NEW YORK TIMES, TIME OUT, AND LONDON’S THE GUARDIAN TOP TEN 2014 THEATRE PRODUCTIONS
2014 OBIE BEST NEW AMERICAN PLAY
What you gonna do once you free? You just gonna walk up in somebody house and be like, “Hey. I’m a slave. Help me?”
An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins — whose plays include Neighbors and Appropriate — had its world premiere at Soho Rep last season. Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins takes on the Irish author, Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon. He “uses the plot of the Irish playwright’s 1859 antebellum melodrama….as the starting point for a bigger, wilder play” (The New Yorker).
Meta-melodrama with Forbidden Love! Humor! Feelings! Live Music! Wigs! Sensation Scenes! Slave Auctions! Exploding Steamboats! Photography! And More!
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Soho Rep.’s An Octoroon is recommended for ages 13 and up.
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This production is made possible, in part, with major support from Rosalind P. Walter.
Additional support: Board of Directors, Theatre for a New Audience and The Polonsky Foundation.
Pictured above: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, photo by Imogen Heath; and Dion Boucicault, photo courtesy of Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University.