Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon is a whirlwind of images and dialogue that leaves no one out of the conversation and makes no apologies for asking the hard questions.
The Octoroon is a play by Dion Boucicault that opened in 1859 at The Winter Garden Theatre, New York City. Extremely popular, the play was kept running continuously for years by seven road companies.[2] Among antebellum melodramas, it was considered second in popularity only to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).[3]
- AN OCTOROON Time Out New York Despite the moments of palpable fear and disquiet, the audience leaves feeling somehow healthier, as though the theater has given us a violent shake and a pep talka tremendously exciting production, moving and chilling and surprising at once.
- The term octoroon referred to a person with one-eighth African/Aboriginal ancestry; that is, someone with family heritage equivalent to one biracial grandparent; in other words, one African great-grandparent and seven European great-grandparents. An example was Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.
Boucicault adapted the play from the novel The Quadroon by Thomas Mayne Reid (1856). It concerns the residents of a Louisiana plantation called Terrebonne, and sparked debates about the abolition of slavery and the role of theatre in politics. It contains elements of Romanticism and melodrama.
An Octoroon National Theatre
The word octoroon signifies a person of one-eighth African ancestry. In comparison, a quadroon would have one quarter African ancestry and a mulatto for the most part has historically implied half African ancestry.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites The Octoroon with the earliest record of the word 'mashup' with the quote: 'He don't understand; he speaks a mash up of Indian, French, and Mexican.' (Boucicault's manuscript actually reads 'Indian, French and 'Merican.' The last word, an important colloquialism, was misread by the typesetter of the play.)
Plot[edit]
Act I[edit]
George Peyton returns to the United States from a trip to France to find that the plantation he has inherited is in dire financial straits as a result of his late uncle's beneficence. Jacob McClosky, the man who ruined Judge Peyton, has come to inform George and his aunt (who was bequeathed a life interest in the estate) that their land will be sold and their slaves auctioned off separately. Salem Scudder, a kind Yankee, was Judge Peyton's business partner; though he wishes he could save Terrebonne, he has no money.
George is courted by the rich Southern belle heiress Dora Sunnyside, but he finds himself falling in love with Zoe, the daughter of his uncle through one of the slaves. Dora, oblivious to George's lack of affection for her, enlists Zoe's help to win him over. McClosky desires Zoe for himself, and when she rejects his proposition, he plots to have her sold with the rest of the slaves, for he knows that she is an octoroon and is legally part of the Terrebonne property. He plans to buy her and make her his mistress.
Act II[edit]
McClosky intercepts a young slave boy, Paul, who is bringing a mailbag to the house which contains a letter from one of Judge Peyton's old debtors. Since this letter would allow Mrs. Peyton to avoid selling Terrebonne, McClosky kills Paul and takes the letter. The murder is captured on Scudder's photographic apparatus. Paul's best friend, the Indian Wahnotee, discovers Paul's body; he can speak only poor English, however, and is unable to communicate the tragedy to anyone else.
George and Zoe reveal their love for each other, but Zoe rejects George's marriage proposal. When George asks why, Zoe explains that she is an octoroon, and the law prevents a white man from marrying anyone with the smallest black heritage. George offers to take her to a different country, but Zoe insists that she stay to help Terrebonne; Scudder then appears and suggests that George marry Dora. With Dora's wealth, he explains, Terrebonne will not be sold and the slaves will not have to be separated. George reluctantly agrees.
Act III[edit]
George goes to Dora and begins to propose to her; while he is doing so, however, he has a change of heart and decides not to lie to her. He and Zoe admit to their love of each other; a heartbroken Dora leaves. The auctioneer arrives, along with prospective buyers, McClosky among them. After various slaves are auctioned off, George and the buyers are shocked to see Zoe up on the stand. McClosky has proved that Judge Peyton did not succeed in legally freeing her, as he had meant to do. Dora then reappears and bids on Zoe – she has sold her own plantation in order to rescue Terrebonne. McClosky, however, outbids her for Zoe; George is restrained from attacking him by his friends.
Act IV[edit]
The buyers gather to take away the slaves they have purchased on a steamship. They have realized that Paul is missing, and most believe him dead. Wahnotee appears, drunk and sorrowful, and tells them that Paul is buried near them. The men accuse Wahnotee of the murder, and McClosky calls for him to be lynched. Scudder insists that they hold a trial, and the men search for evidence. Just as McClosky points out the blood on Wahnotee's tomahawk, the oldest slave, Pete, comes to give them the photographic plate which has captured McClosky's deed. The men begin to call for McClosky to be lynched, but Scudder convinces them to send him to jail instead.
Act V[edit]
The men leave to fetch the authorities, but McClosky escapes. Stealing a lantern, he sets fire to the steamship that had the slaves on board. Wahnotee tracks him down and confronts him; in the ensuing struggle, Wahnotee kills McClosky. Back at Terrebonne, Zoe returns but with a sad heart, as she knows that she and George can never be together. In an act of desperation she drinks a vial of poison, and Scudder enters to deliver the good news that McClosky was proven guilty of murdering Paul and that Terrebonne now belongs to George. Despite the happiness Zoe stands dying and the play ends with her death on the sitting-room couch and George kneeling beside her.
Alternative endings[edit]
When the play was performed in England it was given a happy ending, in which the mixed-race couple are united. The tragic ending was used for American audiences, to avoid portraying a mixed marriage.[4]
References[edit]
- ^Photo from first edition of The Octoroon, Act IV, by Dion Boucicault; compliments of Special Collections, Templeman Library, University of Kent.
- ^'The McVay Farewell'. Pacific Commercial Advertiser. June 20, 1899. p. 3. Retrieved May 11, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^'McVay in The Octoroon'. Honolulu Evening Bulletin. June 20, 1899. p. 1. Retrieved May 11, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^How to End 'The Octoroon', John A. Degen, Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2 (May 1975), pp. 170–178; The OctoroonArchived November 17, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
External links[edit]
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.
An Octoroon Soho Rep
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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
An Octoroon
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
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
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
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...