Branden
Jacobs-Jenkins
Theater Artist and WriterBrooklyn, NY
2020 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Jacobs-Jenkins’ plays include Girls (Yale Rep), Everybody (Signature Theatre; Pulitzer Prize finalist), War (world premiere, Yale Rep; LCT3), Gloria (Vineyard Theatre; Pulitzer Prize finalist), Appropriate (Signature Theatre; OBIE Award), An Octoroon (Soho Rep.; OBIE Award), and Neighbors (The Public Theater).
A Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre, his most recent honors include the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright from the London Evening Standard, a London Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwriting, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Steinberg Playwriting Award, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award. Having taught at NYU, Juilliard, and Hunter College, where he was director of the MFA Playwriting program, Jacobs-Jenkins now serves on the faculty at University of Texas-Austin.
Portrait photo courtesy of John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Gabby Bean and others in Girls. Yale Repertory Theatre, 2019. Photo by Joan Marcus.
Johanna Day, Michael Laurence, Patch Darragh, and Maddie Corman in Appropriate, 2013. Signature Theatre. Photo courtesy of Signature Theatre.
Charlayne Woodard in War, 2014. Lincoln Center Theatre. Photo by Sara Krulwich/New York Times.
David Patrick Kelly, Michael Braun, Lakeisha May, Brooke Bloom, and Mary Louise Burke in Everybody, 2017. Signature Theatre. Photo courtesy of Signature Theatre.
Jennifer Kim, Catherine Combs, and Kyle Beltran in Gloria, 2015. Goodman Theatre. Photo courtesy of Goodman Theatre.