The Octoroon/An Octoroon: Special Issue
The Octoroon/An Octoroon: Special Issue
The AHRC funded research network Boucicault 2020 examined the legacies and residues of Dion Boucicault’s 19th century theatre in contemporary practice. We are now inviting contributions to a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review: Interventions on the afterlives of Boucicault’s 1859 sensation melodrama The Octoroon and its relationship with Branden Jacobs Jenkins’ radical reworking, An Octoroon. We are keen to shape this issue as a potentially useful critical resource for teaching, and it will appear in parallel with an online exhibition on the work of Boucicault, hosted by the Museum of Literature Ireland (MOLI).
We are looking for short critical responses of 500 to c.1000 words on the following topics:
- The plantation
- Spectacle
- Plagiarism
- The photograph
- Music
- The American play
- Make-up
- Tableaux
- Audience
- Mise en scene
- Race
- The law
- Laughter
- Sentimentality
- Endings
- Violence
At this point all we need is a 100-word outline, with submissions to follow by June 15th, for publication in early 2025. Please send outlines to:
Aoife Monks and Nicholas Daly