This chapter explores the history of representations of race in the Irish theatre, with a particular focus on blackface and minstrelsy – a discussion which uses at is focal point the pre-histories and afterlives of Dion Boucicault’s 1859 play The Octoroon. That melodrama is resituated within an Irish performance tradition (one that Boucicault himself would have encountered as a young man in Dublin) that stretches from the late nineteenth century, and which involved the performance on Irish stages of African-American characters – whose identity was often juxtaposed with that of stage Irish characters, and often performed by white Irish actors. In such a context, The Octoroon represents a form of continuity with what came before – and must therefore be seen in Irish as well as American contexts. Its impact on subsequent performance histories is also considered, up to and including the staging on the Abbey Theatre stage of An Octoroon – an adaptation of the original play – in 2022.

This chapter turns to the black New York actor Ira Aldridge, who began building his transatlantic fame in 1825 with London performances in the popular play The Death of Christophe, King of Hayti. These performances helped construct complicated but popular notions of Haitian sovereignty and black celebrity. London’s illegitimate theatre remade figures of black power in its own image, undercutting Haiti’s legitimacy while using popular conceptions of Haiti to launch the first African American tragedian to international fame.