Mixed Blood Theatre's AN OCTOROON to Open Today

AN OCTOROON, which the New York Times proclaimed to be "this decade's most eloquent theatrical statement on race in America today," is a shrewdly awkward riff on The Octoroon, a 19th-century melodrama about illicit interracial love. A funny, disturbing, whirlwind of a play, AN OCTOROON riffs on the antebellum South as well as our present-day American selves, delves into the complexity of American identities and their unresolvable connection to our legacy of slavery and genocide, and perpetrates a full-blooded investigation of race and cultural politics. At the same time it is so theatrically mind-bending, funny, energetic, and demented, that it's impossible to look away.

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has deservedly been described by the New York Times as one of "this country's most original and illuminating writers about race." He received a 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play for writing both AN OCTOROON and APPROPRIATE, and has quickly become one of the most unpredictable, visionary, and relevant theatre-makers in America. As with Jacobs-Jenkins' other unorthodox, highly stylized plays on incendiary topics, AN OCTOROON reminds us that race is less a matter of what we can see and more a question of how we ask to be seen.

Nataki Garrett, director of Mixed Blood's 2015 world premiere of Katori Hall's Pussy Valley, as well as Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Neighbors (which opened Mixed Blood's 2011-12 season), leads a cast that includes Jamila Anderson, Megan Burns, Jane Froiland, Jon Hegge, Chaz Hodges, William Hodgson, Jasmine Hughes, Eric Mayson, and Ricardo Vazquez. The creative team includes Trevor Bowen (costumes), Michael Hoover (scenic), Abbee Warmboe (props), Lynn Musgrave (sound), Annie Enneking (fight choreography), and Karin Olson (lighting).

Director Nataki Garrett: "AN OCTOROON is a melo-dramatic romance complete with villains, slapstick, vaudeville, with both masked and exposed characters, set on the back-drop of Boucicault's 19th century play, and it is as much about privilege as it is about race. It is universal in its investigation of the desire to understand who you are and who you belong to. It is provocative in that it is a complete reflection of American racial history. It is brilliant because it turns the conversation about race in America upside down, both theatrically and actually, revealing deeper truths in the process, as only the best theatre does."

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