在歷史與當下之間：兩個《混血兒》的再現與詮釋

Between History and the Present: Representation and Interpretation in Two Octoroons

本文以十九世紀美國通俗劇《混血兒》（The Octoroon, 1859）與其二十一世紀的改編《一個混血兒》（An Octoroon, 2014）為對照文本，探討兩個時代的戲劇如何再現美國的種族經驗。原劇由布希柯（Dion Boucicault）創作於奴隸制度爭議激烈之際，描寫南方莊園生活與混血身分的悲劇；而當代非裔劇作家雅各-詹金斯（Branden Jacobs-Jenkins）則以後設、跨種族角色扮演等手法介入敘事，彰顯原劇中被邊緣化的女性黑奴視角。本文首先探討十九世紀通俗劇以及布希柯的劇作《混血兒》，其次分析詹金斯如何顛覆通俗劇的敘事傳統，回應十九世紀舞台上的種族想像與權力關係，最後援引歷史主義與當下主義的詮釋觀點，思考當代戲劇如何重訪歷史文本，使舞台成為辯證與詮釋介入的空間。

This paper examines The Octoroon (1859), a nineteenth-century American melodrama, alongside its twenty-first-century adaptation An Octoroon (2014), to explore how theatrical works across two eras represent racial experience. Written by Dion Boucicault amid intense national debates over slavery, the original play centers on the tragedy of a mixed-race woman set against the backdrop of a Southern plantation. In contrast, contemporary African American playwright Branden Jacobs- Jenkins reimagines the narrative through metatheatrical strategies and cross-racial role-playing, foregrounding the voices of enslaved Black women marginalized in Boucicault’s version. This paper analyzes how Jacobs-Jenkins subverts the conventions of melodrama to interrogate the racial imagination and power structures embedded in the nineteenth-century stage. Drawing on historicism and presentism as interpretive frameworks, the study further considers how contemporary theatre revisits historical texts, transforming the stage into a space of dialectical encounter.