← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Play 'Purpose'
00:19:56
The new play "Purpose" won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and is now nominated for six Tony Awards.
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- [00:00]
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- [01:31]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. This Sunday are the 78th annual Tony Awards, Broadway's biggest night. So on today's show we are sharing conversations with some of this year's Tony nominees. You'll hear Audra McDonald tell the story of how the late actor Gavin Creel convinced her to play Mama Rose and the new revival of Gypsy. Stars Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen talk about how they transformed into robots with emotions in the Tony nominated musical maybe Happy Ending. And we'll hear live performances of the Tony nominated score from Real Women have Curves composed by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez. But this hour of the show, it's all about plays. Coming up, we'll hear from Sarah Snook about the Picture of Dorian Gray and the team behind the new play. John Proctor is the villain. That's the plan. So let's get this started with a dramedy about family secrets. The new play Purpose from Brandon Jacob Jenkins is not only nominated for six Tony Awards, it was also recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the Drama Desk for Outstanding play. The story follows the family of a civil rights icon named Solomon Jasper. Jasper has marched beside Martin Luther King Jr. Kids learn about him in school, but his own children are a bit of a disappointment to him. His younger son, Naz, has dropped out of divinity school and moved far, far away, both physically and emotionally. The eldest son became a politician, but soon found himself in jail. Upon his release, the matriarch of the family has insisted they get together and break bread. And you can expect that's not all that gets broken. Purpose has just been extended. At the Hayes Theater through Aug. 31. It has earned six Tony nominations, including best play and best performance by an actor in a leading role for John Michael Hill. Brandon and John joined me earlier this year to discuss the show. I began the conversation by asking Brandon how he manages to nail the mix of comedy and. And drama in his plays.
- [03:58]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
I mean, I think it all comes down to character. You know, I think the magic of the theater is that we sit in the dark and we project ourselves into these people on stage. We call actors who are pretending to be other people, and we trust them to take us through all of the ups and downs of a given person's emotional journey through the story. And I think that's only possible if the characters feel like people we want to spend time with and attach ourselves to. And, of course, the actors don't hurt. You know, when you have someone like John Michael Hill, it's pretty good. I could be writing the phone book. I feel like I'd be a good show.
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Alison Stewart
Naz sort of narrates the story. He has a relationship with us, the audience. What kind of relationship did you want to form with the audience?
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John Michael Hill
Yeah, it's sort of a daunting responsibility to start the play, and so you want people to be drawn into the story. So it's finding a fine line of being sort of a charismatic guide through this thing, but also delivering this information, this context to what they're gonna experience on stage. And that's been a journey. It's. It's different every night. You can really see everything that's going on out there, so you really have to know it well enough to be able to deal with any sort of distraction, but also be able to look people in the eye and connect with them.
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Alison Stewart
Harry Lennox couldn't be with us in person, so I'll ask you about Solomon Jasper Brennan.
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Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Okay. Should I pretend to be Harry Lennox as I try to imitate that gorgeous voice of his?
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Alison Stewart
It's a good one. Can you describe what Solomon Jasper has meant for the civil rights movement?
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Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Gosh, yeah. I mean, I kind of conceived of Solomon as, you know, a member of that kind of SNCC generation. Silent generation. These are the people who really were the bridge from, I would say the cohort that was MLK and Abernathy and those folks. And these are people who kind of carried that mission into what we think of as policy. Right. Who were kind of among the biggest supporters or people holding up the kind of Voting Rights Act. And I wanted to think about a person who was literally. I mean, there's a line where he's called living history, and he hates that. But it's like, you know, in your lifetime, you have helped shape the world, and yet you're still in the world, and you're still having to witness that not all things are permanent. Yeah.
- [06:19]
Alison Stewart
It's funny, because while he is an icon, he does have some views. You know, he's not quite sure about climate change.
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Brandon Jacob Jenkins
That's right. Yes.
- [06:27]
Alison Stewart
He's not up to date, so to speak.
- [06:30]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Yeah. I mean, isn't this the experience of life that, like. I mean, I'm now in my 40s, and I have students who get younger as I get older, and you start to, like, be. You're marveling at this notion that they could have these different ideas that are both somehow cockamamie, but also possibly the truth, you know, and that's maybe the experience of moving through life is having to readjust to these new concepts and ideas. Yeah.
- [06:51]
Alison Stewart
So Naz doesn't seem that close to his dad. Doesn't know that Naz takes photography, doesn't know about his sexuality until his friend Aziza shows up, played by the great Cary Young. You should say, why does Naz. Why does he keep his card so close to the chest with his family?
- [07:12]
John Michael Hill
That's so interesting, because I'm not sure how much we should reveal about his sort of childhood and what he's dealing with internally, with his identity and his behaviors. But we can. It's safe to say he's simply a solitary person who, you know, he's dealing with a lot of expectations. Your father was a civil rights leader who expected you, sort of identified you as the one to follow in his footsteps in terms of divinity school and. And preaching. And to walk away from that, I think, is what sort of caused the rift. But walking away is even kind of prescriptive. I think that Nazareth has found another way into that sort of practice of spirituality. And that's one of those divides between the generations. I think, that needs to be bridged in this play, which I think Brandon does, an expert way of. He doesn't really give you answers on each side. There's a conversation there's real debate. There's real gray area. And I think art is at its best when it does that, because then the conversation continues after the play is over in the minds of the people that have come to see it.
- [08:30]
Alison Stewart
My guests are John Michael Hill and Brandon Jacob Jenkins. We're speaking about the new play Purpose, about the family of a civil rights leader and their secrets. It's running now at the Hayes Theater. Theater. Let's talk about the matriarch of the family, Claudine. Claudine, played by Latonya Richardson Jackson. She is a matriarch with a capital.
- [08:50]
Advertiser
M.
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Alison Stewart
What went into crafting her character?
- [08:55]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Oh, man. I mean, you know, American theater is littered with these incredible powerhouse mother characters. I mean, I think there's a bit of Amanda Wingfield in her from Glass Menagerie. There's Mama from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. You know, there's obviously Mama younger from. You know, there's a whole, like, shadow that you can build these characters inside of.
- [09:14]
Alison Stewart
Can't tell you. My friend who saw it said it's Tennessee Williams meets a Different World.
- [09:18]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Lol. Listen, I'll take it. Those are two of my favorite properties. Cultural properties. Yes. I did it. I nailed it, guys. I nailed it. Mom, did you hear that? But, yeah, no, I think for me, it was about trying to build a. So one of the things when you have an actor like latonya, she is like. She oozes charm, you know, it's not very hard to fall in love with her the minute she walks on stage. And when you have that kind of actor, you can build an interesting character on top of that. And I wanted to build the woman who you didn't quite understand how. Just how in control she was of the house she had been entrusted to build. And I think what's beautiful about the job that I think latonya does is you really do slowly begin to understand what the cost of that kind of matriarchal work is. I think early on, they say she has a law degree. She could have been a million other things, but she chose to be a matriarch. That was a calling for her. And I really wanted to kind of expose how that is not just. That's not that choice. Like any job is work, you know, and that work takes something from you as much as it gives you something.
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Alison Stewart
Naz and his father, they don't spend a lot of time together, John.
- [10:21]
John Michael Hill
No.
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Alison Stewart
How would you describe their relationship?
- [10:24]
John Michael Hill
Strained. Strained. I think there's a lot that's unsaid. You have this Adrian Patriarch who's sort of set in his ways. And then you have a person who's not openly sharing their inner life readily. So these, these two forces are sort of have to come to a meeting at some point in this play. And I think those scenes are some of my favorite to work on ever, when the father and son actually get to try to connect. But there's a lot in the way. And then, you know, as the play goes on, you finally get to see these two men bare their souls. And I think it's quietly explosive what's shared. I think that's a really hard thing to achieve. But I think Brandon's done it.
- [11:16]
Alison Stewart
We see Aziza kind of is a stand in for the audience. She's from the outside. She comes into this house and she's totally awed by what she sees about this family. When she realizes who you are, as she says, what does her reaction, Brandon, to Solomon and the Jasper family tell us about their status first?
- [11:38]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Yeah, I mean, in some ways, ironically enough, Aziza's biography is probably closest to mine. You know, I was raised by a single mother in a city. I went to an Afrocentric education where we had what we called famous blacks and posters everywhere on the walls, you know, and it's the way in which you come of consciousness with a sense of who matters in the world to you and who's. You meet. This sort of. It's a kind of celebrity almost. And she's totally steeped in that. She's walking into this space with an idea of who these people are, but not really knowing the people that they are. But I think it tells you a story about how a lot of political moments shore up celebrities as much as any movie or sports thing. That there is an element of political life that is about the public. And the stories that you begin to tell publicly about them become as much a part of a cultural fabric as anything.
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Alison Stewart
It was interesting, the set. Tell me a little bit about what went into the direction of the set. You like a stare?
- [12:39]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
First of all, I love a stare. Give me a level.
- [12:41]
Alison Stewart
I'll take that.
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Brandon Jacob Jenkins
This one has a spiral in it.
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Alison Stewart
And there are just pictures everywhere. Who does the audience see?
- [12:47]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Oh, my goodness. I mean, this is truly a coup of Todd and his team. I described a very simple home, I would say, but they really went ham. And there's a whole gallery of these amazing portraits that have the actor Harry Lennox kind of photoshopped as our character Solomon Jasper into these. What did you call them?
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John Michael Hill
Epic moments.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, like Marsh on Washington.
- [13:10]
John Michael Hill
Yes.
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Brandon Jacob Jenkins
He's like, holding Rosa Parks hand. It's actually the stuff that I want to keep the most. I'm like, when we close, can I please have all these? But it does give you a sense of the family business. Right? The family business was about public intellectualizing or moralizing. That's what the character says. And that there is this way in which they intersect with what we would think of as important people. You know, and truthfully, those important people are only a tenth of who they probably really are in their life.
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Alison Stewart
You know, this isn't giving too much away, because it happens pretty early on. We learn that Naz has agreed to be a sperm donor for Aziza. Is that something he's excited about?
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John Michael Hill
So I think perhaps unbeknownst to him, it's sort of the thing that's singularly important in his life. It's sort of a more buried purpose that's shining through. And it's only in the events of the weekend where he realizes just how important this is for him. But mostly, he is trying to keep these two worlds separate. He's done this thing with his friend, and he knows the consequences of his family finding out about that. So when she shows up at the house, there is a huge, huge time bomb waiting to go off.
- [14:29]
Alison Stewart
He's also, like, he's going to bring his family to her, literally, with his sperm. That's the other thing. He's got to come. Come to realize, like, I'm bringing this to this person.
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John Michael Hill
Yeah.
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Brandon Jacob Jenkins
But what's funny is that she doesn't know anything about his. You know, he's hid his family's identity so well. She has no idea what she signed up for. She thinks she's signing up for anonymity. You know, and that's part of. That's the hilarity that ensues, I guess. Yeah.
- [14:54]
Alison Stewart
My guests are Brandon Jacob Jenkins and John Michael Hill were talking about the play Purpose, which is now at the Hayes Theater. So we don't get to hear a lot from Morgan. She is the wife of your brother Junior, who's been let out of jail. He's. And Morgan's about to go into jail. We learn why. She's been real quiet throughout the whole play, but she's about to have this huge meltdown. It's coming. I wanted to ask you, as a playwright, how did you meter that out? How did you know when Morgan would explode?
- [15:33]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
I mean, you know, I knew that she was gonna have to say something. Cause she doesn't say anything for the first. You know, I think her first line in the play comes, like, 30 minutes in, and she says, thank you. And then she says nothing else for, like, 20 more minutes. And so obviously, you build a.
- [15:47]
Advertiser
She's welcome.
- [15:48]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
She says, you're welcome. And obviously, she's building a kind of tension as a character. But honestly, when I'm writing, I try to really stack the characters. It's up to me to make her talk. Right. That's what I feel in the moment when I'm writing it. So I had to make enough things happen over the course of that scene that she had no choice but to speak up, you know, because so much of what's happening is not about her. When she does speak up, it's about how it's not about her. You know what I mean? And, of course, Alana Raines, who is to me, you know, when I was asked to write this play, I was supposed to write it on three actors, including this incredible actor right next to me. But Alana was one of them, who I'd only seen in one show in New York called Head of Passes, where she was on stage for 10 minutes. And I was like, this woman is a magician. Yeah. And what she's able to just do with language and also with silence is, like, truly original. And honestly, to me, one of the highlights of the show, you know? And so she made it easy for me, you know? Cause she does so much by doing so little already. So when you give her something to do, it's like you're on Jupiter by the time she's done speaking. You know what I mean? It's really wild. Yeah.
- [16:46]
Alison Stewart
It's set around a dinner table. What does the dinner table offer you as a space?
- [16:54]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Good question. Well, you know, it's useful because people are there for a reason. They're hungry, so they're probably gonna try to stay, you know, on a base level. That helps. You know, I think it's also where everyone has to sit around each other and they can all see each other. Right. That's really what it's about. You can't hide at a dinner table unless you get up and leave. And that's an event in a story. Right. So for me, I guess a lot of the joy was kind of cooking everything until we get to that dinner table. And then you just sort of let the timers go off and see what happens.
- [17:23]
John Michael Hill
We were talking about this scene the other day. It was a very complicated one to orchestrate. There's so many moving pieces with the food and the lines. So it. It requires a heightened level of listening and focus. And it's sort of maybe our most enjoyable part of the night. Cause we're all looking at each other.
- [17:44]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
And I love it because to me, that's like a pure ensemble scene. It's like a concerto, basically. If you really are someone who's a freak, like I am about actors and technique, watching them work that scene. Because also, what happens if someone makes the slightest adjustment, the ripple effect through the. I mean, of course, I'm someone who gets to see the show all the time. That's right. But it can be a completely different dinner one night to the next based on what one of these geniuses decides to move your fork the wrong way. It's so cool. I love that stuff. I love, you know, how am I.
- [18:12]
John Michael Hill
Gonna get the grade baits?
- [18:13]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Yeah, how are you gonna get the grade baits? It's so fun. It's so fun.
- [18:17]
Alison Stewart
What is Naz's strategy for getting through that dinner?
- [18:21]
John Michael Hill
I think somebody astutely observed that, you know, in the monologues, Naz is free flowing with the information, charismatic. There's a lot of things to his personality. And then in the scene work, it's a bit different. He's very economical about what he says. So he's learned to sort of keep quiet as much as possible until he's really forced to share. And usually when he shares it is to give just enough information to retain his sort of solitary life. So that's his main strategy at the dinner table. But then his friend is the opposite of that. His friend really speaks up for herself and is firm in her beliefs and unapologetic. So watching that dynamic, I think, is one of the joys of that dinner scene.
- [19:24]
Alison Stewart
What's something that's had to change during previews in the play?
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Brandon Jacob Jenkins
I mean, so like, now, I think it's the secrets out that I just rewrite to death. So everything, to me, I mean, it's basically a whole new play as far as I'm concerned. From day one to day, you know, day 17, we open. Yeah. Like, the plot hasn't changed, but something for me, it's about, like, deepening and it's about detail. Like, I feel like I'm always like, painting a painting. Like I'm pushing in detail, pushing in, like, a finer grain, and that's really what changes. But I think that just means that. So hopefully the picture is more vivid. You know, the story is more vivid, the character's more vivid. That's what I hope at least is happening.
- [20:04]
Alison Stewart
It's funny because the person who Tennessee Williams person I saw this with had seen it really early on and described a scene where Morgan, she used to take a little piece of the cake and go up to the room and now she takes her whole hand, takes a piece of cake and goes to the room.
- [20:19]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
And he said it was like a real different vibe going on.
- [20:24]
Brandon Jacob Jenkins
Yeah. Because we, you know, I remember the day that came out where I was like, you know, she knows whose cake that is. That cake is her mother in law's cake. And so she knows what she's doing when she takes that cake. And when we had that conversation in class, you know, in class, it feels like class would be flushed out. Yeah. But you know, Alana was like, she took that cake.
- [20:39]
John Michael Hill
It communicates so much and it tells.
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Brandon Jacob Jenkins
You everything that's happening inside her. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
- [20:45]
Alison Stewart
That was my conversation with Tony nominees Brandon Jacobs Jenkins and John Michael Hill. Their new play Purpose is up for six Tony Awards, including best play. Up next. While Purpose features a talented ensemble of actors, the new production, the Picture of Dorian Gray, only has one woman playing every part. That actor is Sarah Snook. My conversation with Sarah is next.
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