“Genuine Negroes and Real Bloodhounds”: Cross-Dressing, Eugene O’Neill, the Wooster Group, and The Emperor Jones

Abstract

When Eugene O’Neill’s play The Emperor Jones was first performed in 1920, it was hailed as an important landmark for the representation of race on the American stage. For featuring a central black character and for actually casting a black actor to play the role, O’Neill and his work were seen to be radically progressive in an era of widespread blackface minstrel practice on the stage. O’Neill’s play – which tells the story of Brutus Jones, an African American Pullman porter who escapes from a chain gang and becomes the emperor of a Caribbean island – was hailed as a masterpiece for its expressionist investigation of the complexities of race and identity. O’Neill offered his white audiences a sympathetic and powerful African American protagonist, played by a black actor at a time when the representation of blackness on the stage was reserved for whites in blackface. O’Neill’s place in the history books as an important figure in the history of African American emancipation seemed a sure thing.