What you gonna do once you free? You just gonna walk up in somebody house and be like, “Hey. I’m a slave. Help me?”

This is an update of Dion Boucicault's 'The Octoroon,' which was set in the antebellum South. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins wrote his adaption in 2015 and it received strong reviews and a number of nominations. When I saw it at the Wilma Theater, many actors played multiple roles. Apr 19 – May 13 2018 Lamar Legend. Photo by John McLellan. April 19 – May 13. By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

Define octoroon. Octoroon synonyms, octoroon pronunciation, octoroon translation, English dictionary definition of octoroon. A person having white ancestors except for one black great-grandparent. Used especially as a classification under certain European colonial legal systems.

1859: A famous Irishman writes a play about America. It’s a huge hit!
2014: An American tries to write his own version. Does anyone still care?

A world-premiere, old-fashioned, meta-melodrama with Humor! Feelings! Live Music! Wigs! Sensation Scenes! Slave Auctions! Exploding Steamboats! Photography! And More!

Judge Peyton is dead, and his plantation Terrebonne is in financial ruins. Peyton’s handsome nephew George arrives as heir apparent, and quickly falls in love with Zoe, a beautiful “octoroon.” But, the evil overseer M’Closky has other plans — for both Terrebonne and Zoe.

Featuring Shyko Amos, Jocelyn Bioh, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Amber Gray, Ben Horner, Chris Myers, ZoëWinters, and Danny Wolohan.

Composer and Music Director: César Alvarez, Choreography by David Neumann, Set Design by Mimi Lien, Lighting Design by Matt Frey, Sound Design by Matt Tierney, Costume Design by Wade Laboissonniere, Wig and Makeup Design by Cookie Jordan, Projection Design by Jeff Sugg, Fight Choreography by J. David Brimmer, Props by Noah Mease, Cellist: Lester St. Louis, Illustration by Bee, Production Stage Manager: Amanda Spooner, Assistant Stage Manager: Rachel Gross, Producer: Elizabeth Moreau, Production Manager: Joshua Kohler, Casting: Jack Doulin, C.S.A.

Funding for this production is provided, in part, by the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation.

99-cent Sunday tickets for AN OCTOROON will be offered on April 27 and May 11. Tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis one-hour prior to each performance. 99-Cent Sundays for AN OCTOROON are sponsored by Jody Falco & Jeffrey Steinman and Theatermania.

In the slave societies of the Americas, a quadroon or quarteron was a person with one quarter African and three quarters European ancestry (or in Australia, one quarter aboriginal ancestry).

Similar classifications were octoroon for one-eighth black (Latin root octo-, means 'eight') and hexadecaroon for one-sixteenth black.

Governments of the time sometimes incorporated the terms in law, defining rights and restrictions. The use of such terminology is a characteristic of hypodescent, which is the practice within a society of assigning children of mixed unions to the ethnic group which the dominant group perceives as being subordinate.^[1] The racial designations refer specifically to the number of full-blooded African ancestors or equivalent, emphasizing the quantitative least, with quadroon signifying that a person has one-quarter black ancestry.

An Octoroon Review

Etymology[edit]

The word quadroon was borrowed from the French quarteron and the Spanish cuarterón, both of which have their root in the Latin quartus, meaning 'a quarter'.

Similarly the Spanish cognatecuarterón is used to describe cuarterón de mulato or morisco (someone whose racial origin is three-quarters white and one-quarter black) and cuarterón de mestizo or castizo, (someone whose racial origin is three-quarters white and one-quarter Indian), especially in Caribbean South America.^[2]

Racial classifications[edit]

Quadroon was used to designate a person of one-quarter African/Aboriginal ancestry, that is equivalent to one biracial parent (African/Aboriginal and Caucasian) and one white or European parent; in other words, the equivalent of one African/Aboriginal grandparent and three White or European grandparents.^[3] In Latin America, which had a variety of terms for racial groups, some terms for quadroons were morisco or chino, see casta.

The term mulatto was used to designate a person who was biracial, with one fully black parent and one fully white parent, or a person whose parents are both mulatto.^[3] In some cases, it was used as a general term, for instance on US census classifications, to refer to all persons of mixed race, without regard for proportion of ancestries.

The term octoroon referred to a person with one-eighth African/Aboriginal ancestry;^[4] that is, someone with family heritage equivalent to one biracial grandparent; in other words, one African great-grandparent and seven European great-grandparents. An example was Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. As with the use of quadroon, this word was applied to a limited extent in Australia for those of one-eighth Aboriginal ancestry, as the government implemented assimilation policies on the Stolen generation.

Terceron was a term synonymous with octoroon, derived from being three generations of descent from an African ancestor (great-grandparent).^[5] The term mustee was also used to refer to a person with one-eighth African ancestry.

The term sacatra was used to refer to one who was seven-eighths black or African and one-eighth white or European (i.e. an individual with one black and one griffe parent, or one white great-grandparent).^[6]

The term mustefino refers to a person with one-sixteenth African ancestry.^[3] The terms quintroon or hexadecaroon were also used.

In the French Antilles, the following terms were used^[7][8][9] during the 18th century:

In Latin America, the terms griffe or sambo were sometimes used for an individual of three-quarters black parentage, i.e. the child of a mulatto parent and a fully black parent.^[3]

Depiction in media[edit]

An Octoroon Ebook

In the pre-war period, mixed-race slaves with predominantly white features were depicted in photos and other media to show whites that some slaves were visually indistinguishable from themselves, thus preventing them from seeing slaves as an ethnic 'other' in order to further the abolition movement.

An Octoroon Tfana

See also[edit]

An Octoroon Play

• Discrimination based on skin color a.k.a. Colorism

References[edit]

An Octoroon Pdf

1. ^Kottak, Conrad Phillip. 'Chapter 11: Ethnicity and Race,' Mirror for Humanity a Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 238. Print.
2. ^'Definition'. dle.rae.es.
3. ^ ^abcdCarter G. Woodson and Charles H. Wesley, The Story of the Negro Retold, (Wildside Press, LLC, 2008), p. 44: 'The mulatto was the offspring of a white and a black person; the sambo of a mulatto and a black. From the mulatto and a white came the quadroon and from the quadroon and a white the mustee. The child of a mustee and a white person was called the mustefino.'
4. ^Princeton University WordNet Search: octoroon
5. ^Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). 'Octoroon' . Encyclopædia Britannica. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 993–994.
6. ^'Quadroons, Octoroons, Sacatra, and Griffe'.
7. ^Frédéric Regent, Esclavage, métissage et liberté, Grasset, 2004, p.14
8. ^Gérard Etienne, François Soeler, La femme noire dans le discours littéraire haïtien: éléments d'anthroposémiologie, Balzac-Le Griot, 1998, p.27
9. ^Regent Frédéric, « Structures familiales et stratégies matrimoniales des libres de couleur en Guadeloupe au XVIIIe siècle », Annales de démographie historique 2/2011 (n° 122), p. 69–98