Family dramas are tough, as a playwright. Most stories are about characters going on a trip or a new character coming to town, because that's how you learn information about them. But with family, they all know each other already. There's years of history in every interaction.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

More Quotes by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
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More Quotes From Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Theater is an old thing. It's thousands of years old. TV isn't. Film isn't. We're doing a really old thing.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
olddoingfilmyears

My dream was always to have an experience where an audience member would turn to another audience member, a stranger, and be like, 'What did we just go through?' And, like, kind of begin to talk.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
talkalwaysexperiencedream

'A Streetcar Named Desire' is the play I've probably read the most times in my life, and I love the weirdness of all the scene outs but especially the end of the second scene, when Williams brings a tamale vendor on stage to simply say, 'Red hot!'

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
my-liferedlovelife

I spent summers with my mother's parents in Arkansas, where religion felt very present. My grandmother was Baptist, and my grandfather was Methodist. Double Southern whammy.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
parentsgrandfathermotherreligion

I have this thing called hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies. It's incredibly rare.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
rarethingliabilitypressure

I identify as queer. I just don't know what any of these labels mean.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
justknowlabelsmean

I was 23 when I wrote 'Neighbors,' and I definitely look back at it now and cringe a little bit. I was trying to understand what drama was.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
backunderstandlooktrying

I seem to belong to a boom moment of playwrights, and I'm always curious about how we all got here and what comes next.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
momentalwayscuriousnext

One of the most incredible and important things about the theater is that we're creating a safe space for all feelings, but especially, ugly feelings.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
uglyspaceimportantfeelings

The first theater subscription I ever bought was the August Wilson season at Signature. I remember thinking a whole season to one playwright was a great way for a master to do a victory lap.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
greatvictoryrememberthinking

I tried writing a novel, but plays were the thing that kept feeding me, asking me to come back, sit down and be with them.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
downbackmewriting

You get better at the thing you do by having to explain it to someone else. That, I think, totally makes my work stronger.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
betterthinkyouwork

I feel like I'm put in a position where I have to engage with what people bring to my work, which is an expectation for me to talk about race because it's not normal for a black writer to be writing in the theatre.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
meblackworkpeople

I don't hate people who colour-blind cast, but I hate people who colour-blind cast and pretend that they're not, who pretend that these bodies on stage don't actually carry specific meaning.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
pretendmeaninghatepeople

I wrestle in a big way with August Wilson's work in that I at times admire it and at times feel infuriated by it, which is weirdly more influential than loving someone entirely.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
feelsomeoneworkway

I'm not a really firm believer in theatre that is 'about anything.' I don't think theatre can be about anything other than the people who show up and the value that they hold.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
valuethinktheatrepeople

I actually don't read the press. All the writers I admire were significantly reclusive, and I'm still trying to figure out how they got to a place where they didn't have to talk to press.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
talkplaceadmiretrying

The stuff I write about doesn't, like, necessarily leave people feeling warm and fuzzy. I'm writing in a territory that's, like, contested and full of prickliness. And I find that people project their problems onto me or something.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
problemsfeelingmepeople

I love television, and my love for it has made me curious about writing it. It feels like television's moving toward something more novelistic, and that's what I started wanting to do. But I can't say that I'm dying to get notes from a studio. The artistic control that you get as a playwright is worth its weight in gold.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
meyougoldlove

My mother had a wall of degrees in our house, and she would walk me up to the wall and say, 'When you have this many degrees, you can tell me what to do.'

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
walkmeyoumother