Purpose

From one of America’s greatest playwrights, the winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play: a searing and shockingly funny story of a proud American family whose complex legacy is put on full display over the course of a single shattering evening

The Jaspers are American royalty — the Reverend Solomon “Sonny” Jasper a giant of the civil rights movement who would like nothing more in his sunset years than to enjoy the reputational fruits of a life of noble purpose in the struggle. But his two sons mar his peace of mind.  They are both disappointments — Nazareth for abandoning the ministry and keeping his personal life cloaked in mystery, and Junior, more keenly, for professional corruption that leads to the collapse of his political career and a criminal conviction. 

Now Junior has come home with his wife Morgan to celebrate his release from prison, and Nazareth has joined them for the occasion.  The stage is set for an evening laced with bitterness and recrimination even if everyone was on their best behavior. They are not. Adding fuel to the fire is the surprise arrival of Nazareth’s friend Aziza, who is forced to join the family dinner by its matriarch, Claudine, who can’t resist the chance to find out what her son is hiding. Aziza’s blind, innocent flailing breaks open all the fresh wounds, and many old and deep ones. Before the night is over, a family’s history has been laid bare, all the bees have left the hive, and the stings are unrelenting.BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS is a Brooklyn-based writer and a Professor in the Practice at Yale University. His plays include Purpose, Appropriate, The Comeuppance, Girls, Everybody, War, Gloria, An Octoroon and Neighbors. His work has received the Pulitzer Prize, as well as Tony, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Lortel, Drama League, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Jeff and Obie awards. His other honors include the Tennessee Williams Award and the MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships.