Everybody

NORTHAMPTON, MA — The Smith College Department of Theatre presents Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins on April 24, 25, 26, and 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre directed by Kim Stauffer. This often funny, always provocative play is a modern riff on the fifteenth-century morality play Everyman in which the title character is at death’s door, reflecting on their good and bad deeds. Everybody updates this tale with Everybody—a role assigned to cast members via lottery at each show—and imagines what happens when we die and wonders if we are ever fully prepared. Tickets are $5–10 at smitharts.ludus.com.

“Life is unpredictable, so is this play,” explains guest director Kim Stauffer, “We are laughing one moment and experiencing a gut-punch of emotions the next.” Stauffer appreciates that Everybody includes the audience in its depiction of the lottery of life. As Everybody appeals to family, friends, possessions, and emotions to help on their final journey, the playwright blurs the line between the performance on the stage and the scripts people use in their daily lives. “The play puts us in a shifting space—a void that transforms again and again— with little to anchor us except the recognition of our shared lived experiences and the realization that this life belongs to us and us alone,” says Stauffer. “No one can walk it for us.”

Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins is an award-winning American playwright and 2016 MacArthur Fellow based in Brooklyn from Washington, DC. His work often revolves around race and social identity and includes other adaptations of historical plays, such as An Octoroon, which reframes Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon. His play Appropriate is currently running on Broadway. Jacobs-Jenkins wrote Everybody when a friend was struck with a life-threatening illness and he became fascinated with how to represent a dying person on stage. The play premiered Off-Broadway at the Irene Diamond Stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center on February 21, 2017 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. Reviewing it in the New Yorker, Hilton Als wrote “With Everybody, Jacobs-Jenkins has written a play about love—or, rather, a play that shows how impossible it is to write about love—and it fills the heart in a new and unexpected way.”

The Smith College production of Everybody features a cast of 13 who play God, Death, Understanding, Friendship, Cousin, Kinship, Time, Evil, Love, Death, Somebodies and a rotating Everybody. Preparing for actors to effectively and safely play different roles for each performance has required a challenging and non-traditional rehearsal and tech process–a task that Stauffer says the cast, designers, and technical team have risen to with courage and collaboration. Creating the disorienting, mystical, void-like world of Everybody are set designer Alina Tschumakow ’26, lighting designer Via Sussman ’26, faculty costume designer Kiki Smith with sound design by Zoey Zilber ’25 and props by Tamarin Camp ’25. The show is stage managed by Elie Berman ’25. Stauffer hopes the 90-minute play serves as an invitation for the audience to examine the very human tendency to cling to what is known in order to avoid the discomfort, reckoning, and change of the unknown. “Everybody reminds us to be open to the powerful bridge love creates to help us navigate the journey of life.”

Tickets are free for Smith students by emailing boxoffice@smith.edu. Tickets are $5–10 online at smitharts.ludus.com. Audiences should know that this play contains strong language and mature content. For more information including a complete content warning contact boxoffice@smith.edu.