A Southern mansion crumbling under the weight of family secrets is about to make its St. Louis debut. The Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis will stage the St. Louis premiere of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony Award-winning play ‘Appropriate’ from Thursday through September 27 at COCA’s Catherine B. Berges Theatre in University City, marking a departure for a festival that has spent a decade centered on Williams himself.
The production, running September 17 through September 27 according to St. Louis Magazine, depicts three Lafayette siblings gathering at their late father’s decaying Arkansas plantation mansion to settle his estate. What they uncover while sorting through the property, per the same account, is far more than they bargained for. At the center of that discovery is a photo album filled with historic lynching images, a find that forces the siblings to confront buried family secrets and racial history, as detailed by YaleNews.
A Decorated Playwright Takes Center Stage
‘Appropriate’ arrives in St. Louis carrying serious Broadway pedigree. The play won three Tony Awards at the 77th Annual Tony Awards in June 2024, including Best Revival of a Play and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Sarah Paulson, according to the Tony Awards, capping a run at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre. Hoodline previously noted Paulson’s Tony-winning turn in the show during coverage of other Broadway happenings this fall.
Jacobs-Jenkins began writing ‘Appropriate’ in 2010 during a Fulbright fellowship in Germany, and the play premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays before winning the 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play, according to the Fulbright Program. The playwright revised the script repeatedly across regional productions in the years before it reached Broadway. He has since become one of the most decorated American playwrights of his generation, adding the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2025 Tony Award for Best Play for ‘Purpose,’ making him the first Black playwright to win the Best Play Tony since August Wilson in 1987, per Broadway News.
Why Houk Chose Jacobs-Jenkins for the 11th Season
Jacobs-Jenkins’ inclusion reflects the ambition behind the festival’s 11th season, which Houk has designated “The Tennessee Effect,” a theme built to examine Williams’ impact on other voices rather than simply restage his own catalog. The festival’s new decade is also presented as a look toward its future, the magazine reports.
The Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis aims to enrich and inspire audiences while celebrating Williams and his influence, per the same St. Louis Magazine account of the season. The nonprofit has grown into a fixture of the city’s arts calendar.
Director Sees a Southern Gothic Tale With New Urgency
The production foregrounds ‘Appropriate’s’ delicate, tormented, flawed, and fragile characters. Its themes invite audiences to recognize theater’s power and relevance while reflecting on the country’s current reckoning and its future. Ambush’s framing echoes the play’s stated purpose: offering audiences a place to reckon with major issues rather than escape from them.
That impulse to sit with discomfort rather than dodge it resonates with the legacy of Williams himself. The festival’s focus on Williams and contemporary dramatists helps explain why a festival built around Williams would embrace a playwright working in an entirely different register.
Scholar Talks, a Library Visit, and a Cross-Country Collaboration
The festival’s programming around ‘Appropriate’ extends well beyond the mainstage. Jacobs-Jenkins will speak at the St. Louis County Library’s Clark Family Branch on September 19, discussing his artistic dialogue with Williams, according to St. Louis Magazine. The same day, the festival’s scholar conference at COCA will feature panels titled “Why Williams Still Matters” and “The Tennessee of Today?,” along with a reading of unproduced Williams texts titled “The Lingering Hour & Fin du Monde.”
The festival will also present “Under the Influence,” in collaboration with the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival, examining how iconic Williams characters have been parodied in television shows such as ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘The Golden Girls.’ The season will also include a tribute to Williams at the home of University City Mayor Terry Crow, according to St. Louis Magazine, rounding out a lineup that blends scholarship, pop-culture retrospection, and civic ceremony.
Tickets and Logistics for the University City Run
Tickets for the St. Louis premiere at COCA’s Catherine B. Berges Theatre, located at 6880 Washington, are available online, with free parking available in the nearby Washington University garage, according to the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. Tickets are available online for the mainstage run as well as for the additional scholar panels and satellite events tied to the festival’s 11th season.
The choice to anchor this year’s festival around a story of siblings unearthing their family’s racial history is a deliberate one for an organization built on Williams’ legacy of examining fractured Southern families. Jacobs-Jenkins’ dark comedy offers a contemporary counterpoint to the festival’s Williams legacy. For a festival entering its second decade, staging that contrast under Williams’ own name in the city that shaped him is the clearest signal yet of how far the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis intends to stretch its mandate.
