Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Signature Premiere Residency) is a Brooklyn-based playwright, producer and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. His plays include Girls, Everybody (Signature Theatre), War (Yale Rep; Lincoln Center/LCT3), Gloria (Vineyard Theatre), Appropriate (Obie Award; Signature Theatre), An Octoroon (Obie Award; Soho Rep, Theatre for a New Audience), and Neighbors (The Public Theater). Most recently he was the showrunner, executive producer, and writer for HULU/FX’s drama series, Kindred, based on Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking novel. A Premiere Resident playwright at Signature Theatre, his honors include USA Artists, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellowships, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award and he currently serves as Vice President of the Dramatists Guild council. He teaches at Yale University.
The Premiere Residency guarantees each writer three productions of new plays over the course of their residency. By committing to producing three premieres during a five-year period, Signature seeks to support and enhance each writer’s method of developing new work; the Premiere program celebrates the path from the written page to a fully-realized production. The program (formerly Residency 5) launched during the 2012 inaugural season at the Center as the first program of its kind in the American theatre, and enabling a diverse community of playwrights to build bodies of work.