenation. This use of make-up reverses the nineteenth-century theatres casting of white actors in blackface to play the enslaved characters and comments ironically on racist stereotypes and the theatrical convention that perpetuated them. He alludes both to tropes common across American family dramaa genre characterized by its content and its realism rather than by any particular structural featuresand to specific details from well-known plays. [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]. Early in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's magnificent play, we see a version of the playwright who . [25], Artists Repertory Theatre, located in Portland, Oregon, was to stage An Octoroon from September 3 to October 1, 2017. 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. An Octoroon is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. 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. Mr. Bloomingdale, Rhoda's first suitor, a white man, Dr. Olney, Mrs. Meredith's physician and Rhoda's eventual suitor, a white man, Mrs. Meredith, Rhoda's aunt, a white woman, This page was last edited on 23 January 2023, at 21:41. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. This strategy produces a general sense of familiarity that, as reviewer Erin Keene, observes, creates a comfort zone for audience members who are then periodically shocked out of their complacencywe know these people, we know this genreby the reemergence of the album.[32] The broadly familiar content of Appropriate is punctuated, too, by more precise allusions that Jacobs-Jenkins chooses to italicize and engage with in order to render visible within the parameters of the white American family play a discourse about blackness. 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. But as audiences laugh (or squirm) at the Crows outrageous minstrel show turns, or speculate knowingly about the quarrels of the Lafayettes, or weep for Zoe and laugh at the performances of Minnie, Dido, and Pete, Jacobs-Jenkins simultaneously compels contemporary spectators to confront the racial assumptions he has excavated along with the dramatic forms that contain them and to worry about their own and each others complicity in the continuing legacy of those assumptions. Both the white hero, George, and the white villain, MClosky, are played by the same black actor in whiteface. More significant than these echoes is the familiar symbolic equation of the family home with America. https:www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/16/383567104/one-playwright-s-obligation (accessed 11 February 2019). Still, Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins finds himself in the uncomfortable position of being a black playwright, without knowing exactly what that means. http://jadtjournal.org/2015/04/24/visibly-white-realism-and-race-in-appropriate-and-straight-white-men/ (accessed 30 December 2016). 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. Abolitionist John Brown was hanged just three days before the play's debut, which is seen as one of the catalyst events that started the Civil War. There is a coda, which members of the audience leaving the theatre (according to Jacobs-Jenkinss stage directions) might or might not see. Foster is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at Loyola University Chicago. This led Jacobs-Jenkins to see doubles and pairs in Boucicault's play, through relationships between characters e.g. As Thomas P. Adler observes, Shepard displays a peculiar power in his highly symbolic family problem plays of allegorizing the American experience, of deflating the myth of America as the New Eden.[37] Jacobs-Jenkins transforms Shepards implied equation of literal and symbolic inheritanceembodied in Appropriate in the photo album of lynchingsinto an explicit and particular indictment of Americas racial and racist history and its present-day consequences. Dido replies, "No. 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. Checking on the audiences reactions is a whimsical giant Brer Rabbit (clearly an authorial figure and originally played by Jacobs-Jenkins himself) who wanders through the show at will, staring at the spectators (much as the Crows stare at their audience at the end of Neighbors). 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. [9] Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, xvii, 6, 21. Jim Crows song and dance, while not one of the formal Interludes, is a case in point. England, England, Accessibility Statement Terms Privacy |StageAgent 2020. 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. Your email is never published nor shared. The earliest minstrels were white performers in blackface, but there were also troupes of African-American performers. The last date is today's Rhoda lived her whole life "passing" as a white person. Ostensibly 19th-century slaves, their diction is so modern in its wit and inflection, they could easily be transplanted to any stoop in Bedford-Stuyvesant without causing much of a stir. Infinitely playful Ken Nwosu and Kevin Trainor in An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. In doing so, Brer Rabbitor the dramatist himselfassesses the political impact of Jacobs-Jenkinss adaptation. 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. But the questions it never stops posing light up a very murky night. 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. Unlike historical excavations, which lead archeologists ever deeper into the past, in Neighbors Jacobs-Jenkins excavates upwards into the present, reaching his deepest layer in the feelings of a putative contemporary actor beneath those of a reluctant performer beneath those of a minstrel character. While posing, MClosky comes from behind and kills Paul to take the letter. Hutcheon also notes the Darwinian implications of the term adaptation. A Theory of Adaptation, 31. Amy E. Hughes [43] In all three plays Jacobs-Jenkins adds innovative techniques to the toolbox available to theatrical adaptation and further wrinkles to adaptation theory. 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. It is in the interstices between adapted work and adaptation, or to use Jacobs-Jenkinss archeological metaphor, in the stratigraphy, that the important cultural and political work of adaptation takes place. 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. Word Count: 356. Kim Marra 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). [27] Kee-Yoon Nahm, Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men, Journal of American Drama and Theatre 27, no. Appropriate/An Octoroon. After the conclusion of their show the Crows take a curtain call, but that is not the end. In Appropriate Jacobs-Jenkins layers his own work on top of familiar topoi from the genre of American family drama. 3 (Fall 2016): 286. [36] Sam Shepard, Buried Child. Though I cant remember any of them now. [40] Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog (New York Theatre Communications Group, 2001), 13. Bill Demastes At the beginning of the play, upon hearing the approach of white people, Pete drops his normal conversational voice and transforms into some sort of folk figure speaking the dialect constructed by Boucicault: Drop dat banana fo I murdah you! (19).[46]. 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. Walking on a stage covered with cotton balls is a tricky business. Underscoring the link, Toni sarcastically refers to her brother as Beauregarde Big Daddy Lafayette (35). At the Plantation Terrebonne in Louisiana, Dido and Minnie chat about the arrival of George, and the passing of his uncle, their previous master. It all culminates in a thrillingly ridiculous duel with himself (ingeniously choreographed by J. David Brimmer). And try to guess who that is dressed up as a Beatrix Potter-style rabbit. 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. http://www.signaturetheatre.org/News/An-Archeology-of-Seeing.aspx (accessed 19 May 2017). Through the familiarity of the contemporary comic idiom Jacobs-Jenkins induces the audience to laughin effect, at slaveryand then to question their own and other audience members laughter. If there are three dates, the first date is the date of the original Through such Brechtian techniques as cross-casting and meta-commentary from the plays internal playwright, BJJ, Jacobs-Jenkins ironizes Boucicaults story and the racist attitudes of his characters. "The Octoroon - Themes" eNotes Publishing Themes Questions & Answers Critical Essays . [26], An Octoroon was staged by the Georgia Southern University Theatre & Performance Program from November 8 to November 15, 2017.[27]. 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. 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. (depending presumably on the resources of the theatre). While atmospheric cicadas make symbolic noise in the background, the family members quarrel over long-standing grievances and over their inheritance, which, to their horror, includes an album filled with photographs of lynchings. Ironically, The Octoroon premiered in New York four days after famed. The homecoming motif with which Appropriate opens quickly transforms into the airing of past grievances and the quarrel over inheritance, channeling such plays as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Dividing the Estate. 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. This leads to a hilarious scene in which he switches between the two characters engaged in a fight to the death. The Art of Dramatic Composition: A Prologue, "Branden Jacobs-Jenkins: Feel That Thought", "The Great Work Continues: The 25 Best American Plays Since 'Angels in America', "Amber Gray on 'An Octoroon,' at Soho Rep", "The Octoroon Delayed Opens This Week at PS122", "Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Tries to Revive The Octoroon", "Disgruntled Cast Member Issues Invite to P.S.122's Troubled Octoroon", "Soho Rep Reading of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' An Octoroon to Feature Saycon Sengbloh and William Jackson Harper | Playbill", "Review: 'An Octoroon,' a Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Comedy About Race", "BERKELEY REPERTORY THEATRE | An Octoroon", "Cast announced for An Octoroon at Orange Tree", "Review: An Octoroon (Orange Tree Theatre)", "An Octoroon is taboo ridden, but thoughtful (Shaw Festival)", "Georgia Southern Theatre & Performance to Present "An Octoroon", "2017 Results | Critics' Circle Theatre Awards", For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=An_Octoroon&oldid=1138923673, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox play with unknown parameters, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 12 February 2023, at 11:33. 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. [8] Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). Even more thoroughly than in Neighbors and Appropriate, adapted work and adaptation bleed into one another. Unorthodox, highly stylized plays on incendiary topics tend to have limited shelf lives, especially when theyre wrenched out of their birthplaces. The Theatre of Tennessee Williams. Excavating American Theatrical History: Branden Jacobs-Jenkinss Neighbors Appropriate, and An Octoroon by Verna A. While An Octoroon revisits many of these themes, it does so in a more formally challenging way. The precise resemblance of the two visual images creates a palimpsestic layering that enables the audience to see the human reality of the black flesh and bones that the now pulpy photos represent. Ed. 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. Again, Wahnotee and Paul are presented so sympathetically (especially Wahnotee) that it seems to confirm the author's approval of their feelings and characters. Jacobs-Jenkins looks at the consequences of putting oneself onstage in their own work, if it is a real self or a fake self, which Jacobs-Jenkins embodied himself in the roles of Br'er Rabbit and Captain Ratts. (No.) The kind of dramatic excavation practiced in Neighbors is thus a form of both pedagogy and political protest. 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. It toys with the plot of Dion Boucicault's 19th century play "The Octoroon . 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. BJJ is focused on a play, The Octoroon, but runs into issues staging it because the white actors quit, so he applies whiteface in order to play them himself. England, England, Front Of House at Prince of Wales Theatre 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. The Crows wear black paint, have huge red lips, and, except for Jim, and Zip in his conversations with Jean, speak with the caricatured dialect and malapropisms of their nineteenth-century originals. Bartleby the Scrivener, A Tale of Wall Street, The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. 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. 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. 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. [28] In the end Bo is prevented from selling the photos because Franz feels called to cleanse himself and his family by jumping into the nearby lake, taking the photos with him: I took everythingall my pain, all Daddys pain, this familys pain, the picturesand I left it there. Zoe heads out to the slave quarters to ask Dido for poison. She is considered to be property by law, but this is also presented as wrong. [50] Chase Quinn, Laughing (and Crying, and Laughing Again) about Slavery, Hyperallergic 24 February 2015. http.//hyperallergic.com/185346/laughing-and-crying-and-laughing-again-about-slavery/ (accessed 20 May 2015). The play reiterates a lot of themes I've heard before, but does it in a fresh way that's both thoughtful and provoking. That sense of uncertainty is part of the fun. [26] Jacobs-Jenkins quoted in Wegener, About Appropriate, 147. View our Privacy Policy. Jordan Schildcrout The Crows have been on hiatusthe word is used repeatedly (231, 235, 242)after the death of Jim Crow, Sr. for an uncertain period of time, suggesting that they may have come literally from the nineteenth century, and are, like Pirandellos Six Characters, in search of their life on the stage in the form of their much-vaunted comeback (261). 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. Of these Themes, it does so in a more formally challenging.! Duel with himself ( ingeniously choreographed by J. David Brimmer ) |StageAgent 2020 whole life `` passing as. Challenging way the Scrivener, a Theory of adaptation, xvii, 6, 21 Trainor! Either 2 or 3 dates the questions it never stops posing light up a very murky night play... Is the familiar symbolic equation of the fun stratigraphy, and the hero. Exactly what that means performers in blackface, but that is not end... 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