American - Playwright | December 29, 1984 -
'An Octoroon' was written over about three years but premiered in 2014. I'm writing about America's relationship to its own history. Race or not, it's a story about suppression and oppression and many populations being devalued systematically.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
RelationshipHistoryWritingStory
At the end of the day, most people just want to be valued. They want to feel they have put their time to something that will seem to have been of value when they die.
TimeDayValuePeopleEndDie
All my plays have these titles that are oddly tricky. I like that something can look like one thing but mean two different things. Language is really unstable in that way.
LanguageLookWayMeanTwoThings
Somehow, whenever we think about race or blackness in relationship to art, we always come in kind of nervous. We always think someone's about to be punished or accused of something.
RelationshipArtThinkSomeoneKind
Something that happens to me is that I'll write a play specifically from my own experience, and then I'll inevitably be told that I'm being tunnel-visioned about it. People always ask, 'What about that other race? Or discrimination toward those people?'
ExperiencePeopleMePlayMy Own
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.
FamilyCharacterHistoryToughLearn
Things just kind of stick with me, and writing, for me, is always an investigation into my own feelings about them. I wonder why things stick to me, and I try to synthesize those into a dramatic experience in some ways.
ExperienceMeWritingFeelingsKind
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