Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Chicago audiences will be the first to experience “Purpose” by award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins at the Steppenwolf Theatre this month. Glenn Davis, co-artistic director of Steppenwolf, calls Jacob-Jenkins “one of the premier writers of his generation,” and is excited to finally present the playwright’s latest work on a Steppenwolf stage after postponing a pre-pandemic collaboration.

The family drama portrays the reunion of the Jaspers, a family of pastors, congressmen and activists with significant historical and political ties to the civil rights movement. Parents Sonny and Claudine must deal with the return of their oldest son, Junior, a disgraced public official returning after a stint in jail as well as separation from his wife, Morgan. The younger son and black sheep, Nazareth, comes back for the celebration of his brother’s return, but brings his friend, Aziza, an outsider crashing the party. Despite the initial pleasantries, the family is posed for a pendulum swing after an event pits one side against the other.

“I’m interested in exploring the political dynastic family, and how there is a very thin membrane between their private and public lives,” says Jacobs-Jenkins. “By living their lives in public, they expose themselves to certain moral codes that affect their purpose, or status, as a political family. I wanted to think about this American concept of family and how we approach it in drama and apply it to a context I’ve never seen before.”

The cast includes familiar faces from both stage and screen. The Jasper family is led by Harry Lennix (“The Blacklist”) as the patriarch Solomon, or ”Sonny,” and Tamara Tunie (“Law & Order: SVU”) as his wife, Claudine. Davis steps into the role as the outgoing eldest son, “Junior,” while his introvert brother, Nazareth, or”Naz,” is played by Jon Michael Hill (“Elementary”). Other performers include Alana Arenas (“David Makes Man”) as Junior’s wife Morgan, and Ayanna Bria Bakari (“Last Night and the Night Before”) as Naz’s outsider friend, Aziza Houston.

Phylicia Rashad/Photo: Luis Barrios

Leading the production is director Phylicia Rashad. Known for her role as Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” Rashad has a long list of directing credits as well and is a two-time Tony Award winner (“A Raisin in the Sun” and “Skeleton Crew”).

“We have an amazing director in [Rashad],” says Davis. “Her leadership has already been outstanding. Given the nature of the cast of characters and the family drama they go through, Phylicia knows that world. She knows the nature of what it is to be in a big, important family with high stakes and far-reaching repercussions for whatever they say or do.”

Sarah Paulson and Elle Fanning in “Appropriate” on Broadway/Photo: Joan Marcus

The narrative in “Purpose” parallels Jacobs-Jenkins’ current play on Broadway, “Appropriate.” Both shows feature estranged families, their reunions, how they deal with their troubled legacies, and include a wildcard uninvited guest. “Everything I write is in response to something else I’ve written,” says Jacobs-Jenkins. “I do think of them as parallels, but I can’t tell you if the finished product is going to feel like a fraternal twin to that original idea.”

Jacobs-Jenkins is fascinated with what he calls “the family drama scheme.” He references a philosophical formula used in Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” which posits that a family deficient in any one of a number of factors is doomed to failure. In “Purpose,” Jacobs-Jenkins once again adjusts the ingredients of this formula to reflect his American aesthetic.

One of the central themes of the play is how people misrepresent themselves to gain favor in society, and the consequences faced when that public mask is removed, revealing the painful secrets that lie underneath. For a public figure, this can be catastrophic; within a family, the effects can be heartbreaking.

Glenn Davis

But it’s not always clear who is in the right. “One of the hallmarks of a Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play is that when two people have an argument, at one moment you agree with one person, then a moment later you agree with the other one,” says Davis. “It’s such a beautiful battleground for different folks’ ideologies, ethics, and their own sense of moralities.”

Another them is that of generational divide, in this instance between how older and younger generations of a Black family view the ideology and history of Black radicalism. “It’s a story about class ascension,” says Jacobs-Jenkins, “which I don’t think is necessarily the universal story of Black life in the present tense.”

The play explores how the very idea of Black radicalism has changed in the last hundred years—what looked like radicalism in the middle of our last century might now look like something closer to conservatism. “I wanted to put those things next to each other,” says Jacobs-Jenkins. “I find that comparison is helpful to really get at what’s the difference and what’s the same.”

In preparation for writing the play, Jacobs-Jenkins drew from biographies of members of young people during the civil rights era—the SNCC generation—and from articles about Black political families, writing with an “anthropological eye” informed by thorough investigation. “There was a period where I did a lot of research then I had to stop. It’s one of those things that can become a rabbit hole. After a while I said to myself, ‘I have to start making these people up and letting them have their own lives, or else I’ll never finish this.'”

One of the goals of “Purpose” is to tear down the ostensibly static social construction of the American family, which Jacobs-Jenkins hopes will reveal things that people take for granted in their own family. “We live in a socially constructed world. I think part of the theater’s job is to out that phenomenon and point to the ways that make us rethink our values and gain agency and freedom in our lives to change our circumstances.”

“Purpose” runs March 14-April 21 at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted. For more information, visit Steppenwolf.org.