AN OCTOROON Makes its Dublin Premiere

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins radical 2014 reboot of Irish playwright, Dion Boucicault's notorious 1859 play The Octoroon makes its Dublin premiere.

Both old and new, both disturbing and hilarious, the original storyline of this flawed Irish classic is remixed into a bigger, wilder, more subversive version.

In this contemporary and incendiary take on Boucicault's original play, the failing Louisiana plantation is still in financial ruins. The devious owner Jacob McClosky falls in love with Zoe, a young mixed-race woman. Out of this melodramatic 1859 plot, "Jacobs-Jenkins fashioned a kind of theatre-essay, whose parentheses are filled with dialogue about performing blackness." (Hilton Als, The New Yorker)

After critically acclaimed productions in New York and London, the Abbey Theatre presents the premiere of An Octoroon in Boucicault's hometown of Dublin. What might this blistering social commentary mean for Ireland in 2022?

The production, with an incredible team of creative Irish and UK talent, begins rehearsing in Dublin this week. Tickets are available from 12noon on Monday, March 7.

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