Spirited, hilarious and filled with intrigue, a new play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (who won a Tony Award in 2024 for Appropriate) comes to Broadway direct from Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. The epic family drama arrives with Two-time Tony Award-winner Phylicia Rashad at the helm.
The Broadway cast features Two-time Tony Award nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix, Jon Michael Hill, Glenn Davis, Alana Arenas, and Kara Young.
What's it all about? For decades, the influential Jasper family has been a pillar of Black American Politics: civil rights leaders, pastors and congressmen. But like all families, there are cracks and secrets just under the surface.
When the youngest son Nazareth returns home with an uninvited friend in tow, the family is forced into a reckoning with itself, its faith and the legacies of Black political power and familial duty.
Before arriving on Broadway, Purpose was commissioned by and had its World Premiere at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2024. The production received three 2024 Equity Jeff Awards including Outstanding Production of a Play.
Jacobs-Jenkins is a fantastic storyteller, and it is possible to walk away from Purpose without considering any of the play’s further implications, simply having relished in his almost unparalleled gifts for dialogue and characterization. (It won’t be a surprise if he ends up with back-to-back Tony Awards.)
Thankfully, the extended gestation also means that Rashad's production comes to New York from Chicago with much of its superb Steppenwolf cast intact. (Only Young and Jackson are new additions.) Every actor gets an aria-like monologue, which throws off the play's rhythm, but at least each one is a bravura showpiece. Perhaps that's where the real promise of Purpose in the idea that somehow every member of a family (or of a movement) can be sustained by our attention, rather than our worship. So much precious energy is wasted on building people into icons and tearing them down. Can there be a form of recognition that avoids celebrity? Steppenwolf's own ensemble model shows the way.
2025 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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