| Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has been celebrated for his masterly appropriation of theatrical conventions—and for his eagerness to explode them.  Photograph by Maciek Jasik for The New Yorker When is a play finished? For the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who is making his Broadway début with “Appropriate,” a family drama set at a former Arkansas plantation, the answer is probably never. “Appropriate” is more than a decade old, and it’s already been performed in six previous productions, but as Julian Lucas notes in a Profile of the artist from this week’s issue, Jacobs-Jenkins was making changes well into rehearsals, throwing new lines at his star-studded cast. “It’s really keeping me on my toes, but I think he’s learning about us,” the actress Elle Fanning explains. For Jacobs-Jenkins, who Lucas notes “has made an art of dramatizing the Chinese finger trap that is ‘writing about race,’ ” the arrival on Broadway might be categorized as overdue: he’s already been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer. “I see all these sweet little notes from people that are, like, ‘Finally, Branden’s on Broadway!’ ” he says, but adds that he feels mostly a pressure to be excited rather than any real thrill. Instead, he explains, he is curious to see how the play, a living thing, responds in a more expansive production. Meanwhile, he’s at work on several next things, including his first musical, an adaptation of Prince’s “Purple Rain.” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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