Boucicault's Octoroon was famously 'adapted' by the author in response to British audience's disc... more Boucicault's Octoroon was famously 'adapted' by the author in response to British audience's discomfort with Zoe's death in 1861. As it turns out, however, a play very similar to Boucicault's appeared in England nearly a year before its British debut. The Quadroon; or, the Sun Picture (1860) is not simply an act of plagiarism, or even simply an adaptation of Boucicault's play. Instead, it is a pastiche of the sources Boucicault drew on for his play, along with unmistakable elements of Boucicault's-a kind of metaadaptation. I focus on how The Quadroon incorporates The Octoroon's use of photography and his sources for the idea of a camera capturing a murderer in the act. What emerges is a play that offers a different representation of the figure of the photographer, the dynamics of racial justice, and the dynamics of racial visuality. By focusing on the use of photography in The Octoroon, The Quadroon, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon (2014), I explore more broadly how the spectacle of photographic technology on stage itself offers a self-reflexive commentary on melodramatic form and structure. Melodramas that stage photography both highlight the strange temporality of the tableau and ask us to think of photography as both a frozen image (a product) and kinetic act (a process and performance).
This article focuses on British plays featuring photography and photographers from 1854 to the en... more This article focuses on British plays featuring photography and photographers from 1854 to the end of the nineteenth century. What happens when a medium conceived out of the desire to freeze time in the form of a tangible object is not only performed on stage, but also rendered fundamentally performative? Rather than associating photography with a non-theatrical objectivity, Victorian plays make the case that theater is a superior technology of seeing and knowing. Moreover, by representing photography as a performative process rather than a material image, these plays ask us to rethink the relationship between ephemeral experience and the visual archive. In doing so, they explore and renegotiate the representational limits and possibilities of both photography and theater
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Boucicault's Octoroon was famously 'adapted' by the author in response to British audience's disc... more Boucicault's Octoroon was famously 'adapted' by the author in response to British audience's discomfort with Zoe's death in 1861. As it turns out, however, a play very similar to Boucicault's appeared in England nearly a year before its British debut. The Quadroon; or, the Sun Picture (1860) is not simply an act of plagiarism, or even simply an adaptation of Boucicault's play. Instead, it is a pastiche of the sources Boucicault drew on for his play, along with unmistakable elements of Boucicault's-a kind of metaadaptation. I focus on how The Quadroon incorporates The Octoroon's use of photography and his sources for the idea of a camera capturing a murderer in the act. What emerges is a play that offers a different representation of the figure of the photographer, the dynamics of racial justice, and the dynamics of racial visuality. By focusing on the use of photography in The Octoroon, The Quadroon, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon (2014), I explore more broadly how the spectacle of photographic technology on stage itself offers a self-reflexive commentary on melodramatic form and structure. Melodramas that stage photography both highlight the strange temporality of the tableau and ask us to think of photography as both a frozen image (a product) and kinetic act (a process and performance).
This article focuses on British plays featuring photography and photographers from 1854 to the en... more This article focuses on British plays featuring photography and photographers from 1854 to the end of the nineteenth century. What happens when a medium conceived out of the desire to freeze time in the form of a tangible object is not only performed on stage, but also rendered fundamentally performative? Rather than associating photography with a non-theatrical objectivity, Victorian plays make the case that theater is a superior technology of seeing and knowing. Moreover, by representing photography as a performative process rather than a material image, these plays ask us to rethink the relationship between ephemeral experience and the visual archive. In doing so, they explore and renegotiate the representational limits and possibilities of both photography and theater
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
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Books by Daniel A Novak
Papers by Daniel A Novak