Night Waves - The Octoroon
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2013
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Sweet is on stage at the Theatre Royal Stratford East for a post-performance discussion of The Octoroon, by Dion Boucicault, which can be heard on Sunday 5 May 2013 on Drama on 3. To discuss the enduring appeal and legacy of the play, Matthew Sweet is joined by playwright Mark Ravenhill, who adapted the play for Radio 3; the cultural commentator Kit Davis; the Victorian theatre expert Anne Varty; and two of the cast members, Amaka Okafor and Golden Globe nominee Toby Jones. As the play’s attitudes reflect the time in which it is set, this edition contains some language now regarded as racist.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.4 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.9 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | This is a download from the BBC. |
| 0:34.0 | For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three. |
| 0:40.9 | Good evening. Welcome to the Theatre Royal Stratford East, a contemporary playhouse with its roots in the Victorian past. |
| 0:48.4 | The audience here tonight have just thrilled to Mark Ravenhill's new version of a work first performed in this space |
| 0:54.9 | 128 years ago, the Octaroon by Dion Boussico. Boussico wrote his drama in 1859, and its |
| 1:03.2 | subject is love across the racial divide on a Louisiana plantation called Tairbon. Tonight has been |
| 1:10.3 | quite an event, not least because for the first |
| 1:12.4 | time on this stage, the black characters were played by black actors and not white actors in |
| 1:18.1 | blackface. The octaroon is a melodrama, a term about which we could do to shed a few of our prejudices. |
| 1:24.8 | And prejudice is one of its subjects. The octaroon of the title is the daughter |
| 1:29.3 | of the plantation owner, Judge Payton. The word means that she has one black great-grandparent. |
| 1:35.6 | Her mother was a slave, but she's been raised as part of the presiding family. The death of the judge |
| 1:41.2 | reveals the precarious nature of her position. Is she a free person or the property of the estate? The death of the judge reveals the precarious nature of her position. |
| 1:47.3 | Is she a free person or the property of the estate? |
| 1:51.5 | The heir apparent, the handsome George Payton, considers her the former, |
| 1:53.4 | not least because they're in love. |
| 1:58.4 | But the plantation's vicious overseer, Jacob McCloskey, has other ideas, |
| 2:02.6 | which he's prepared to enforce with murder. Tonight, we're going to examine the Octoroon and the colourful life of its author, discover what it tells us about what |
| 2:07.8 | the Victorians felt about blackness and about the persistence of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic, |
... |
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