| Appropriate | |
|---|---|
 Broadway Promotional Poster | |
| Written by | Branden Jacobs-Jenkins |
| Date premiered | 2013 |
| Place premiered | Actors Theatre of Louisville |
| Original language | English |
| Subject | Drama |
| Setting | The living room of a former plantation home in southeast Arkansas. Summer. |
Appropriate is a dramatic play written by American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
 | This section needs expansionwith: more plot details, please. You can help by adding to it. (June 2024) |
Appropriate follows the dysfunctional Lafayette family as they return to a decaying plantation mansion in Arkansas to battle over their recently deceased father's inheritance. Soon after the discovery of a relic buried deep in the recess of their family's past, decades of resentment burst through centuries of historical sin. [1]
Jenkins conceived the play through participation with the Vineyard Arts Project and the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab beginning in 2011. The play was first performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville in the Humana Festival of New American Plays. [2]
The play was next performed in Chicago at the Victory Gardens Theater and at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington D.C. in 2013. [3] [4]
Appropriate began previews Off-Broadway on February 25, 2014, in The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center, New York. It had its opening night on March 16, 2014, playing a limited run to April 6. [5] Johanna Day was given the Obie Award for Distinguished Performance by an Actress for her performance.
The play premiered on the West Coast at Center Theatre Group in 2015. [6]
Appropriate opened at the Donmar Warehouse in London August 22, 2019, following previews from August 16. It played a limited run to October 5. [7] [8]
On June 15, 2023, Second Stage Theater announced that it would produce Appropriate at the Hayes Theater on Broadway as part of its 2023–2024 season with Lila Neugebauer as the director. [9] [10] Previews began on November 29, 2023, with the official opening on December 18, 2023. The show extended for a second time, concluding its run at the Hayes on March 3, 2024. Appropriate transferred to the Belasco Theatre on March 25, 2024 and ran through June 30, 2024. The extended cast includes everyone except Elle Fanning, who was replaced by Ella Beatty, daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, making her Broadway debut. [11] [12]
| Character | Louisville [5] | Off-Broadway [5] | Los Angeles [5] | London [8] | Broadway [8] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2019 | 2023 | |
| Antoinette 'Toni' Lafayette | Jordan Baker | Johanna Day | Melora Hardin | Monica Dolan | Sarah Paulson |
| Franz Lafayette | Reese Madigan | Patch Darragh | Robert Beitzel | Edward Hogg | Michael Esper |
| River Rayner | Natalie Kuhn | Sonya Harum | Zarah Mahler | Tafline Steen | Elle Fanning |
| Rhys Thurston | David Rosenblatt | Mike Faist | Will Tranfo | Charles Furness | Graham Campbell |
| Rachael Kramer-Lafayette | Amy Lynn-Stewart | Maddie Corman | Missy Yager | Jaimi Barbakoff | Natalie Gold |
| Ainsley Kramer-Lafayette | Gabe Weible | Alex Dreier | Liam Askew Alexander Rodriguez | Orlando Roddy Oliver Savell | Everett Sobers Lincoln Cohen |
| Bo Lafayette | Larry Bull | Michael Laurence | David Bishins | Steven Mackintosh | Corey Stoll |
| Cassidy Kramer-Lafayette | Lilli Stein | Izzy Hanson-Johnston | Grace Kaufman | Isabella Pappas | Alyssa Emily Marvin |
Will Eno is an American playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. His play, Thom Pain was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2005. His play The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it received a Drama Desk Special Award and was named Best Play on Broadway by USA Today, and best American play of 2014 by The Guardian. His play The Open House was presented Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in 2014 and won the Obie Award for Playwriting as well as other awards, and was on both TIME Magazine and Time Out New York 's Top Ten Plays of 2014.
Take Me Out is a play by American playwright Richard Greenberg. After a staging at the Donmar Warehouse in London, it premiered Off-Broadway on September 5, 2002 at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. It made its Broadway debut on February 27, 2003 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, where it ran for 355 performances and won the 2003 Tony Award for Best Play. A Broadway revival opened at the Hayes Theater on April 4, 2022.
Parade is a musical with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. The musical is a dramatization of the 1913 trial and imprisonment, and 1915 lynching, of Jewish American Leo Frank in Georgia.
The Belasco Theatre is a Broadway theater at 111 West 44th Street, between Seventh Avenue and Sixth Avenue, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Originally known as the Stuyvesant Theatre, it was built in 1907 and designed by architect George Keister for impresario David Belasco. The Belasco Theatre has 1,016 seats across three levels and has been operated by The Shubert Organization since 1948. Both the facade and interior of the theater are New York City landmarks.
Itamar Moses is an American playwright, author, producer and television writer. He gained acclaim for writing the book for the Broadway musical The Band's Visit (2017) receiving the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. He wrote the play Completeness (2011) earning a nomination for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. He wrote books for the musicals Nobody Loves You (2012), and Fortress of Solitude (2014). His latest play The Ally (2024) about a college teacher conflicted about signing a petition debuted at The Public Theatre.
Merrily We Roll Along is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by George Furth. It is based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.
Dinner with Friends is a play written by Donald Margulies. It premiered at the 1998 Humana Festival of New American Plays and opened Off-Broadway in 1999. The play received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Rob Ashford is an American stage director and choreographer. He is a Tony Award, Olivier Award, Emmy Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award winner.
The Lucille Lortel Awards recognize excellence in New York Off-Broadway theatre. The Awards are named for Lucille Lortel, an actress and theater producer, and have been awarded since 1986. They are produced by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers by special arrangement with the Lucille Lortel Foundation, with additional support from the Theatre Development Fund.
Bruce Norris is an American character actor and playwright associated with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago. His play Clybourne Park won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
David Adjmi is an American playwright. He is the recipient of a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the inaugural Steinberg Playwright Award, a Bush Artists Fellowship, and the Kesselring Prize for Drama. In 2020, he released a memoir about the struggle to become an artist, titled Lot Six. His plays include Stunning (2008) and Stereophonic (2023), the latter winning the Tony Award for Best Play.
Corey Daniel Stoll is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Congressman Peter Russo on the Netflix political thriller series House of Cards (2013–2016), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination in 2013, and Dr. Ephraim Goodweather on the FX horror drama series The Strain (2014–2017). From 2020 to 2023, he portrayed Michael Prince, a business rival to protagonist Bobby Axelrod, in the Showtime series Billions. He was also a regular cast member on the NBC drama series Law & Order: LA (2010–2011).
Red is a two-handed play by American writer John Logan about artist Mark Rothko. It was first produced by the Donmar Warehouse, London, on December 8, 2009, in a production directed by Michael Grandage. It then transferred to Broadway in March 2010 with the same two leads, Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne, where it won many Tony Awards.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an American playwright. His plays Gloria and Everybody were finalists for the 2016 and 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His play Appropriate made his Broadway debut as a playwright in 2023 and earned him his first Tony Award. His additional plays include An Octoroon and The Comeuppance. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016.
Leigh Silverman is an American director for the stage, both off-Broadway and on Broadway. She was nominated for the 2014 and 2024 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the musicals Violet and Suffs, and the 2008 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for the play From Up Here.
Gloria is a dramatic comedy written by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins focusing on the lives of working Americans and dynamics in the workplace. The play made its debut Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre in May 2015, after being developed by the same theatre. It was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Lila Neugebauer is an American theatre director, writer and artistic director. After studying at Yale University she started directing numerous theatrical productions. She came to prominence directing the Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan's memory play The Waverly Gallery (2018) which was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. She has since directed the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins family drama Appropriate (2023), for which she received a Tony Award nomination, Itamar Moses political satire The Ally (2024), and the Anton Chekhov revival Uncle Vanya (2024).
Clyde's is a play by Lynn Nottage that opened on Broadway on November 23, 2021, and closed on January 16, 2022, at the Hayes Theater. The production was directed by Kate Whoriskey and starred Uzo Aduba, Ron Cephas Jones, Edmund Donovan, Reza Salazar, and Kara Young.
Mother Play – A Play in Five Evictions is a dramatic stage play written by American playwright Paula Vogel. The play debuted on Broadway at the Hayes Theater on April 25, 2024 as part of Second Stage Theater's 2023–2024 season starring Jessica Lange, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Jim Parsons.
Primary Trust is a dramatic stage play written by American playwright Eboni Booth. The production premiered Off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre in 2023 and starred William Jackson Harper who received the Obie Award. The play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2024.