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: 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 (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

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 o…

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2302 words

Citation: Foster, Verna Ann. "An Octoroon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 September 2019 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38959, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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