The Octoroon

Branden-Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly are both sophisticated works centered around sociocultural problems in their respective settings. In An Octoroon, Branden-Jacobs Jenkins presents his own adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon critiquing Boucicault’s depiction of race and identity on the plantation Terrebonne in Louisiana. The play is centered around the sale of the plantation and a girl who is one eighth black by descent, an octoroon girl named Zoe who is

and white-biased perspective in Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon does not hold up to modern conceptions of race in America, the play only remains useful for historical examination; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, in his adaptation of the work, An Octoroon, examines the historical implications presented in Boucicault’s original work and transforms the story into one more appropriate for the modern era. Boucicault offers his perspective in The Octoroon from a distance, choosing to weave his message through

Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon is an example of melodrama and artistic mastery. First, it has all the marking of a melodrama which was popular in the 19th century, where you have the villain poses a threat to a hero or heroine. Not only is there a villain but he is so villainous that he poses a threat to all around him, not just the hero and heroine (granted many will argue that Zoe cannot be the heroine, due to racial perceptions at the time of his writings) of the story. Moreover, I would say that

The show that I decided to watch was "An Octoroon" directed by Branden Jacobs Jenkins. To start off it seemed like a comedy but then quickly turned to a melodrama. The play starts with the director telling the audience, in a hilarious way, what inspired him to write/revise his play. Once done, the play begins and it starts off with the slaves of Terrebonne (a slave plantation) discussing the death of their plantation owner. As they wonder and worry of what will become of their homes, the plantation

would someone do that?” or “I wish I could be there to just experience that!”. An Octoroon, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, is a recently new play in which topics of racism and stereotypes are discussed. Branden’s version is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon, which premiered in 1859. Branden used all the same characters and plot, with much of Boucicault’s language in the entire show. While An Octoroon could be considered offensive to a select few people, I found the entire show hysterical

The Octoroon, classified as a slavery play, is a drama by Don Boucicault, that was performed by Queens College students and directed by professionals from the theater industry was a drama of a plantation life in Louisiana and miscegenation back in the day. The script for this play is divided into five acts and performed in two and half hours. Light turns on, and the first scene setting is a view of the plantation Terrebonne, during an unspecified year. Perhaps a time of slavery, Pre-civil war. Giving

Is The Octoroon a typical Victorian melodrama? The Oxford English Dictionary defines the genre of melodrama as, “a stage play, usually romantic and sensational in plot”, this description certainly applies to The Octoroon. It was an extremely popular form of stage drama and what I will discover is whether its themes, content and structure are typical of the Victorian period melodrama. From the first time it was presented at the start of the nineteenth century, melodrama attracted big audiences

heads of others”. Batuman then attends a play, which is a “refashioning” of an 1859 play. This play, An Octoroon, is an “adaption” of The Octoroon, a theater piece about a master falling in love with an illegitimate “octoroon” (someone who’s not white). The original play reveals the struggles that slaves went through, even though it sounded extremely racist, calling people ‘niggers’. An Octoroon completely reenacts this, but cannot find white people to join, so the black people put on white-face and

The Octoroon addresses, albeit briefly and insignificantly, the implications of slavery in various climactic scenes and the dialogue exchanged between characters throughout the play. The character of Zoe, for instance, is actually a common literary convention in America during the 19th century. That is, the convention of the “tragic mulatto” or the “white negro” (Shirley Samuels, 221), for Zoe is mixed race; an octoroon, meaning she is made up of ⅛ African American blood. Shirley Samuels quotes W

Miss Rosa describes her niece, Judith Sutpen, as "a woman more strange to me than to any grief for being so less its partner" (120). Judith is a woman well-acquainted with suffering, losing first her mother, then her fiancé at the hand of her brother, and finally her father. She watches her family 's wealth disintegrate as a result of the heavy toll exacted by the Civil War, and eventually becomes accustomed to tending her own garden, spinning her own thread, and weaving her own cloth as the poor