Everybody
by Austin Community College
Dec. 11 (2021)
Everybody is a play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. It is a modern adaptation of the 15th-century morality play Everyman, one of the first recorded plays in the English language. The play premiered Off-Broadway at the Irene Diamond Stage at Signature Theatre Company on February 21, 2017 with previews beginning January 31, 2017 and a closing date of March 19, 2017. The play features the unique casting quirk of using a lottery system to define the roles of the play. Each actor must memorize the entire script and be prepared to play any role.
The story is kept largely the same as Everyman with a few exceptions. Fellowship, Kindred, Goods, Discretion, Five Wits, and Knowledge are renamed Friendship, Kinship, Stuff, Mind, Five Senses, and Understanding respectively. Additionally the scene where Everyman must whip himself for Confession is changed to a scene where they are instructed by the drill seargant-esque Love to strip naked and shout about existential dread. Also instead of Good Deeds following Everyman/Everybody to the grave, in this play that role is filled by Love. The story is also interspersed with pre-recorded voiceover scenes done fully in the dark, depicting four of Everybody's friends comforting them at their deathbed and through a misunderstanding eventually turns into a discussion on racism.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ plays include Everybody (Signature Theater), Neighbors (Public Theater), An Octoroon (Soho Rep, OBIE Award for Best New Play), Appropriate (Signature Theater, OBIE Award for Best New Play, Outer Critics Circle nominee), Gloria (Vineyard Theater, 2015) and War (Yale Rep, forthcoming). His plays have been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3, Soho Rep, the Public Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Center Theatre Group, Victory Gardens Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theater, The Matrix Theater, CompanyOne, Theater Bielefeld in Germany and the HighTide Festival in the UK. He is currently a Residency Five playwright at Signature Theatre and master-artist-in-residence in the Playwriting MFA program of Hunter College, City University of New York. Other honors include a 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, the Paula Vogel Award, a Fulbright Arts Grant, a Helen Merrill Award, the Dorothy Strelsin playwriting fellowship, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award. He is a Princeton alum from the Class of 2006, holds an M.F.A. in Performance Studies from NYU and is a graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard.
The ACC Drama Department is holding an open call for its spring 2022 production of Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a play where a nightly lottery determines who plays who and who dies!
You do not need to be an ACC student to audition.
Currently casting Black men and women 18-80 to play a variety of roles.
Saturday, December 11 from 12-2pm
ACC Highland Campus
6101 Highland Campus Dr, Austin, TX 78752
Building 2000, Room 2.2505.
Please prepare a 1 minute monologue, headshot, and resume.
Free Parking is available in the HLC South Garage between Wilhelmina Delco and Thomas Hatfield Way. Face Masks are required in all ACC buildings.
To schedule a time please email Yesenia Garcia Herrington at ygarcia@austincc.edu
