Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' GRASS World Premiere is Coming to Park Ave Armory

Park Avenue Armory will present the world premiere of Grass, a new co-commission from Armory Artist-in-Residence and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Appropriate, Purpose) in partnership with National Black Theatre. Written for the Armory's immense Wade Thompson Drill Hall, Grass follows a mother and son on a fantastical, picaresque road trip through the American South. Equal parts fantasia, memory play, and morality drama, Grass is a surreal meditation on the overlap of personal, ancestral, and national identities, and their ramifications in periods of social conflict and upheaval.

For the first time in over a decade, Grass reunites the creative team behind 2014's Obie Award-winning production of An Octoroon, with direction by Obie Award-winning director Sarah Benson (Teeth, Fairview) and set design by Tony Award-winner, MacArthur Fellow, and former Armory Artist-in-Residence Mimi Lien (The Great Comet of 1812, Sweeney Todd). Through collaborative readings and design workshops in the Armory's company rooms and the Drill Hall, the team has been creating a theatrical event that will uniquely meld text, design, and performance.

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is internationally recognized for writing that pushes the boundaries of theatrical form and explores themes of race, identity, history, and representation in America. As a Park Avenue Armory Artist in Residence since 2018, Jacobs-Jenkins has dedicated studio space within the Armory, where he has developed Grass and other works over the past eight years. Two epic family dramas in his oeuvre—one of which was in part developed while in residency at the Armory—have recently appeared on Broadway to critical acclaim: Purpose received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the 2025 Tony Award for Best Play, and in 2023, Appropriate won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. His robust off-Broadway career spans over a decade and includes notable works such as An Octoroon, Everybody, and Gloria, which will be revived on Broadway in March 2027.

Grass will mark Jacobs-Jenkins' first production mounted at the Armory, joined by Benson and Lien to utilize the vast architecture of the Drill Hall as a backdrop for a mother and son's fantastical journey. Through the pair's surreal encounters with fellow countrymen and remnants of American history, Grass interrogates the limits of identity on a modern-day search for meaning. Additional casting and production details will be announced this fall.

Grass is co-commissioned and produced in partnership with National Black Theatre (NBT), a two-time Tony Award nominated producer and the oldest continually run Black theater in New York City led by Sade Lythcott, Chief Executive Officer and Jonathan McCrory, Executive Artistic Director. Building on the two institutions' shared legacy of groundbreaking, collaborative performing arts presentations, this new commission follows NBT and Park Avenue Armory's partnership on Black Theater Advance, a gathering for conversations and activations examining the current state of Black theater and exploring ways to catalyze growth in 2025; a salon of Hidden Conversations in commemoration of Juneteenth to uplift the work and impact of NBT founder Dr. Barbara Ann Teer in 2023; and the symposium for 100 Years | 100 Women in 2020 that grew into a citywide celebration marking the centennial of the 19th amendment that granted women the right to vote.