An Octoroon

In the Prologue, BJJ introduces himself as the play’s narrator and creator, thus immediately establishing the play’s metatheatrical approach: The name BJJ suggests that this character is synonymous with the author, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, but this connection is never made explicit. Instead, the use of initials emphasizes the distinction between the actual author and his fictional stand-in, who is played by an actor, not by the playwright himself. BJJ then immediately undermines his reliability as a narrator by reenacting his conversations with his therapist before adding that his therapist doesn’t exist, although he continues to quote their imaginary conversation. Through metatheatricality—by deliberately calling attention to the play as a constructed object—BJJ stands back and critiques The Octoroon as a formative, if largely forgotten, influence in American theater while presenting himself under the guise of an admirer. The Prologue’s subtitle, “The Art of Dramatic Composition,” refers to Boucicault’s 1878 essay by the same title, which outlines his approach to playwriting and stagecraft. The Prologue responds to Boucicault’s essay by outlining Jacobs-Jenkins’s own theories of playwriting and stagecraft, beginning with his explanation that the play is an assignment from an imaginary therapist and ending with him exchanging shouted curse words with the white Playwright who represents Boucicault.

Metatheatricality in the Prologue is also expressed by the three characters—BJJ, the Playwright, and the Assistant—Performing Constructions of Race. First, BJJ is stymied by the unwillingness of white male actors to take on roles in the play, claiming that the script is too melodramatic. But as BJJ notes, their real issue is their reluctance to play racist characters who are unrepentant and uncomplicated in their racism. All the white characters are openly racist, even if McClosky is the only villain. Even George, the play’s romantic hero, drops the n-word in his first line, describing the Black people he’s met outside of the American South, where they are most systematically oppressed and forced to perform docility, in extremely racist and unflattering terms. As BJJ points out, Black actors are still expected to take roles in which they are stereotyped. The tropes may have shifted since the stereotypes of antebellum minstrel shows, but they are still harmful.

Throughout the play, metatheatrical elements remind the audience that they are watching not only a play but, in a sense, a play-within-a-play. BJJ takes on the two central white male roles of George and McClosky by putting on whiteface makeup. This allows the play to upend expectations of realism to comic effect when the two characters interact or fight, but it also shows these two characters—who in Boucicault’s play are moral opposites—as two sides of the same coin. When reading the original play, which is essentially the only way to encounter it since it’s rarely if ever produced, it’s easy to forget that the Black characters weren’t played by Black actors. By putting on whiteface, BJJ reminds the audience of the blackface that is inextricably tied to the play. He also plays with the dialect of Black characters, as they code-switch between contemporary AAVE and the exaggerated dialect that is ubiquitous in slavery or Jim Crow-era representations of Black people by white authors.

Another way that the play’s metatheatricality enables its critique of racial representation is the silent, unexplained specter of Br’er Rabbit who wanders in and out of the play, starting in Act II, unnoticed by anyone onstage. In fact, it’s questionable whether the audience would even recognize the rabbit as Br’er Rabbit rather than, say, the Easter Bunny or Peter Cottontail. But Br’er Rabbit is a significant metaphor, whether his presence has meaning to the audience or not. He is a character from African folklore, a clever trickster who schemes his way out of trouble. But Americans who recognize the character of Br’er Rabbit almost certainly only know him from Disney’s 1946 film Song of the South, in which an Uncle Tom-like character named Uncle Remus, living on a plantation in Reconstruction-era Georgia, tells stories about Br’er Rabbit to a young white boy who is visiting his relatives—who were certainly the owners of Uncle Remus a few years before. Br’er Rabbit studies and stares at the audience, gazing at them as they gaze at the performance.

One of the primary ways that The Octoroon tacitly justifies slavery is by exercising the common trope of romanticizing enslaved life, presenting the enslaved people of Terrebonne as a happy community who love their enslavers like family. An Octoroon works to dismantle this trope by De-Idealizing Life on the Plantation through irony. Jacobs-Jenkins challenges the idealization of slavery in Boucicault’s play by staging private interactions between enslaved people and juxtaposing them with interactions that are held in front of white enslavers. In particular, Minnie and Dido set the tone at the beginning of Act I, when their private conversation is the audience’s first entry to the world of the play and the conditions at Terrebonne. Significantly, the two women gossip about the late Judge Peyton’s penchant for raping enslaved women. In the original play, although Zoe is the child of Peyton and an enslaved woman, there is no acknowledgement of the inherent violence of her conception. As Minnie and Dido discuss, when the enslaver wants sex, there is no choice in the matter. Instead, the play focuses on how beloved Zoe is, even by Mrs. Peyton. There’s no mention of Zoe’s birth mother or why she is no longer around, although Zoe was apparently raised by a “mammy.” These conversations between enslaved people, as well as their real dialect, hint at subjugated histories that have been ignored and forgotten by the historical record.

As biased as the historical record is in favor those who hold power, George presents the novel technology of the camera as inherently unbiased. Because the person being photographed must hold a pose for several minutes, it is difficult to present a false front. In the play, this gives the camera a heightened ability to reflect the truth. Dora, who tries very hard to appear elegant for George, can’t hold her smiling pose, and it “melt[s] into something so hideous it’s hard to look at” (28). The resulting photo is so awkward that George cuts the sitting short. Paul, who is watching the photo session, wants badly to be photographed, and George shouts at him for it. To George, Paul is not worth the materials needed to make a record of his existence. Later, the only remnant of Paul will be a crossed-out name on an auction register and the photo of McClosky standing over his dead body. Wahnotee is afraid of the camera, reflecting a widespread stereotype of Indigenous peoples, and he smashes it when Paul is killed, as if his fear of the camera is now proven and justified.

In his plays, Jacobs-Jenkins often creates messes onstage that present very real physical and material challenges to clean up. At the end of Act II, Paul is killed by a blow to the head, which results in a large puddle of blood around his body. Since Act III occurs inside the Peyton house, there is either an immediate need to mop up the blood or perhaps a deliberate choice leave it there. The blood that spreads from Paul’s head is evidence of his life and death, and it’s also, according to old blood quantum laws, what keeps him enslaved. Notably, Paul as a character is Black with dark skin, but he is played by the Assistant, who is Indian or Indigenous. Zoe is legally Black but passes as white—so much so that George falls in love with her without realizing that their love is forbidden. Skin color is determined by heredity, and race is defined by bloodlines, which are invisible. Without this rigid codification of racial identity, someone like Zoe might slip through the cracks. Instead, she is caught between two worlds.