Everybody
by Trinity University
Feb. 19 - Feb. 27, 2027
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.
Everybody
by Branden Jacobs Jenkins
Trinity University
February 19 - 27, 2027
Trinity University, San Antonio
