Stage West’s “An Octoroon” Explores Race – And What It Means To Be A Playwright
Branden Jacobs Jenkins’s award-winning Off Broadway play “An Octoroon” features blackface, Br’er Rabbit and a pair of wise-cracking enslaved women. It makes its North Texas debut at Stage West in Fort Worth. I caught the show last weekend, and stuck around for the talk-back, led by Stacie McCormick, assistant professor at TCU.
McCormick teaches literature and drama, and her forthcoming book, “A Body Without a Nation: Performing Slavery and Fugitivity in Contemporary Black Drama” looks at the rise in dramas on slavery in theater today. I invited her to join me for our weekly State of the Arts conversation.