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Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has turned out to be one of the highlights of the 2024â€�2025 Broadway season, picking up six Tony nominations (including Best Play) and winning a Pulitzer Prize. But it didn't set out to be a Broadway play. Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, under artistic director Glenn Davis, first commissioned the play for its acting company. 

"I'm just thrilled for Steppenwolf," Davis tells °ëµºÌåÓý. In addition to Best Play, Purpose also picked up five acting nominations, including one for Davis' performance. Though for Davis, he was thinking more about what the accolades meant for the theatre rather than himself personally. "We thought maybe it would transfer to another market. We couldn't, in my wildest dreams, have thought that it would end up being on Broadway with the reception that we've gotten...I'm very proud and humbled by it all."

Davis, a Steppenwolf company actor since 2017, currently runs the theatre alongside fellow Artistic Director Audrey Francis. The theatre has a storied history of bringing works to Broadway, and winning Tonys for it—it currently has five Tony Awards, including those for August: Osage County, the 2013 revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and the 1985 Regional Theatre Tony. With how many awards the play has already received going into Tony night, there is a good chance that Purpose may bring the Chicago theatre its sixth Tony (producers of Best Play also get a Tony statuette). 

Though to Davis, the show has already won in so many other ways. Initially a four-month limited run, Purpose has now been extended, by popular demand, until August 31—showing that there is appetite from Broadway audiences for well-told stories that don't star celebrities. The play follows the fictional Jasper family, a powerful and politically influential Black family living in Chicago. And they're in a moment of turmoil as one son (played by Davis) just came home from prison after being charged with embezzlement of campaign funds, another son who wants to distance himself from his family, a father who is in the middle of a political scandal, and a mother who is pressured to keep it all together. The appearance of a newcomer lights a fuse on a tense powder keg. 

In the interview below, Davis reflects on being Tony-nominated in a role that was written for him, how Purpose found financial and critical success despite not having any stars in its cast, and the current state of regional theatre.

When you said yes to producing the play last year, was Broadway in the future for it?
Glenn Davis: When we started rehearsals, we had about 40 pages. And so, to program a play with only 40 pages was a big, huge swing. But we trusted Branden, we trusted Miss Phylicia Rashad [our director]. If you're going to bank on any two artists those, those are the two. And so they delivered in spades. And by the time we had our first preview in Chicago, page still in hand, we got roaring applause, huge standing ovations. Everyone loved it. No one wanted to leave the theatre. And as you know, this is not a short play [it's three hours long]. And so people were saying, "I loved it. It went by so fast. I wanted it to keep going. I'm coming back with my husband. I'm coming back with my wife. I'm coming back with my brother, my sister." Those are things you hear, and at some point, you start to believe it and go, "Wait, maybe we do have something special. And so, the journey as an artistic director has been supremely fulfilling because I've watched it go from page to stage in Chicago and now in New York. And then as an actor, to be in the play is one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had artistically, because I'm working with the highest caliber of actors.

READ: LaTanya Richardson Jackson Was Done With Acting. Then She Read the Script for Purpose

You're the first artistic director of color at Steppenwolf, and you immediately brought a play to Broadway and you got a bunch of Tony nominations. So does it feel like vindication for anyone who doubted you?
Well, if they doubted me, they didn't tell me! But you tell them for me, please. I feel a sense of huge accomplishment, not just for myself, but for Steppenwolf. Next year, we're going to turn 50, and I think that myself [and company members and Purpose actors Alana Arenas and Jon Michael Hill], in particular, we stand on the shoulders of those company members who've come before us, who are still engaged with the company—the Jeff Perrys, Terry Kinneys, the Joan Allens, the Laurie Metcalfs, the Amy Mortons, the Tracy Lettses—all these folks who've come before us...If there is a market for bringing work to New York or other places and being celebrated in whatever way, we really just took the baton from them, and from former artistic director Martha Lavey, Randall Arney before her, Anna Shapiro before us. We're just in the long line of artists who've come through the company, who are trying to pass this on to the next generation and really just hold up the stature of the company. So I feel hugely accomplished in that way, as an artist and as an artistic director, producer. 

What are your hopes for the next 50 years of Steppenwolf? Or at the very least, for your tenure?
Wow! I think, yeah, I've taken a show to Broadway. I can walk away feeling thrilled about everything I've done. [Laughs] I'm just joking. The next 50 years, I mean, that's a big number. Steppenwolf is relatively new for me still, because I came into the company in 2017, and I've been artistic director since 2021. Audrey [Francis] and I were talking about this the other day, we've now been artistic directors longer than we were ensemble members in the company. And so, I'm still relatively new in the job, comparatively to some of the folks who who've done it for 10, 15, 20, 30 years.

So I think in the immediate aftermath of everything we've gone through, with the pandemic and the [Black Lives Matter] uprising in the last five years or so, I want to help the theatre industry holistically—to get out of the sort of tumultuous time that we were in financially, and get back to just making great theatre. And I think this season on Broadway, and in some of the regional theatres, as well as last season, is evidence that Broadway is back. We're doing work in Chicago that's doing well, Steppenwolf is doing well. So holistically, I just want to help uphold the theatre industry in whatever small way that I can, and encourage people who are, yes, watching Netflix and going to the movies—but theatre is here to stay. It's a singular experience that you can't get anywhere else, and I want to implore us to continue to pass theatre and our stories down to the to the next generation of students and artists and patrons, so that this medium, this platform, doesn't go away. 

Because during the pandemic, we weren't doing any theatre. It was a scary moment—actors weren't working, and audience members weren't being fed, in terms of live theatre. So now that we're back, I just want to continue to strengthen, and I want to continue to move forward and uplift great stories.

I remember a couple years ago there were some layoffs at Steppenwolf. So how are you all doing financially now? And what's your take on the state of regional theatre?
You're right to bring that up. That was a scary time, and every theatre across the country was affected. It seemed like at the time, we were doing those layoffs, so were many of our counterparts in New York and regionally. I feel like Steppenwolf has rebounded on that in recent years. And obviously, the success of Purpose, which, alongside another play from last season, Little Bear Ridge Road [starring Laurie Metcalf], were the two highest-grossing shows in Steppenwolf's history. And so I think that, you know, those are new plays that we took big swings on, and they did a lot of good for our particular theatre community. So I think that, yeah, we've rebounded from that. And I've seen a lot of our counterparts are rebounded from that, and I hope we never have to go back to that time. 

But in the event that we do, we each have a template for what we were able to do, in terms of digging ourselves out of a big hole that many of the theatres were in, and are still in, to be frank. But it's a work-in-progress, and we're not out of it yet, by any stretch. But we're moving closer and closer towards the place that we all want to be. So how do you get people to go to the theatre for new work and work that may not be from people, writers they are familiar with?

READ: Phylicia Rashad and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Collaborate to Find Purpose

Celebrities?
It comes back to great storytelling, [for emphasis] great storytelling. We have found that, yes, you can put a star in your play, or a name. Or you can get a talented writer—all those things are part and parcel to the success of any commercial venture. But in terms of just making great theatre, I think you have to have those elements that I spoke of earlier: great director, great artistic vision, great artists involved with the production, great storytelling. What is the story? You know, Shakespeare famously gave us, "the play's the thing." What is the play about? 

You know, there are no huge Hollywood names in Purpose, right? But this play has affected people on a profound level because of the nature of the storytelling. People come to me all the time and say, "I saw my mother, I saw my brother, I saw my father, I saw my sister, I saw myself. That's my family experience." And these are people that don't look like the characters that are on stage. Don't have the same background, don't come from the same demographic. But they say, "That was my Thanksgiving dinner. That's every time I go home and visit my family. And whether I'm from the Upper West Side here in New York, or I'm from the Catskills, or south side of Chicago—everyone relates to these people, because there's universality in the specific. And Branden has done such a magnificent job of carving out beautiful characters and experiences on stage and attuning them to the actors that are saying his words—that the profound experience that the audience members are getting is, many times, so unforgettable and so delicious that for this epic experience in the theatre is reminiscent of Appropriate or reminiscent of August: Osage County.

And it must feel great to be recognized for a play that Branden wrote for you—he wrote that character for you.
It's unlike any other experience that you have as an actor. You can pick up a play, you can pick up a Greek tragedy, you can pick up some Shakespeare, some Eugene O'Neill, some August Wilson. And those are all great writers that you can take nothing away from, but to have a playwright of Branden's skill-set and pedigree write a play that centers you or centers your character or centers your expertise as an artist, whatever that may be—is such a singular experience to have it written on you. It is supremely satisfying and an experience that I would want every actor to have at least once, to have something written for you that's so juicy. I'm forever grateful to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for writing this play, for these actors, and forever grateful to Miss Phylicia Rashad for directing the hell out of this play, because she is a force of nature.

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Photos: Purpose on Broadway

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