Intrageneric adaptation has received less theoretical attention than intergeneric or intermedial adaptation. Hutcheon also notes the Darwinian implications of the term adaptation. A Theory of Adaptation, 31. Richard explains that the origin of Agamemnons tragedy lies in events that occurred before the action of the play begins. Log in here. . [2] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, quoted. George defends him and demands a fair trial, while MClosky reluctantly takes the role of prosecution. [25] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Appropriate. 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. 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. 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. The evening starts with a confrontation between the two authors. 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]. When a black actor in whiteface makes a racist remark (Georges reference to the folksy ways of the niggers down here, for example), the line is necessarily italicized and held up for the audiences critical inspection. Zoe falls in love with George as well, though others are shocked that the two would wish to marry (it being, of course, illegal at the time). . A theater and a slave plantation in Louisiana, College/University, Diverse Cast, Ensemble Cast, Mature Audiences, Regional Theatre, Front Of House at Prince of Wales Theatre. Bo hated the plantation with its bugs and its endless stories about Civil War ancestors. By presenting characters in whiteface, blackface, and redface, Jacobs-Jenkins can look at "blackness and how to represent social constructs onstage that are so tied to a specific culture of nation. Complimentary and Deeply Discounted Shows. Wahnotee, accused by the members of Captain Ratts ship of killing Paul, is about to be lynched. The Crows uncomfortable, not to say embarrassing, interrogative gaze anticipates that of the zanier Brer Rabbit, who wanders through An Octoroon slyly inviting the audience of that play to reflect upon their own and each others responses. Toni returns from Atlanta, Bo and Rachael from New York, and Franz and River from Portland. In Neighbors, Appropriate, and An Octoroon Jacobs-Jenkins puts his own adaptive versions of the minstrel show, the American family play, and Boucicaults melodrama into an edgy but productive dialogue with the forms that he excavates. The most overt of this is Zoe's status as an "Octoroon," a person who is one-eighth black. While An Octoroon revisits many of these themes, it does so in a more formally challenging way. https:www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/16/383567104/one-playwright-s-obligation (accessed 11 February 2019). [35] Horton Foote, Dividing the Estate. [42] Jacobs-Jenkins retains most of Boucicaults main characters and substantial amounts of his dialogue as well as his plot. This is Terrebonne, a Louisiana plantation that George Peyton (Myers in whiteface) inherited after the death of his uncle, the Judge. Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve, Managing Editor: Jess Applebaum In An Octoroon, the projection of a "lynching photograph" is an attempt towards an actual experience of finality. [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. And the slaves Pete and Paul, according to Jacobs-Jenkinss textual directions, are to be played by a Native American actor (or an actor who can pass as Native American) in blackface. But it feels right that the people occupying this production, first seen last year at Soho Rep, should be required to move on what might be called terra infirma. Instead of performing themselves, they put the (real) audience on display: We watch them. "[2] This examination of race as a social construct is also in Appropriate and Neighbors. By uprooting every plank in the stage to create a pit for a slave auction, Ned Bennetts inventive production and Georgia Lowes ingenious design also create a needless hiatus. [13] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Neighbors. In Appropriate Jacobs-Jenkins layers his own work on top of familiar topoi from the genre of American family drama. Appropriate bears many of the generic markers of American family drama. Adaptation is a creative, interpretative, and political act. "An Octoroon," which opened in 2014 at Soho Rep. in New York, won an Obie award for best new American play. 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. Dion Boucicault's drama was inspired by his visit to the American South and The Quadroon (1856), a novel by Thomas Mayne Reid. Subsequent references are indicated in parentheses.
ZOE played by an octoroon actress, a white actress, a quadroon actress, a biracial actress, a multi-racial actress, or an actress of color who can pass as an octoroon. [25], Artists Repertory Theatre, located in Portland, Oregon, was to stage An Octoroon from September 3 to October 1, 2017. It is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, which premiered in 1859. The audience is catapulted into a space that plays to their stereotypes and questions our societys relationship to humanity and our history.
Jims performance, so admired by Melody that she gives the dazed Jim a blowjob, seems, according to Jacobs-Jenkinss stage directions, designed to be genuinely remarkable and worthy of the theatre audiences admiration as well as Melodys. [45] Similarly, the old slave Pete (in blackface) clearly performs his role as loyal house slave. 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. [31] Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 170. Besides, it was being almost entirely recast for the new production, and there was concern that the original chemistry might evaporate. Though I cant remember any of them now. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. But as well as preserving much of Boucicaults work, not least his artistic focus in manipulating his audiences emotions, Jacobs-Jenkins incorporates his own words with Boucicaults, transforms melodramatic techniques into Brechtian techniques, and uses racially cross-cast actors in whiteface, blackface, and redface, inviting audiences to join him in excavating the plays different levels of meaning and to see them simultaneously. Enjoy live events at insider prices. The family return after their fathers/grandfathers death to the old family home in Arkansas: a decaying mansion with ancestral and slave graveyards on the property of what was once a plantation. 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. The debt-ridden, lost plantation over which the family quarrels evokes A Streetcar Named Desire and Dividing the Estate, as well as the play that lies behind both of them, The Cherry Orchard. Review: An Octoroon, a Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Comedy About Race, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/theater/review-an-octoroon-a-branden-jacobs-jenkins-comedy-about-race.html. The Octoroon Themes Racial Identification and Discrimination Set in the pre-Civil War South, The Octoroondeals heavily with racial themes. George photographs Dora with his camera while she and Zoe plot to make George marry her. A photograph of a real murdered human contrasts with the original play's use of a photograph for justice.[4]. 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. "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. While posing, MClosky comes from behind and kills Paul to take the letter. [40] Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog (New York Theatre Communications Group, 2001), 13. Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. [18], The play was presented at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia from March 16, 2016 to April 10, 2016, directed by Joanna Settle. [1] Jeff Lunden, One Playwrights Obligation To Confront Race And Identity In The US, All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 16 February 2015. New York NY 10016. 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. So, instead of giving up, he decides to play the white male roles himself. Maurya Wickstrom Brooks' idea is that melodrama is about binaries and opposites, where there is always good and bad with no gray area. [55] See Collins-Hughes, Provocative Play Sees the Faces Behind the Blackface, and note 11 above. 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. : a person of one-eighth Black ancestry Word History Etymology octa- + -roon (as in quadroon) First Known Use 1859, in the meaning defined above Time Traveler The first known use of octoroon was in 1859 See more words from the same year Dictionary Entries Near octoroon octopus octoroon octospore See More Nearby Entries Cite this Entry Style publication online or last modification online. Study Guide! [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. Kevin Byrne This is the type of play I would love to dissect for a thesis project! The album is deeply embedded in the action of the play as the characters try to figure out what it means and what to do with it. [7] Grard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). One theme of this text has to do with the fact that everyone, no matter their race, has the capacity to feel and love deeply, and all should have the right to do so. 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. Most distinctively in An Octoroon and with far-reaching dramaturgical consequences, Jacobs-Jenkins racially cross-casts several of the characters. He does acknowledge, however, that his wife, Halie, has a family album that can explain the heritage . 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). In his second lectureon Euripidess Iphigenia at AulisRichard layers his own experience as a black man in America onto the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. And try to guess who that is dressed up as a Beatrix Potter-style rabbit. In front of a strobe light (310), comically undercuts the utter, utter transcendence he has just described, but it does so in such a way as to mock (give the fingeror the bananato) what has been historically a largely white and often exploitative entertainment industry rather than the artists themselves. Neighbors, Appropriate, and An Octoroon all attest to Jacobs-Jenkinss fascination with genre or old forms as interesting artifacts. But it is his detailed, scholarly knowledge of minstrel shows, American family drama, and nineteenth-century melodrama that enables him to manipulate these forms and the audience responses they typically generate to elicit an archeology of seeing. Jacobs-Jenkinss sensitivity to and command over the forms he appropriates are apparent in the tropes of the plays themselves, in the characters own commentary on the genres they are inhabiting, especially in Neighbors and An Octoroon, and in the playwrights numerous comments in interviews on the generic affiliations of his work. At the same time his plays push the boundaries of what adaptation can accomplish and offer further refinements to the current discourse on adaptation theory. 1 Mar. The play begins with BJJ, in a black box telling the audience a conversation he and his therapist had, to get him excited about playwriting and to overcome depression. 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. Appropriate opens with the initially unexplained arrival of Franz and River jumping through a window into a very disorderly living room cluttered with old and new furniture as cicadas hum in the background (15). England, England, Foyer Security at Sondheim Theatre
", It will be one of the hottest tickets in town. think were related! (250). Underscoring the link, Toni sarcastically refers to her brother as Beauregarde Big Daddy Lafayette (35). 1 - The Rocky Horror Show
BJJ, Playwright, and Assistant explain the significance of the fourth act, the sensation scene in melodrama. 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. [3] Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, quoted. [23] Jacobs-Jenkins quoted in Amy Wegener, About Appropriate, Appropriate. [38] Verna A. 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. In addition to the resourceful Nwosu, who deserves to be honoured in end-of-the-year awards, there is a host of fine performances. The implicit contrast is hilarious, and harrowing. It then manipulates us by just such means, including one truly upsetting video projection toward the end. It's a strenuous and daring display of theatricality that goes far beyond issues of race in America. 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. 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. Esther Kim Lee Jorge Huerta The second date is today's . Austin Smith and Amber Gray in a scene from Branden Jacobs-Jenkinss play. Abbey Theatre, Dublin . [14] For the history and content of nineteenth-century minstrel shows see Robert C. Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), especially 2557; and Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). [2] In a 2018 poll by critics of The New York Times, the work was ranked the second-greatest American play of the past 25 years. 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. Summary. [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. [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). An Imperative Duty is a short realist novel by William Dean Howells published in 1891. In his own defense, Jacobs-Jenkins writes in the stage direction, "I don't know what a real slave sounded like. [11] Jacobs-Jenkins grew up in a home full of black memorabilia such as mammy dolls and Colored Only signs, according to Laura Collins-Hughes in Provocative Play Sees the Faces Behind the Blackface, The Boston Globe, 16 January 2011. http://archive.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2011/01/16/neighbors_exposes_racial_history_on_stage/ (accessed 5 December 2016). Even more pointed is Minnies advice to Dido, I know we slaves and evurthang, but you are not your job (58), an anachronistic clich that reminds us that Dido, in fact, has no life outside her job. Early in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's magnificent play, we see a version of the playwright who . Make an argument for each side of the slavery argument here, analyzing how the play could be read as both anti- and pro-slavery. In the auction scene he has to fight himself over Zoe. In parallel scenes the Pattersons, themselves relatively new to town, enact the realistic drama of modern marital and generational conflict inflected by anxieties over social and professional status in a new job, new school, and new neighborhood. The play, based on a 1859 melodrama by the Irish-Anglo playwright Dion Boucicault, tells the story of a young man who's about to inherit a plantation and falls in love with a woman who is an. This place has historyour history.[25] If the plantation clearly symbolizes Americas history, the members of the Lafayette family represent its contemporary cultural geography. An Octoroon, Jacobs-Jenkins's riff on Boucicault's 1859 classic The Octoroon, which had a 2010 workshop at PS122, bows this month at Soho Rep in a production directed by Sarah Benson. Amy E. Hughes Already a member? An Octoroon is "this decade's most eloquent theatrical statement on race in America today." - The New York Times Performance Dates & Times Thursday, September 28, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, September 29, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, September 30, at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, September 30, at 8 p.m. Sunday, October 1, at 2:30 p.m. Old times there, it seems, are not forgotten at all. In creating his plays Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has repeatedly chosen to rewrite, adapt, or otherwise appropriate earlier theatrical styles or dramatic texts. 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. "An Octoroon" begins with BJJ an onstage realization of the melodrama's playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins talking to his imaginary therapist about the public's tendency to view most of his. Kevin Trainor as the bombastic Boucicault, Vivian Oparah and Emmanuella Cole as a pair of closely bonded slaves, Celeste Dodwell as a cracked Southern belle and Iola Evans as the eponymous heroine are all first rate. Then Playwright and Assistant put on redface and blackface paint. An Octoroon, you see, is all about race in these United States, as it was and is and unfortunately probably shall be for a considerable time. [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). Still, Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins finds himself in the uncomfortable position of being a black playwright, without knowing exactly what that means. 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. [6], An Octoroon had a workshop production at Performance Space 122 from June 19 July 3, 2010, featuring Travis York, Karl Allen, Chris Manley, Ben Beckley, Gabe Levey, Jake Hart, Margaret Flanagan, Amber Gray, Mary Wiseman, LaToya Lewis, Kim Gainer, and Sasheer Zamata. 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. (London: Methuen Drama, 2012), 222. [44] The Native American Wahnotee is played by a white actor in redface. As a symbol, the album suffuses the consciousness of both characters and audience. Caught up into his act, Jim is like a hurricane unleashed, the most incredible thing you have ever seen in your entire life, even though he also shares characteristics with his minstrel forebearseyes bugged out, limbs loose, moving, dancing, mo coon than a little bit (288). BJJ explains, with the help of Boucicault, how melodrama works and how it has been necessary for An Octoroon to adapt some of the melodramatic features of the earlier play. the Vietnam War. Repetition and Regression in Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child, 121. Grace wants to escapeshe is co-head of the Runaway Plannin Committee (40)and Minnie and Dido at least want to choose the nature of their servitude, supposing that if they can persuade Captain Ratts to buy them to work on his steamboat, they will enjoy a life of romantic adventure. American Next Wave: Four Contemporary Plays from HighTide Festival Theatre. [22] Jacobs-Jenkinss final direction for Topsy, And maybe it ends with her masturbating with a banana. For Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins has deliberately built his play on slippery foundations, the kind likely to trip up any dramatist, performer or theatergoer. 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. 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