Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an American playwright. He won the 2014
Obie Award for Best New American Play, for his plays Appropriate
and An Octoroon. His play Gloria was a finalist for the 2016
Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Other credits include: Everybody
(Signature Theatre), War (LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater), and
Neighbors (The Public Theater).
A Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre, his recent honors
include the MacArthur Fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize for
Drama, the Benjamin Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation Theatre
Award, the Steinberg Playwriting Award, and the Tennessee Williams
Award. He currently teaches in the Hunter College Playwriting MFA
Program.
'Coruscating comedy of unresolved history… this decade's most
eloquent theatrical statement on race in America today'
*New York Times*
'A giddy mix of the angry and the absurd… Jacobs-Jenkins is
considering important issues about race and representation and
making something playful and provocative from them… inspired,
invigorating'
*The Times*
'Bizarrely brilliant… a work that is both infinitely playful and
deeply serious and which dazzlingly questions the nature of
theatrical illusion'
*Guardian*
'Half of the fun – and there is a hell of a lot of fun – in
watching An Octoroon is witnessing people squirm with discomfort,
unsure if to laugh, when to laugh or if they are even allowed to
laugh… Jacobs-Jenkins is like one of those magicians who shows you
how the trick works and still leaves you agog with wonder'
*The Upcoming*
'A dazzlingly playful and sharply provocative look at ideas of
race, representation and the nature of theatre itself'
*Evening Standard*
'A dazzling deconstruction of racial representation… deeply
shocking, but darkly hilarious; satire at its most scornful… with a
savage and sophisticated sense of irony, Jacobs-Jenkins sinks his
teeth into the relationship between representations and
reality'
*WhatsOnStage*
'A major work of new American drama… borrowing [from original play
The Octoroon] is a stroke of inspiration in itself – melodrama
being a self-referential genre, the satiric contexts of then and
now contrast very nicely – but it's the richness of
Jacobs-Jenkins's own imagination that really sets this show
soaring... make no mistake about it, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a
playwright to watch'
*The Arts Desk*
'How do you deal with slavery as a black American playwright? Take
someone else's play, and play with it. Problematise it. Take the
piss out of it. Take the piss out of the idea, too, of a 'black
playwright' being constantly expected to confront race issues. But
don't forget to still punch the audience in the guts. That's what
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins does in An Octoroon… the play keeps you on
your toes. It's bold, fearless playwrighting: laughing in the face
of racism as well as allowing the horror of history to spell itself
out'
*Time Out*
'Totally, totally bonkers… Jacob-Jenkins' text has a madcap mania
and a rich vein of absurdist humour… An Octoroon is a play that
refuses to kowtow to the audience's preconceptions, that dances
with stereotypes and teases relentlessly with sly race
politics'
*The Stage*
'A fresh and thought-provoking examination of the uniquely American
experience of race and colour… forces the audience to confront
uncomfortable issues and yet remains funny and incredibly
engaging'
*Broadway World*
'So energetic, funny, and entertainingly demented, you can't look
away'
*New York Post*
'The play uses the plot of the Irish playwright Dion Boucicault's
1859 melodrama The Octoroon... as the starting point for a bigger,
wilder, more hilarious play about the tremendous, often tragic
difficulties of identity, and life, for us all'
*New Yorker*
'A wildly imaginative new work'
*Village Voice*
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |