An Octoroon

by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

A Note From the Director…

“I’ve literally heard famous friends of mine who are athletes and have money, when we’re in a club or something, they’ll point to a light-skinned woman and say, ‘I want one of those.’ Now, in their mind, a light-skinned woman is a trophy. A lot of black men believe this, that you get more power, more prestige if a lighter-skinned woman is on your arm,” says Bill Duke, director of the 2011 documentary Dark Girls, which explores the damaging effects of colorism on young African-American women.

Colorism in the Black community is being explored more and more on stage, on screen and in all forms of media. It is an age old issue as products of enslaved African women (their children) who have been raped (and white men then breed to be lighter complexed) became sexual objects to be raped all over again. Today in America, and in parts of Africa and other parts of the world, there is a billion dollar industry of lightening/whitening products that women use to become more like their white counterparts that they see in the media.

Now An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a play within a play. A deconstruction of Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon based on the novel A Quadroon by Thomas Mayne Reid. BJJ's choice of using white-face on a Black actor, red-face and finally black-face is, to me, a direct criticism of Boucicault’s story and his racist attitudes; in this case, his own characters. Boucicault, like so many before and after him, felt that he could co-op a culture by spending a few weeks observing that culture from afar. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, like many BIPOC artists, asks the audience, theatre organizations, museums, film studios, gate keepers of all kinds to stop labeling artists that may not look like them.  

Identity is a big part of this play. We want you to examine that for yourself. I am happy that Benchmark asked me to direct this play so that you, the great folks that have chosen to spend some time with us, can ask yourself some hard questions. Here are a few: 

What is Diversity?

What is Inclusion? What is Intersectionality?  Can America be America?

Let's have a conversation. I’m open, are you?

donnie l. betts

Lowercase is intentional.