Maechi Aharanwa, Pascale Armand & More to Star in AN OCTOROON at Theatre for a New Audience

Single tickets are now on sale for Theatre for A New Audience's production of Soho Rep.'s An Octoroon, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's widely acclaimed new play directed by Sarah Benson, Artistic Director, Soho Rep. An Octoroon plays February 14 through March 8 at Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn. Opening night is February 26.

The cast for Soho Rep.'s An Octoroon includes Maechi Aharanwa, Pascale Armand, Danielle Davenport, Amber Gray, Ian Lassiter, Austin Smith, Haynes Thigpen, and Mary Wiseman.

Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director of Theatre for a New Audience, observed, "Theatre for a New Audience presents Shakespeare alongside other major authors in a dialogue over centuries between past and present, classic and contemporary. Soho Rep. is a great theatre which also has a vital dialogue with tradition. It's exciting that Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon now joins Theatre for a New Audience's season of plays by Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne."

Ms. Benson said, "Directing An Octoroon has been one of the most fulfilling experiences I've had working in the theater. Branden's play asks us to question our own assumptions about everything we think we know and trust. I'm now delighted to get to reimagine our Soho Rep. production. For years, Jeffrey and I have talked about collaborating on projects, so I couldn't be happier that we're working together and able to share An Octoroon with thousands of new people in Theatre for a New Audience's stunning Brooklyn home."

On December 5, 1859, Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon, based on the novel The Quadroon by Thomas Mayne Reid, opened at The Winter Garden Theatre in New York City. One of the few contemporary plays about slavery in its time, it was quickly christened the great dramatic sensation of the season.

Seven companies toured the antebellum melodrama for years, making it second in popularity only to Uncle Tom's Cabin. In a 1929 revival of the play, The New York Times called The Octoroon a "complicated tale of love, intrigue, murder and other such vendible stuff of melodrama in the Louisiana of slavery days."

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins collides the sensational plot and heightened theatrical gestures of Boucicault's original with contemporary language and a dueling set of narrators. His An Octoroon is a piece that's firmly about us-here and now.

Originally produced by Soho Rep. in May 2014, An Octoroon was last season's most exciting new play, winning two OBIE Awards, including Best New American Play. The New York Times called it "exhilarating" and made it a Critic's Pick, and the Wall Street Journal called it "one of the biggest hits of the season." An Octoroon was also included in the Top Ten 2014 Best Theatre lists of The New York Times, Time Out New York, and The Guardian.

Boucicault's play is about forbidden love and slavery in the American South. Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins takes on The Octoroon ("octoroon" refers to someone who is one-eighth black) and "uses the plot of the Irish playwright's antebellum melodrama as the starting point for a bigger, wilder play" (The New Yorker).

In An Octoroon, 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.

The creative team returns, including Mimi Lien (sets), Wade Laboissonniere (costumes), Matt Frey (lights), Matt Tierney (sound), Jeff Sugg (projections), Cookie Jordan (wigs and makeup), César Alvarez (songs, music, & music director), David Brimmer (fight director), David Neumann (choreography), J. Noah Mease (props), and Amanda Spooner (stage management).

This production is made possible, in part, with support from Rosalind P. Walter. Additional support has been provided by members of Theatre for a New Audience's Board of Directors. Theatre for a New Audience's New Deal Ticket Program is supported by Macy's.

The original Soho Rep. production of An Octoroon was made possible with lead support from John Adrian Selzer.

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