An Octoroon

A plantation on the brink of foreclosure…a young gentleman falling for the part-black daughter of the estate’s owner…an evil swindler plotting to buy her for himself. Meanwhile, the slaves are trying to keep things drama-free because everybody else is acting crazy.

An Octoroon, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Obie-winning riff on a 19th-century melodrama that helped shape the debate about the abolition of slavery, is an incendiary adaptation. Part period satire, part meta-theatrical middle finger, it’s a provocative challenge to the racial pigeonholing of 1859 — and of today.