Workshop Performance: "A bluish tinge around the fingernails": Race, Representation, Casting, and Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon

A Penn Provost's Theme Year of Discovery Event

Don Boucicault's 1859 melodrama, The Octoroon.
As the first in a series of events centering on issues of race, theatrical representation, and casting, the Theatre Arts Program is presenting a semi-staged script-in-hand reading of Don Boucicault's 1859 melodrama, The Octoroon.
The plot of The Octoroon revolves around issues of slavery, miscegenation, property, and visibility.  As it was originally designed to be performed, all of the roles--black, white, mixed-race, and native American--were played by white actors in varying degrees of blackface and redface makeup.
The Theatre Arts reading  will be cast across racial, ethnic, and gender lines.  The public reading will take place at 6pm on Friday, February 5th in the Montgomery Theatre, Annenberg Center.

Following the workshop will be a theatre outing to the Wilma Theatre production of An Octoroon, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
A later event on the series will be a group excursion to the Wilma Theatre to see Brandon Jenkins-Jacobs's adaptation of Boucicault's play, An Octoroon, in March.