{"id":48276,"date":"2016-07-15T01:23:21","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T01:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48276"},"modified":"2016-07-15T01:23:21","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T01:23:21","slug":"making-jokes-and-history-in-an-octoroon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48276","title":{"rendered":"Making Jokes and History in An Octoroon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aaihs.org\/making-jokes-and-history-in-an-octoroon\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Making Jokes and History in <\/strong>An Octoroon<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aaihs.org\" target=\"_blank\">African American Intellectual History Society<\/a> (AAIHS)<br \/>\n2016-06-25<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/history.umd.edu\/users\/cjbonner\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Christopher Bonner<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of History<br \/>\n<em>University of Maryland<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Last weekend I saw a performance of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.playscripts.com\/playwrights\/bios\/1521\" target=\"_blank\">Branden Jacobs-Jenkins<\/a>\u2018 play <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tfana.org\/season-2015\/soho-reps-octoroon\/overview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>An Octoroon<\/em><\/a>, which is a reimagining of <a href=\"http:\/\/stageagent.com\/shows\/play\/3555\/the-octoroon\" target=\"_blank\">Dion Boucicault\u2019s <em>The Octoroon<\/em><\/a>, a popular 1859 melodrama set on a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Louisiana\" target=\"_blank\">Louisiana<\/a> plantation. There is a kind of humor inherent in using pieces of <em>The Octoroon,\u00a0<\/em>with its excessive melodrama and absurd stereotypes, such as the\u00a0moments when Zoe, the titular octoroon, wallows in the tragedy of her \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=451\" target=\"_blank\">mulattoness<\/a>.\u201d But what I found most interesting about the play are the ways that <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Branden_Jacobs-Jenkins\" target=\"_blank\">Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins<\/a> finds and creates humor for his enslaved characters, especially Dido and Minnie, a mismatched pair of enslaved women who are truly the stars of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tfana.org\/season-2015\/soho-reps-octoroon\/overview\" target=\"_blank\"><em>An Octoroon<\/em><\/a>. By imagining these women\u2019s stories, Jacobs-Jenkins transforms a racist play with a minor critique of southern justice into an exploration of enduring problems of racism and injustice and the misremembering of American slavery&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aaihs.org\/making-jokes-and-history-in-an-octoroon\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Making Jokes and History in An Octoroon African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) 2016-06-25 Christopher Bonner, Assistant Professor of History University of Maryland Last weekend I saw a performance of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins\u2018 play An Octoroon, which is a reimagining of Dion Boucicault\u2019s The Octoroon, a popular 1859 melodrama set on a Louisiana plantation. There is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1196,8,6462,6940,20],"tags":[20798,20797,24492,24493,1627],"class_list":["post-48276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-aaihs","tag-african-american-intellectual-history-society","tag-brandon-jacobs-jenkins","tag-christopher-bonner","tag-dion-boucicault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48277,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48276\/revisions\/48277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}