Branden Jacobs-Jenkins won a Tony Award in June for the Broadway production of “Appropriate,” his blistering play about a white Southern family grappling with some serious baggage.
This season, Jacobs-Jenkins will return to Broadway, now with “Purpose,” a stormy play about a Black Midwestern family wrestling with its own legacy.
“Purpose,” which had a well-received run earlier this year at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, is to begin previews Feb. 25 and to open in mid-March at the Helen Hayes Theater. The Broadway production is being directed by Phylicia Rashad, who also directed the play at Steppenwolf; Rashad, best known for “The Cosby Show,” has won two Tony Awards as an actor, for “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Skeleton Crew”; this will be her first time directing on Broadway.
Set in contemporary Chicago, “Purpose” is about the Jaspers, a civically engaged family of preachers and politicians. There are some parallels to Jesse Jackson’s family, but the story is fictional.
In the play, the family gathers at the home of its patriarch — a civil rights activist and preacher who had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — to welcome the eldest son, a politician, home from prison as his wife prepares to serve her own sentence. The gathering is complicated by the presence of the younger son, a divinity school dropout, who shows up with an unexpected friend.
The critic Chris Jones, writing in The Chicago Tribune, called it an “absolutely not-to-be-missed” play.
Jacobs-Jenkins, 39, has for a decade been touted as among the nation’s most important young playwrights. He is a two-time Pulitzer finalist (for “Gloria” and “Everybody”), but “Appropriate” was his first play on Broadway. It took so long for it to get there that the production, which starred Sarah Paulson, was deemed a revival and won the Tony Award in that category. Now, Jacobs-Jenkins is working on a musical adaptation of Prince’s “Purple Rain” that will have an initial production in Minneapolis next spring, while also preparing to return to Broadway with “Purpose.” (And before then, he has a new Off Broadway show this fall: “Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!” at Soho Rep.)
“I’m shocked, honored, surprised, confused, nervous,” Jacobs-Jenkins said in a phone interview, referring to having two Broadway plays in a row. “I definitely feel like there’s some kind of turnover: In this post-recovery period, lots of surprising things are happening.”
“I feel like suddenly my cohort is stepping into some new space that wasn’t available to us before,” he added.
And are “Appropriate” and “Purpose” related? “Not really,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “But it wouldn’t be ridiculous to read them against each other.”
Though the nonprofit Second Stage Theater owns the Helen Hayes Theater, this will be a commercial production. The lead producers include David Stone and Marc Platt, who are the lead producers of “Wicked”; the film producer Debra Martin Chase; the actress LaChanze; and Rashad V. Chambers, Aaron Glick and Steppenwolf.
Read More: The Tony Winner Behind ‘Appropriate’ Is Back. This Time, With ‘Purpose.’
