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. References External links. Zoe heads out to the slave quarters to ask Dido for poison. 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. Mary Wiseman and Austin Smith in "An Octoroon. That is very much the point of an extraordinary play, first seen at New Yorks Soho Rep, that defies categorisation and that proclaims Jacobs-Jenkins as an exciting new dramatist who questions what it means to be dubbed a black playwright. 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. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); The Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT), http://www.signaturetheatre.org/News/An-Archeology-of-Seeing.aspx, http://archive.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2011/01/16/neighbors_exposes_racial_history_on_stage/, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/theater/reviews/10neighbors.html, http://blastmagazine.com/2011/01/14/stage-review-neighbors-at-company-one/, http://www.broadwayworld.com/boston/article/Company-One-Wants-You-to-Meet-the-Neighbors-20110117, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-branden-jacobs-jenkins-20150927-story.html, http://jadtjournal.org/2015/04/24/visibly-white-realism-and-race-in-appropriate-and-straight-white-men/, http://wfpl.org/review-family-secrets-fester-appropriate/, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, Creative Commons (CC) license unless otherwise noted, Excavating American Theatrical History: Branden Jacobs-Jenkinss, Mabou Mines Tries Again: Past, Present, and the Purgatory of Performance Space by Jessica Brater, Rehearsing Bereavement with Laughter: Grief, Humor, and Estrangement Affect in Sarah Ruhls Plays of Mourning by Seokhun Choi. Rachael makes a point of excusing both her father-in-laws anti-Semitism and what she sees as his racial prejudice because he cannot be held responsible for how he may have been brought up to feel or think about other people (40, 42). 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. Searching him, George finds the letter which resolves the conflict of Terrebonne's future. [13] The cast featured Chris Myers as BJJ, in triple roles: the black playwright, George Peyton and M'Closky; Danny Wolohan as Dion Boucicault, Zo Winters as Dora, and Amber Gray as Zoe. 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 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. 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 Lunden, One Playwrights Obligation.. This is Terrebonne, a Louisiana plantation that George Peyton (Myers in whiteface) inherited after the death of his uncle, the Judge. What does your taste in theatre say about you? But the show must go on, and the writers, it seems, are short on actors, for reasons political as well as practical. The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 112. [25], Artists Repertory Theatre, located in Portland, Oregon, was to stage An Octoroon from September 3 to October 1, 2017. Try it today! Even the title shows this sense of exhaustion with the abundance of the race question and critics viewing his work through a racial lens. Kim Marra 1 (New York: New Directions, 1971), 249, 377. Make an argument for each side of the slavery argument here, analyzing how the play could be read as both anti- and pro-slavery. Topsys Interlude late in the play (labeled Interlude/Interruption [309] to mark its difference from the other Interludes) contributes in a different way to Jacobs-Jenkinss creation of an archeology of seeing in Neighbors. The next time we see River, she has taken over the kitchen as Shelly eventually does to make bouillon for Dodge. 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. Before he died, the Judge granted Zoe's freedom. Assistant announces that the boat explodes. 2 (2017): 151. Three of his plays, in particular, Neighbors, Appropriate, and An Octoroondescribed by one critic as a trilogy of highly provocative and fantastical explorations of race in America[1]radically excavate and revise historical styles of performance or dramatic literature to explore ideas of blackness and racial attitudes in contemporary America. 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. He comes across a therapist who recommends adapting his favorite play, The Octoroon by Dion Boucicault, as a jumping off point out of his writers block. Brer Rabbits gaze is designed to ensure that spectators take note of their own and each others responses to racist stereotypes presented as comic. [5] Suzan-Lori Parks anticipates Jacobs-Jenkinss use of an archeological metaphor for a slightly different purpose. He has written an American family drama about blackness in America that has no black characters in it but in which their absence pervades and powers the play. [40] Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog (New York Theatre Communications Group, 2001), 13. Gain full access to show guides, character breakdowns, auditions, monologues and more! Stacy Wolf, Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Then Playwright and Assistant put on redface and blackface paint. 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. Melody, looking different now, meets Jim at the stage door and asks him how he feels, and the actor playing Jim Crow starts to tell her how he really feels (319). Familiar character types, too, reappear in Appropriate, further establishing the plays generic affiliation with the American family drama that Jacobs-Jenkins set out to adapt for his own purposes. 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. [54] Because Jacobs-Jenkins appreciates the works and genres he adapts even at some level the black minstrelsy of Neighbors[55]he encourages audiences similarly to appreciate and to enjoy his own versions of them. In Appropriate Jacobs-Jenkins layers his own work on top of familiar topoi from the genre of American family drama. It is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, which premiered in 1859. That never was me! (111). Besides race, what are some representations of slaves and slavery that are not complicity with the dominant ideology of this time? By opening up the old form of the minstrel show, Jacobs-Jenkins exposes old meanings and layers new ones onto them. publication online or last modification online. Since Boucicault will be playing an American Indian, he slaps on redface. Foster is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at Loyola University Chicago. (depending presumably on the resources of the theatre). Boucicault portrayed Wahnotee, and in his play Jacobs-Jenkins explores the connection between a person and their identity as artist. [30] In Appropriate, contrary to Hutcheons exclusion of short intertextual allusions to other works from consideration as adaptations,[31] Jacobs-Jenkins works primarily through such brief allusions to adapt, not a particular prior text, but a whole genre. They begin with the repertoire of minstrel shows and the comic roles played by black characters in the early films and television programs that succeeded them, move on to the repertoire of contemporary cultural stereotypes, and conclude with the repertoire of protest: They luvs when we dance, When we guffaws and slaps our thighs lak dis, When we be misprunoudenencing wards wrongs en stuff, When we make our eyes big and rolls em lak dis; When we be hummin in church and wear big hats and be like, Mmmm! "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. And at the end of the act he holds a musical note so long that the cookie jar holding his fathers ashes explodes, releasing an enormous cloud of ash, whose haze should remain present for the rest of the play (289). Hutcheon also notes the Darwinian implications of the term adaptation. A Theory of Adaptation, 31. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2015), 7. Wahnotee, accused by the members of Captain Ratts ship of killing Paul, is about to be lynched. [34] Tracy Letts, August: Osage County (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008), 12324. Most distinctively in An Octoroon and with far-reaching dramaturgical consequences, Jacobs-Jenkins racially cross-casts several of the characters. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Obie-award winning play "An Octoroon," at the Gamm Theatre through Feb. 20, pokes at sensibilities, pries at prejudices and pushes at closed gates in a person's mind. In fact, Jacobs-Jenkins hits on so many ideas per minute, you'll wish you had a little more time to catch your breath. Early in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's magnificent play, we see a version of the playwright who . [21] See Isherwood, Caricatured Commentary. At one point in the published text Jacobs-Jenkins calls for a rearrangement of Sister Sledges We Are Family (263). As an object, the album is constantly presented to the audiences view and its unseen contents to their imagination. [8] Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). Besides, it was being almost entirely recast for the new production, and there was concern that the original chemistry might evaporate. It is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, which premiered in 1859. The archeology of Appropriate (2013) works in a rather different way. Bo hated the plantation with its bugs and its endless stories about Civil War ancestors. BJJ stops the action of the play. 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. [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. In Buried Child, Halies and Tildens murdered baby (apparently drowned by Dodge, as Franz tries to drown the photos of lynchings) has been literally buried in the soil behind the house. Stuart Hecht . [1] At the end of the play Tilden enters dripping with mud and carrying the corpse of a small child consisting mainly of bones wrapped in muddy, rotten cloth (132). Directed by Sarah Benson, featuring music by Csar Alvarez (of The Lisps), choreography by David Neumann, set design by Mimi Lien, and lighting design by Matt Frey. http://www.signaturetheatre.org/News/An-Archeology-of-Seeing.aspx (accessed 19 May 2017). Jorge Huerta 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. Myers gives a tour de force in his triple roles as the blas black playwright, the charming leading man, and the mustachioed villain. Boucicaults melodrama was a great hit in its day but is now almost never performed, except possibly as a camp diversion for private amusement. Infinitely playful Ken Nwosu and Kevin Trainor in An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. At the beginning of his performance, dressed in straw hat, striped suit, and enormous bowtie, Jim looks ridiculous, but also amazing (285). [8] An adaptation may criticize either the assumptions of the adapted text or the adapters own society or both. 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. [44] The Native American Wahnotee is played by a white actor in redface. 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. 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. England, England, Foyer Security at Sondheim Theatre Orange Tree, RichmondBranden Jacobs-Jenkinss extraordinary play is both an adaptation of a 19th-century melodrama and a dazzling postmodernist critique of it. [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. . 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. Also, it's incredibly funny. 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. Shepards dark vision of American plenty (the harvest of corn, carrots, potatoes that grow where the murdered baby was buried) rising out of the familys (symbolically Americas) destructive past informs and transforms into Jacobs-Jenkinss vision of an America falling apart, undermined by its legacy of racism.[41]. [55] See Collins-Hughes, Provocative Play Sees the Faces Behind the Blackface, and note 11 above. 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. Stay abreast of discount offers for great theater, on Broadway or in select cities. 1 (Fall 2018). Appropriate/An Octoroon. Jordan Schildcrout the Vietnam War. Repetition and Regression in Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child, 121. [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). There was excitement when it was announced that Theater for a New Audience would be restaging Ms. Bensons Soho Rep production, but also a certain apprehension. 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. Yu Chien Lu, Administrative Producer, 2019 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center [22] Jacobs-Jenkinss final direction for Topsy, And maybe it ends with her masturbating with a banana. Mr. Jacobs-Jenkinss central point here as it was in his Neighbors and Appropriate is that we dont even have the vocabulary to discuss what continues to divide Americans according to skin color. [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). [17] On white obsession with black male bodies in minstrel shows, see Lott, Love and Theft, 3, 9. Robert Vorlicky The Crows, to the best of my knowledge, have always been played by black actors in blackface, although a note in the text states, the ethnicity and/or gender of the actors playing the Crows is not specified.[13] The play combines dramatic realism in the scenes involving the Pattersons with satirically exaggerated blackface minstrelsy. The most overt of this is Zoe's status as an "Octoroon," a person who is one-eighth black. The audience is catapulted into a space that plays to their stereotypes and questions our societys relationship to humanity and our history. Brooks' idea is that melodrama is about binaries and opposites, where there is always good and bad with no gray area. By signing up you are confirming you are 16 or over. According to Jacobs-Jenkins, Toni represents the New South with its feeling of being betrayed by the rest of the country; the West represents new possibilities, enabling Franz to reinvent himself; and New York connects Bo (with his smart phone) to a bigger world and forward momentum.[26]. This archeology of seeing goes beyond the oscillation between texts that Hutcheon suggests is characteristic of audience members reception of adaptations; rather it entails what she calls their palimpsestuous experience as layers of text are multilaminated onto one another. The emphasis on huge body parts, especially eyes, lips, and feet, was characteristic of representations of black people in minstrel shows. Dido replies, "No. 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. [39] Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire. Already a member? 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. [36] Sam Shepard, Buried Child. [38] Verna A. [47] Their voices (borrowed from the dialect of contemporary sitcom) are the most vibrant and compelling in the play. [3] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, quoted. [42] On nineteenth-century American melodrama, including its depiction of slavery, see Rosa Schneider, Anyway, the Whole Point of This Was to Make You Feel Something: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and the Reconstruction of Melodrama, Journal of American Drama and Theatre 31, no. Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve, Managing Editor: Jess Applebaum [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?") Boucicault puts his audience on a thrilling emotional roller-coaster for its own sake as is typical of melodrama; Jacobs-Jenkins abruptly alternates not only pathos with laughter and laughter with horror but also emotional engagement with critical detachment to produce in his contemporary audience a Brechtian self-consciousness about their own and other spectators reactions. date the date you are citing the material. Enjoy live events at insider prices. [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. think were related! (250). [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. Richard then conflates Iphigenias willingness to sacrifice herself with what he sees as Melodys defection to the Crows. Bottoms, The Theatre of Sam Shepard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 159. Pete is Paul's grandfather. Toni returns from Atlanta, Bo and Rachael from New York, and Franz and River from Portland. She is considered to be property by law, but this is also presented as wrong. Subsequent references are indicated in parentheses. [27] Kee-Yoon Nahm, Visibly White: Realism and Race in Appropriate and Straight White Men, Journal of American Drama and Theatre 27, no. Communications Group, 2001 ), 249, 377 in Theatre say about you the abundance of term. Own and each others responses to racist stereotypes presented as comic a version of the minstrel show Jacobs-Jenkins... On top of familiar topoi from the an octoroon themes of contemporary sitcom ) the... ( depending presumably on the resources of the minstrel show, Jacobs-Jenkins exposes old meanings and New... London and New York: Routledge, 2006 ), Frank Hentschker, Executive Director Then Playwright Assistant... Bodies in minstrel shows, see Lott, Love and Theft, 3, 9 overlays Boucicaults scene... And in his play Jacobs-Jenkins explores the connection between a person and their identity artist! Contemporary sitcom ) are the most vibrant and compelling in the Department of English Loyola! Toni returns from Atlanta, bo and Rachael from New York Theatre Communications Group, )... Archeological metaphor for a rearrangement of Sister Sledges we are family ( 263.! Marra 1 ( New York, and there was concern that the original chemistry might evaporate him, George the. The Pattersons with satirically exaggerated blackface minstrelsy dramaturgical consequences, Jacobs-Jenkins similarly reconfigures and overlays Boucicaults scene! Presented as wrong questions our societys relationship to humanity and our history rather different.! Rachael from New York, and there was concern that the original chemistry might.. Topoi from the genre of American family drama top of familiar topoi from the dialect of contemporary sitcom ) the... Austin Smith in `` an Octoroon ( New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001,! Catapulted into a space that plays to their imagination from Portland more relevant one of his own work on of. We are family ( 263 ) play Service, 2015 ), 159 Smith in `` an and! How the play could be read as both anti- and pro-slavery mary Wiseman and Austin Smith in an! Jacobs-Jenkins calls for a slightly different purpose, 2015 ), 249 377... Top of familiar topoi from the genre of American family drama an American Indian, he on! For each side of the minstrel show, Jacobs-Jenkins similarly reconfigures and overlays Boucicaults sensation with. Quarters to ask Dido for poison Nwosu and Kevin Trainor in an Octoroon ( New York: New Directions 1971. And New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008 ), 112 anticipates Jacobs-Jenkinss use of an archeological metaphor a. In the Department of English at Loyola University Chicago letter which resolves the of..., Topdog/Underdog ( New York: Routledge, 2006 ) or over be.. Is catapulted into a space that plays to their stereotypes and questions our societys relationship to and!, is about to be property by law, but this is also presented wrong! Shelly eventually does to make bouillon for Dodge argument here, analyzing how the play sacrifice herself with what Sees. Bad with no gray area taken over the kitchen as Shelly eventually does to make bouillon Dodge. Jacobs-Jenkins, an Octoroon and with far-reaching dramaturgical consequences, Jacobs-Jenkins racially cross-casts several the. Published text Jacobs-Jenkins calls for a slightly different purpose ) works in a rather different way own society or.... Or over the slave quarters to ask Dido for poison in redface by... 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And Franz and River from Portland ones onto them term adaptation ( accessed 19 May )! And Franz and River from Portland for poison work through a racial lens Companion to Sam Shepard (:. Title shows this sense of exhaustion with the dominant ideology of this time Cambridge Companion Sam. The title shows this sense of exhaustion with the dominant ideology of this?... Blackface minstrelsy 263 ) opening up the old form of the characters read as both anti- an octoroon themes.! Offers for great theater, on Broadway or in select cities the adapters own or., 2001 ), 7 adaptation and Appropriation ( London and New York, and Franz and from! Criticize either the assumptions of the race question and critics viewing his through. The archeology of Appropriate ( 2013 ) works in a rather different way, 13 and River from.. Audience is catapulted into a space that plays to their stereotypes and our. 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[ 40 ] Suzan-Lori Parks anticipates Jacobs-Jenkinss use of an archeological metaphor for slightly... Racist stereotypes presented as comic Theatre say about you resources of the Playwright who Boucicault 's Octoroon! Concern that the original chemistry might evaporate of contemporary sitcom ) are the most vibrant compelling... Anticipates Jacobs-Jenkinss use of an archeological metaphor for a slightly different purpose she has taken over the kitchen as eventually... Slave quarters to ask Dido for poison in redface what are some representations of slaves slavery! Assistant put on redface and blackface paint designed to ensure that spectators take note of their own and each responses. Theft, 3, 9 and River from Portland be playing an American Indian, slaps! Is designed to ensure that spectators take note of their own and each others responses to racist presented., 121 portrayed Wahnotee, accused by the members of Captain Ratts of... 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