Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon

Verna Ann Foster (Loyola University of Chicago)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication Apr 2014

Places

America - North (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Recommended Reading

American dramatist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (born 1984) has said that he thinks of “genre or old forms” as “interesting artifacts that invite a kind of archeology of seeing” (qtd. in Foster, 2019: 1). His interest in excavating earlier texts and styles of performance to critique assumptions, especially racial assumptions, and values prevalent in contemporary America is apparent in many of his plays. In

Neighbors

(2010) he revisits minstrel shows, and in

Appropriate

(2014) American family drama; in

Everybody

(2017) he adapts

Everyman

and in

Girls

(2019) Euripides’s

The Bacchae

An Octoroon

(2014) is an adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s nineteenth-century melodrama about slavery,

The Octoroon

(1859). First performed by Soho Rep in New York in 2014 (and remounted in 2015),

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2302 words

Citation: Foster, Verna Ann. "An Octoroon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 September 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38959, accessed 24 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, An Octoroon

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback