Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an admirer of the American family drama—his family play Appropriate was a hit on Broadway last season and earned him a Tony Award. Phylicia Rashad has starred in many family dramas, including in August: Osage County on Broadway. So, it’s natural that they are now collaborating on a new play for Broadway called Purpose, playing the Hayes Theater with opening night set for March 17.
Speaking with the two of them in February while the play was in rehearsal, it was clear that Jacobs-Jenkins was still awestruck to be in a room with Rashad: “I call her Miss Phylicia. We all do. It doesn’t seem right to just call her any old thing,” he says to a bemused Rashad.
“He’s so silly,” remarks the two-time Tony winner with a smile.
Rashad and Jacobs-Jenkins first collaborated on Purpose last spring at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, where the writer had been commissioned to create a play for the theatre’s acting company. Jacobs-Jenkins is a fan of genre bending. Appropriate was inspired by the American family drama. His Obie Award-winning Octoroon was a take on the melodrama. His Everybody was inspired by the morality play.
When Steppenwolf asked him to write a play, the genre that inspired him was what he calls “the Steppenwolf play,” popularized by writers like Sam Shepard and Tracy Letts, which showcases the strength of the Steppenwolf acting company. “This muscular realism is their kind of house style,” explains Jacobs-Jenkins. “These actors are trained to make humans appear before your eyes out of a pile of words.”
For his commission, Jacobs-Jenkins could write for any member of the Steppenwolf ensemble: He chose Glenn Davis, Alana Arenas, and Jon Michael Hill to focus on. Those actors are reprising their roles on Broadway, along with LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix, and Tony winner Kara Young. The play follows a wealthy Black family in Chicago, where the patriarch had been one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and his children have struggled to assert themselves under his looming shadow.
"Classically, family dramas have always concerned themselves with the upper classes; then Arthur Miller came along and kind of upended that idea most publicly," explains Jacobs-Jenkins. "But I was always curious about: What is Black political power and status? What does a Black dynasty look like?" Jacobs-Jenkins cites Lydia R. Diamond's play Stick Fly, about a wealthy Black family in Martha's Vineyard, as inspiration. Though the show is set in Chicago, a formidable seat of Black political power, Jacobs-Jenkins declined to say if the play was based on any real person.
When it came time to find a director, Jacobs-Jenkins looked for someone who also embodied power, though he was sure she wouldn't accept: “Miss Phylicia’s name was like one of the first ones that came out of Glenn Davis' mouth," recalls Jacobs-Jenkins. "And I was like, ‘What are you talking about? She's running Howard University. This play is not finished. She's not going to come to Chicago and direct this nothing play.'”
But Jacobs-Jenkins took a chance and sent Rashad some pages from Purpose. She was immediately intrigued—the two first talked about the play over a Zoom call, which Rashad took from her dean's office at Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University. "He writes about things that are commonplace, but he doesn't write about them in a commonplace way," says Rashad. "And I like that. I like that very, very much. And I want to see where that goes."
As a director, Rashad’s mainly worked on revivals. Purpose would be the rare opportunity for her to work with a playwright to help create a play from the ground up. “I was in Gem of the Ocean [on Broadway in 2004]. And August Wilson was in the room. And I just thought, ‘Oh, wow, manna from heaven in the room,’” she recalls with reverence. She has the same feeling working with Jacobs-Jenkins now, saying, “This time, I get to work with a genius in the room from what we call ‘the most primary stages of the work.’…You wonder if that could ever happen in your life, and it has.”
When writing Purpose, because Jacob-Jenkins knew he would be writing for an intergenerational company of actors, he decided to create an intergenerational conflict—where the older generation is questioning all the sacrifices they made in the name of racial progress and what it cost them personally, and the younger generation is wondering how to move forward and make their own mark.
“We take for granted that people were doing the right thing and it was all going to work out. That’s not necessarily true. Even Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter came out recently, and was like, ‘People forget that when my father was assassinated, he was one of the most hated men in America,’” explains Jacobs-Jenkins. “When you square that against our current experience of political life and political realities, how do we get from A to B? And what is it that we need in order to activate ourselves, to save our own lives?”
Purpose deals with a family in a time of turmoil, but the rehearsal process for this new play is anything but stressful. Although the two of them have different temperaments— Jacobs-Jenkins is an energetic jokester while Rashad speaks in slow, measured sentences—there’s a visible ease in the way that they interact with one another.
“Miss Phylicia really runs an incredibly warm, inspiring room,” says Jacobs-Jenkins. “I think the most common phrase you’ll hear Miss Phylicia say is, ‘What would happen if….’ Everything is a kind of hypothetical. But it’s interesting because it does allow the artists to make a choice, make their own choice.”
When asked how working with Jacobs-Jenkins compares to working with the legendary Wilson, Rashad can only wax poetic about her new collaborator. “Some people have an idea in their mind, and we’re going to do it this way, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. And that’s one way of writing a play. But it’s something to work with geniuses,” she muses. “The way genius manifests itself. It’s not always the same thing, but there is one thing that is common, and that’s a real regard for humanity, a real respect for each character.”
Chuckles Jacobs-Jenkins: “I’m blushing!”
