The focus of Act III is the auction of the Terrebonne plantation slaves. Kean played the dual role of twin brothers with a close psychic connection. For example, the threat of the family being forcibly separated is minimised when the kindly owners of neighbouring plantations agree to avoid that outcome once it is called to their attention. 40.Hopkins, Magic; Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, p. 305. Part I’, The North American Review, 126:260 (1878), 40–52, 44. The boiler deck must be cut out with platform behind and gang way plank about two feet wide, down stage—The windows of the Cabin must be transparent and lit up. If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Branden Jacob-Jenkins’ 2014 adaptation called An Octoroon, while departing significantly from Boucicault's approach to visual storytelling, also uses a visual sensation to create an emotional impact. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click on download. He is in dangerous territory as the inclusion of the image could be perceived as exploiting the actual suffering of real individuals as a short cut to creating an emotional response in his audience. But while Eliza’s flight across the ford has lived on in shows as recent as The King and I and resonances of Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s Topsy can be seen everywhere, The Octoroon has largely faded from American memory and is only occasionally taught in American theatre history classes, probably because anthologists and professors find it slightly less offensive than Uncle Tom’s Cabin. … We enter Boucicault’s world, where George; M’Closky; Pete; Paul; the white woman, Dora; and the octoroon, Zoe, speak much of Boucicault’s text with the same melodramatic flair one can imagine actors in 1859 employing, but without most of the spectacle… Jacobs-Jenkins keeps reminding his audience that race, and therefore “the race problem in America,” is not just a matter of DNA (as it is for the octoroon), but rather a matter of DNA and history, heritage, and performance. Though both are comically unaware of plot developments that will change their lives, their anachronistic banter invites an audience to think about all the people oppressed by slavery, not just the single tragic octoroon. ZOE is declared a slave as well and is put up for sale. Any newly designed, realistically thrilling steamboat fire is likely to be beyond the resources of any particular production and distract from Jacobs-Jenkins’ main interest in revisiting the play. By contrast, Jacobs-Jenkins does not suggest cross-racial casting for the female characters.67 This provides another perspective on the significance of race and the degree to which times have changed. The email address and/or password entered does not match our records, please check and try again. As a adjective quadroon is (historical) having three-fourths caucasian descent and one-fourth african descent. According to Andrew Maunder, their ‘shocking plots which were believed to assault the nerves and make the flesh “creep” centered on the depiction of lurid, exaggerated or sensational events in which murder, adultery, bigamy, illegitimacy, kidnapping, madness and fraud proliferated’.6 In drama, a sensation scene usually means the thrilling combination of technical/scenic elements and a life or death situation in the play (sometimes also involving acrobatic skills on part of the performers). Though the use of blackface is unmarked in Boucicault's play, Jacobs-Jenkins makes the wearing of blackface, and by extension the performance of racial identity, part of his spectacle by having actors apply make-up onstage before playing characters in whiteface and redface, as well as blackface. I have read and accept the terms and conditions, View permissions information for this article. Terms pertaining to one drop, based on “blood quantum,” said to measure blood quantity, include Mulatto (1/2 Negro), Quadroon (1/4 Negro), Octoroon (1/8 Negro) and so on. 21.Quoted in John A. Degen, ‘How to End “The Octoroon”’, Educational Theatre Journal, 27:2 (1975), 170–8, 172, https://doi.org/10.2307/3206111. M’CLOSKY sets fire to RATTS’ steamboat on the water. An Octoroon ended its sold-out, extended run yesterday – but it will bob up again. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2005.00140.x, https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810802696287, https://doi.org/10.2979/victorianstudies.59.1.02, http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjlh/vol10/iss1/1, https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-art/2016/01/27/send-racial-stereotypes-octoroon-has-contemporary-resonance/aXnjDyEukiJVw39q5eBPSO/story.html, https://howlround.com/branden-jacobs-jenkins-octoroon, https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/06/national-theatre-octaroon-branden-jacobs-jenkins-review, https://britishtheatre.com/review-an-octoroon-national-theatre/, https://hyperallergic.com/185346/laughing-and-crying-and-laughing-again-about-slavery/. Wheatleigh's promptbook states that as a red glow is seen off right ‘The cry of fire heard, women screaming heard above, the engine bell is heard, and the movement of the engine. The directions state ‘The Steamer moves off—fire kept up—M’Closky re-enters, r., swimming on.’ After a speech, M’Closky swims off left. Assistant wanders in with a small lantern and reports ‘Then the boat explodes’. Also on the scene is George Peyton, the judge's nephew and heir, recently returned having spent years being educated in Europe. The truth of the matter is, it was non-committal. For more information view the SAGE Journals Article Sharing page. He is found guilty, but Scudder keeps the crowd from carrying out a lynching on the spot. Multiple promptbooks survive for The Octoroon documenting productions subsequent to the original. A bit more emphasis is given to the character Salem Scudder in the last act of a promptbook which belonged to actor Charles Wheatleigh. In Georgia Lowe's arena stage design, sections of wooden flooring are pulled up part way through the show to reveal a flooded understage.81 BJJ pours some petrol on the water and, in the words of Helen Lewis of the New Statesman they ‘SET THE STAGE ON FIRE. Below are excerpts taken from the HowlRound article,  “Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon” by Holly Derr. The final direction reads ‘Music—The flat is drawn off and discovers Tableaux of the Indian and M’Closky—M’Closky is down and the Indian in the act of scalping him. See more. Though ZOE has been raised as a white woman, anti- miscegenation laws forbid marriage between blacks and whites. Jacobs-Jenkins stage directions call for the sound of fire and men panicking. After retrieving the mail, M’CLOSKY ambushes and murders PAUL and steals the check. All the time that has passed since 1859 serves only to make this mix more complicated. “An Octoroon,” onstage at the University of Central Florida, is a complicated beast. Both end of play tableaus are included in the version published in Peter Thomson (ed), Plays by Dion Boucicault (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) and Werner Sollors (ed), An Anthology of Interracial Literature: Black-White Contacts in the Old World and the New (New York: New York University Press, 2004). Nicholas Vardac, Stage to Screen: Theatrical Method from Garrick to Griffith (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), p. 45. According to a recently published article by Lisa Merrill and Theresa Saxon, various endings of the play were performed in England and Australia during ensuing years.23 While it is possible to see Boucicault's revision as evidence that he was not committed to an abolitionist message, Sarah Meer reads the happy ending version as following logically from George's earlier misreading of the subtle racial and social hierarchy of the plantation. Members of _ can log in with their society credentials below. Before he even begins to present the events of Boucicault's play, Jacobs-Jenkins has alerted his audience to pay attention to the way race is understood and performed within the world of the play. and off L. then returning.35. Going to PAUL he expresses in pantomime grief, sorrow, and fondness, and takes him in his arms to carry him away. Mark Mullen, ‘The Work of the Public Mind’, Nineteenth Century Theatre, 27:2 (1999), 89–115, 89–90. Rather than an emotionally charged double tableau that ties up all the plot elements, Jacobs-Jenkins gives his audience a challenge of how to process these signs of injustice, representing the slave auction, the murder of Paul, and the wrongful accusation of Wahnotee.90 The last image is followed by a blackout and Jacobs-Jenkins' final stage direction, ‘[e]veryone sings’.91 In the Soho Rep production the cast sang, ‘when you burn it down what do you put there in its place?’92 The question is apt as Jacobs-Jenkins’ adaptation seems to answer a question about what to do with this historical artefact of theatrical performance. Richard Fawkes, Dion Boucicault: A Biography (London: Quartet Books, 1979), p. 94. M’CLOSKY shows great interest. The play's popularity was due in part to the novelty of its staging. 95. Mrs. Peyton's son, loves Zoe, and asks her to be his wife. “The Octoroon Gone Home,” New York Times, February 9, 1860, An Octoroon: The Octoroon an essay by James Leverett, An 1889 Guide to Acting Eleven Tragic Emotions, Native American Experience and Exploitation, American Indian vs. When Stuart and Fields replaced Boucicault and Robertson in The Octoroon and continued to run the play, Boucicault sought an injunction to prevent further performances. Boucicault always considered the original to be the true ending. However, rather than heightening the melodrama, Jacobs-Jenkins’ visual sensation jolts an audience out of laughing at the over-the-top racism of a previous era. Then, after letting the audience know that the sensation scene is important, but also suggesting that it is an effect that can no longer be accomplished, Jacobs-Jenkins delivers his sensation. According to Sugg the image was bumped up, rather than brought in with a slow fade and ‘[t]he audience gasps as a response to the image’.79, Once the image is projected, the newly sombre actors restart their enactment of the central actions of Act IV (the defence of Wahnotee, discussion of the newly discovered photographic evidence, the accusation of M’Closky) ‘in the light of the projection’, and continue the performance after BJJ calls for the projection to be turned off. — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, "On Racism and Epithets," 10 Aug. 2020 The 1850 census instructed enumerators: Be particularly careful to distinguish between blacks, mulattoes, quadroons, … His bloody axe, a half emptied rum bottle, and the smashed photographic apparatus are also discovered. Both plays, in their attempts to create sympathy for slaves while also depicting actual black people as minstrels, have been called both abolitionist and racist. Rather than scenic spectacle, actor skill is showcased as a single actor plays both George and M’Closky in a dramatic confrontation between the two characters. The scene above opens, and discovers the scene of the landing. The most famous sensation of Boucicault's play was the burning of the steamboat in Act IV. When Zoe asks to look at George, ‘Scudder raises her in his arms. The Octoroon (1861-1862) is a lurid tale of race, slavery and crime. The lynching photo selected for the Soho Rep production includes a number of white spectators, inviting further reflection on the connection between racial stereotypes consumed as entertainment and the horrifying celebration of deadly violence on view in the projected image.89. Meanwhile, the young slave PAUL and his American Indian friend WAHNOTEE are sent to collect the mail. He then pushes it a step further, expecting his audience to not just be entertained by feeling for the characters in an exciting situation, but also to be pushed to grapple with the real-world implications of depictions of racial and social injustice. 5.William Winter, Other Days: Being Chronicles and Memories of the Stage (New York: Moffat, Yard and company, 1908), p. 130. Though Zoe is white in appearance and portrayed by a white actress – Boucicault's wife Agnes Robertson originated the role – her legal and social position is nevertheless defined by the fact that she is one-eighth black. AN OCTOROON), Disgruntled Cast Member Issues Invite to P.S.122’s Troubled Octoroon, Review: White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack. The Soho Rep production accomplished the change away from the plantation by pushing over the back white wall, a repetition of the earlier falling wall effect.76. The tragic aspect of Zoe's fate is diminished by the end of Jacob-Jenkins’ play, which may remind an audience that being one-eighth black does not hold the same dire legal and social consequences in 2015 as it did in 1859. The New York Times noted ‘its striking merits as a sensational drama’ on 7 April 1860 and advertisements begin to label it a sensation.4 William Winter attributed to Boucicault the invention of the term ‘Sensation Drama’, which became widely used following the success of The Colleen Bawn.5 During the 1860s, sensation novels, borrowing their name from sensation drama, became the rage.