In his boundary-bending play, An Octoroon, from 2014, the Pulitzer finalist and Obie-winning playwright wrote himself into a challenging work, Dion Boucicault’s 1859 play, The Octoroon, in which a white American man falls for an enslaved Black woman, the titular octoroon. This bit of meta commentary, slipped into the mouth of his protagonist, is classic Jacobs-Jenkins. Related Story The novel ‘Underground Airlines’ is too real Read now
The closed world of Butler’s Dana will have to expand past her inner contemplations and narration about her experiences time-traveling to a plantation on Maryland’s eastern shore in 1815 and past her introspections about her white husband Kevin and their relationship.
Having anticipated the scrutiny he would attract from devoted fans looking for a more literal adaptation of Butler’s book, Jacobs-Jenkins slips an important piece of information to his audience. In a post-coital get-to-know-you session, Dana explains what she’s doing in Los Angeles: She’s an aspiring television writer, and she gives Kevin (and the audience) a quick lesson by screening episodes of Dynasty and writing down in a notebook the actions of each character as they appear on screen. She’s barely unpacked, but has already bagged a paramour named Kevin Franklin (Micah Stock). In the show, it’s 2016, and the protagonist, Dana James (Mallori Johnson), has sold the Brooklyn brownstone left to her by her grandmother and moved to Los Angeles. Butler’s time travel slave narrative, showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins prepares his audience for the many liberties he’s taken with Butler’s beloved book. This essay discusses plot details of both the television adaptation and the novel Kindred.Įarly in the first season of the television adaptation of Octavia E.
0 kommentar(er)
