George Peyton inherits a plantation, and falls in love with an octoroon-a person one-eighth African American, and thus, in 1859 Louisiana, legally a slave. In The Octoroon-the most controversial play of his career-Boucicault addresses the sensitive topic of race and slavery. In the twenty-first century the gripping nature of his plays is being discovered afresh when The Octoroon was produced as a BBC Radio play in 2012, director and playwright Mark Ravenhill described Boucicault’s dramas as “the precursors to Hollywood cinema.” He was largely forgotten during the twentieth century-though he continued to influence popular culture (the iconic image of a woman tied to railway tracks as a train rushes towards her, for example, originates in a Boucicault melodrama).
Regarded by Bernard Shaw as a master of the theatre, Dion Boucicault was arguably the most important figure in drama in North America and in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century.
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