Interview by Kilian Melloy
It’s not every play that wins both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize. That rare honor was bestowed to Purpose, the 2025 play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. The play, commissioned by Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, is a funny, shattering family epic that covers miles of narrative territory with a tight, compelling script. Its Broadway run last year boasted masterful performances that commanded Tony noms for no less than five of its six ensemble actors, with Kara Young claiming the award — her second Tony.
Now Purpose comes to Boston in a Josiah Davis-directed production by the Huntington Theatre Company that’s scheduled to run September 10 – October 11, 2026. The narrator of Purpose is Nazareth “Naz” Jasper (Omari K. Chancellor), a photographer who has not seen his family in some time. His return to the Jasper household is occasioned by the release of his older brother, Junior (Ugo Chukwu), from prison following a political scandal. Junior’s wife, Morgan (MarHadoo Effeh), blames the Jasper family for her misfortunes and doesn’t allow her husband to see their children upon his homecoming. The family patriarch, Soloman Jasper (Ezra Knight), is a towering civil rights legend who worked, marched, and faced persecution alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and other legends; Naz’s mother Claudine (Phyllis Yvonne Stickney) is not just the family’s bedrock; she’s also a lawyer who knows how to safeguard the family from threats both legal and reputational.
Naz hasn’t come home alone. With him is Aziza (Kalyne Ashley Coleman), with whom Naz has just met up in Niagara Falls — an appropriate locale for an agreement in which he donates genetic material for Aziza to conceive a child. Their relationship is close and loving, but it’s platonic for reasons that are only gradually unveiled. That the two are “only friends” bewilders Naz’s family, but her sudden proximity to an icon like Solomon Jasper leaves Aziza starstruck… and discovering that his brother is a felon at the heart of a national scandal has her questioning their arrangement.
Jacobs-Jenkins, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and the author of plays like An Octoroon, The Comeuppane, and Appropriate, is skilled at tackling themes of race in America, and here he blends those themes together with LGBTQIA+ issues, today’s social and political turmoil, and a powerful, intimate family drama in a way that feels organic. Nothing is shoehorned in, everything relates organically, and the play’s comedic gloss, dimensional characters, and charm deepen its visceral power.
Theater veteran Ezra Knight has trod the boards on Broadway for decades in everything from Othello to Mean Girls and Pretty Woman, not to mention a long list of credits off-Broadway, on television, and in film. Even on a Zoom call, Knight brings a quality of presence that feels right for Solomon, a larger-than-life figure whose stature casts a shadow full of all-too-human complexities. Knight shared his insights into his character, the play, and the themes to which Jenkins-Jacobs is writing in Purpose.
Theater Mirror: It’s a pleasure to talk with you today. Were you already a fan of Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins and Purpose when you booked the role of Solomon?
Ezra Knight: Yes, big fan. Being aware of Steppenwolf and all of the landmark productions that company has produced, and Brandon being attached to that, is just an interesting and profound dynamic, especially as a Black writer. I saw Appropriate on Broadway, which was another award-winning play by Branden. I didn’t see Purpose on Broadway last year because I was running concurrently with Othello at the time, but when this audition came out, I jumped at the opportunity. This is the first time I’m doing a play of his, and it’s everything that I love…
Theater Mirror: With Purpose, Jacobs-Jenkins combines family drama and social issues, but he also makes it into kind of a thriller.
Ezra Knight: It’s Jacobean, it’s Tennessee Williams-esque. He’s blending a lot of things: Memory, historical underpinnings, contextual social issues… gender, race, individual identity. It’s built as a comedy, which is striking to me because there’s such serious undertones that come to the fore. The balance is inherent in really good writing.
Theater Mirror: Solomon combines two fundamental pillars of this play, faith and the Civil Rights Movement. Like so many of our great leaders, we find that Solomon is an ordinary human being underneath the trappings and accomplishments. What is this impulse about wanting to see leaders like Solomon as somehow supernatural?
Ezra Knight: It is one of the most tragic flaws of human nature. As an actor, that’s the feast of what acting is about — to play the complexity, the contradictions, the idiosyncratic elements of the character. Solomon Jasper has all of those things. I feel a completely visceral connection to it, having been born in Atlanta, Georgia, with a history of pastors in my family. I used to think of myself as somehow unique, being the black sheep of the family, out here doing theater. But that elocution, that presentational theatricality — it’s somehow coded into my genetic makeup because of the history of reverends and pastors in my family, these great speakers. The southern roots connect me to playing Solomon, as well as being a son of the civil rights movement. I’m of a certain age; when the Voting Rights Act was passed in ’65, I was just four years old. What’s unfolded for my life — the wins, the graces, the victories of the civil rights movement — have been profoundly influential. I’m very connected to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached. My father works there. It’s a pillar of Atlanta, so those icons are very vibrant to me. I really connect with Solomon in that way, and I see the tragedy of having to live up to that. There’s a nobility and power in it, absolutely, but we do that to ourselves by denying some sort of humanity of our icons and leaders, and it’s one of the subplots of this play. It’s incredibly relevant to me, very profound, and I feel very connected to it.
Theater Mirror: Solomon seems very rigid and dogmatic, but he also has a willingness to question and re-examine things.
Ezra Knight: He gets there. I like that Brandon has written in a journey that he goes on where he begins to question some of those things. Without spoiling, there’s a wonderful journey that Solomon goes on. He’s a profound character, like Walter Lee Younger in Raisin in the Sun, like King Lear. [The character] has that kind of largess. There are going to be more than a few actors who get a chance to play Solomon and chew on this language and go on that journey. It’s wonderful, surprising, not obvious. Some nuances, as well as some large elements.
Theater Mirror: The play also represents the universality of relationships and family, especially the tendency of parents to mistake their projections for what they want their children’s future to be — transforming that into “this is my child’s destiny.”
Ezra Knight: That was definitely a hot button topic around the table. I have two daughters — one’s 35 and one’s 23. Neither has embraced Dad’s profession. They’ve gone different paths, in some ways to my own chagrin and my own petty egocentric frustrations. I wish them happiness and joy. They’re wonderful. I love them immensely. But I would not be fully honest to say I didn’t have a vision or an idea of what I wanted them to achieve. It brought up some control issues and some frustrations I had to process to be able to just open my arms and allow them to be and love them in the most unconditional way that I can. Everyone has their own push-pull with their parents, and tradition, and the legacy word — what that means to the child and to the parent. The parent wants to have an imprint on that child. [It’s] instinctive in a way. This play is profoundly universal. Anybody watching it will catch so many of these themes, no matter what path of life they’re coming from. That’s part of the brilliance of it to me.
Theater Mirror: There are so many strong female characters in this play — the cast includes Phyllis Yvonne Stickney as Claudine, Kalyne Ashley Coleman as Aziza, and MarHadoo Effeh as Morgan. How are you calibrating your work with these actors?
Ezra Knight: I’m a son with three sisters, a wife, two daughters, and now a granddaughter. I’m a son of a very strong mother, a strong-willed, wonderful, powerful, smart, intelligent woman. That’s my life. I’ve grown accustomed to strong women being in my orbit and having strong influences. So much of my life is shaped by that; to me, that’s just another day in the park. I respect Brandon’s wisdom in crafting very multi-dimensional women in this play, each with their own distinct identities. It’s amazing what you can do with a limited cast to have these three women be so different and so representative of different dynamics of their own humanity. That speaks to the balance that this playwright has rendered.
Theater Mirror: The play brings up Black excellence and the reluctance to show vulnerability or failure.
Ezra Knight: I’m as guilty as anyone when I post on Instagram or Facebook my successes. I don’t post as many of my failures and misses. I was taught at age 13 that freedom to fail was part of what it means to be a performer. Many of us shy away from that, but it is essential — to embrace your failures as not only learning lessons but also fuel to keep the exploration going. When it comes to our concept in the Black community about Black excellence, we’re all about that, and oftentimes unwilling to air our public dirty laundry and show the warts and foibles and failings of our icons. It’s a tendency, but someone like Brandon is taking that as a challenge to tell a story about that and show those flaws, inconsistencies, those warts. We feel we have more to lose if we tell the dirty truths about us. What’s that serving? That can be unhealthy to a culture’s existence if you’re constantly in denial of your truths and only wanting to show your shiny bits. That’s the stuff of great story and legend. Here we are, kind of telling that story and asking these questions.
Theater Mirror: The play also includes reference to the LGBTQIA+ community. One of the characters is asexual, and Aziza identifies as a lesbian. This is an issue for the very traditional Jasper family.
Ezra Knight: If you’re going to really look at the history of the movement, you can’t speak about the civil rights movement without bringing up Bayard Rustin. Someone like Solomon knows who Bayard Rustin is, and certainly [is] aware of his homosexuality. However, the deal apparently seems to have been: He’s not going to be at the forefront. Let’s just keep that quiet. By the time you get to someone like Aziza, who’s very open and very proud about [the LGBTQIA+] aspect of her identity and speaks it very clearly in this conservative environment, we’re going to watch what happens when that struggle and that conversation ensues. It shows where we’ve come societally. We have made strides to be able to tell this story, and to perform this play, and have it win a Pulitzer Prize. It’s very significant.
Theater Mirror: Solomon is definitely a character who’s got stature, which is not always easy to write or pull off.
Ezra Knight: That’s right, but that’s necessary. You got to find the right energy and the right performer to do it. I’m honored to give this a swing, and it feels like it’s going well so far. Good writing speaks. It’s food for the soul, food for the mind, and spirit.
“Purpose” is scheduled to run September 10 – October 11, 2026 at the Virginia Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood/BCA Stage, 527 Tremont Street in Boston. For tickets and more information go to https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/whats-on/purpose/
