Below are excerpts taken from the HowlRound article, 'Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon' by Holly Derr. Also, scroll down for a plot summary of THE OCTOROON. Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon, first presented in New York in 1859, bears more than a striking resemblance to its better-known stage sister, George Aiken’s adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle. Winner of the 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play, An Octoroon is an incendiary, subversively funny exploration of identity, jammed with sensation and surprises!
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. Among antebellum melodramas, it was considered second in popularity only to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Moving from “The Octoroon” to “An,” Jenkins suggests that despite the incredibly modern and subversive elements which Jacobs-Jenkins adds to Boucicault’s original, this is just another play and that the novelty of racial mixing has worn off and become common now.
Also found in: Thesaurus, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.oc·to·roon
(ŏk′tə-ro͞on′)
n.octoroon
(ˌɒktəˈruːn) oroctaroon
nAn Octoroon National Theatre
oc•to•roon
(ˌɒk təˈrun)n.
| Noun | 1. | octoroon - an offspring of a quadroon and a white parent; a person who is one-eighth black archaicism, archaism - the use of an archaic expression mixed-blood - a person whose ancestors belonged to two or more races |
An Octoroon Quotes
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