An Octoroon

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play An Octoroon debuted off-Broadway in 2014 at Soho Repertory under their Dorothy Strelsin Foundation Fellowship for early-to mid-career playwrights. The play is a metatheatrical adaptation of the 1859 American melodrama The Octoroon by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault. Set on a Louisiana plantation, The Octoroon centers on the antebellum plight of the young white man who inherits the plantation and the technically enslaved, white-passing “octoroon”—a dated and offensive term for a person who is one-eighth Black—woman he falls in love with. Although The Octoroon (Boucicault’s 1859 drama) is often read through a contemporary lens as an anti-slavery play, Boucicault acknowledged that the play was deliberately neutral on the controversial subject, written to spark debate on the topic without choosing a side.

In revisiting this play in the 21st century, Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon considers cultural and theatrical histories that may be largely forgotten but are still evident in the social and artistic framework of American society. The original Boucicault melodrama used slavery as an inherently dramatic situation to exploit for thrills. The play’s Black characters were common minstrel show tropes played by white actors in blackface. Jacobs-Jenkins’s version often lifts dialogue straight from the original, commenting on the way Blackness was depicted within the roots of the popular American theater and how these depictions have evolved into new stereotypes. An Octoroon is one of Jacobs-Jenkins’s early plays, for which he won a 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play. He would go on to win a MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2016, to be a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Gloria (2016) and Everybody (2018), and to make his long-awaited Broadway debut in 2023 with Appropriate.

This guide uses the version of An Octoroon published by Dramatists Play Service in 2015.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide include depictions of slavery and racialized violence, discussion of rape, and dramatized suicide. The play uses the n-word throughout, which is replicated and obscured in this guide only when directly quoting the source material.

Plot Summary

The play begins with a Prologue in an empty theater, in which BJJ—a fictionalized version of Jacobs-Jenkins—talks to the audience about being categorized as a Black playwright, describing a conversation with his imaginary therapist, who suggested that he adapt a play he admires to deal with his depression. BJJ explains that he chose The Octoroon, a 19th-century melodrama by Dion Boucicault. Having been unable to find white male actors willing to play the roles, BJJ dons whiteface to play both the romantic hero, George Peyton, and the villain, Jacob McClosky.

The Playwright enters—an unnamed white man representing Boucicault—and the two end up in a primal shouting match. The play takes place on Terrebonne, a plantation in Louisiana. Minnie and Dido, two enslaved women, gossip, and Pete, an older enslaved man, joins them. George Peyton has just arrived from Paris after his uncle, Judge Peyton, died and left Terrebonne to him. George is immediately taken with Zoe, a young woman who he is unaware is an “octoroon” as the child of Judge Peyton and an enslaved woman. A neighbor and heiress, Dora Sunnyside, is taken with George. George learns that due to his late uncle’s gambling problem, half of the estate is owned by the villainous McClosky, while the rest is tied up in debts and facing foreclosure and auction. They are expecting a letter about a long-overdue debt owed to their family. If paid promptly, the debt would be enough to save Terrebonne.

McClosky, however, is in love with Zoe and is determined to buy Terrebonne. Upon learning that the papers signed by the late judge to free Zoe are not legitimate, McClosky plots to buy her at auction, which means that he must make sure that George doesn’t get the money to save Terrebonne. Paul, a young enslaved boy who is beloved by everyone, and Wahnotee, his older Indigenous friend who loves him like a son, are sent to fetch the mail. McClosky tries to get there first but fails.

In Act II, McClosky catches up with Paul, who has stopped to watch George set up his camera to take photos as Dora poses, using a solution George concocted to make photos self-develop. After George, Dora, and Zoe head back to the house, having received news that the police have come to seize the property, Paul convinces Wahnotee to take his picture. McClosky kills Paul with Wahnotee’s tomahawk, finds the letter he needs, and leaves. Wahnotee wails with grief and smashes the camera.

Act III takes place in the house, where Minnie, Dido, and Pete are unknowingly setting up for an auction of enslaved people. George, who has learned that he can’t marry Zoe due to “anti-miscegenation” laws, decides that he must sacrifice himself and marry Dora, whose money would save them. George tries to confess love to Dora, but he admits that he loved Zoe first. Dora leaves in tears.

The auction begins, and Minnie and Dido position themselves to be bought by the captain of a fishing boat in hopes of a new adventure. When Zoe is on the platform, George and McClosky (both played by the same actor playing BJJ), engage in a bidding war that erupts into a knife fight, but McClosky outbids George.

In Act IV, BJJ and the Playwright speak to the audience, admitting that they didn’t have the resources to stage the act properly, so they instead describe what happens. Wahnotee is located, and he is about to be lynched for Paul’s murder when the police see the photo of McClosky standing over Paul and arrest him instead. George finds the letter. McClosky is to be locked in the hold of the fishing boat until his execution, but he escapes and makes the boat explode (the elaborate spectacle that BJJ and the Playwright were unable to replicate). Wahnotee catches him and drags him off to kill him.

In Act V, Zoe asks Dido for a potion for fever, planning to overdose and kill herself, as she overheard George telling Dora that he’d rather see Zoe dead than with McClosky. Zoe runs away with the potion, and Dido wonders if she ought to do something, but Minnie asserts that Dido should prioritize herself instead of getting involved with white people’s drama.