“I’m becoming obsessed with people’s relationships and inner landscapes,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins told Vogue before the 2025 premiere of Purpose, which came on the heels of his Appropriate, an incediary play about prejudice. Purpose is set in the household of the Jaspers, an influential Black family whose members include civil rights leaders, pastors, and politicians. When their artistic youngest son, Nazareth, comes home with an unexpected friend, Aziza, and a snowstorm strands her there, long-held tensions unravel a seemingly flawless family. A decade-long project, Purpose was directed by Phylicia Rashad, and won the 2025 Tony for Best Play and the year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Broadway cast arrives intact in Los Angeles. —Jeanne Malle