Everybody, a one-act play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, premiered Off-Broadway in 2017 at the Signature Theatre and was first published in 2018. It is a modern retelling of Everyman, the most well-known and anthologized example of a medieval morality play, which was adapted from a Dutch play by an anonymous 15th century English writer. Morality plays first appeared in the 12th century, evolving from the Catholic Church’s cycle plays and liturgical dramas, which reenacted biblical scenes, and became popular in the late Middle Ages (15th/16th centuries). They began as religious allegories designed to teach the audience a moral lesson by representing abstract concepts and ideas as characters.

In Everyman, God sends Death to take Everyman, who stands in for all humankind, on his final journey. Along the way, Everyman meets characters who personify concepts such as Fellowship, Wisdom, Strength, and Discretion. However, they all abandon him, and he can only bring Good Deeds with him to gain entrance to heaven after he receives forgiveness from Confession. This medieval morality play was influenced by a philosophical shift in that followed the devastation of the Black Death in the mid-14th century: the internalization of the idea that life is fragile, and that suffering and death could come to anyone at any time.

Jacobs-Jenkins is a celebrated contemporary Black playwright whose works disrupt the lines between established genres and use history and theatre history to comment on private relationships and public spheres in the present. While Everybody maintains much of the structure and the storyline of the original play, it draws a connection between medieval anxieties about death to modern existential angst and shows that humanity still (and always has) struggled with the same unanswerable questions: What happens when we die? How do I prepare myself? What is the value of my life? Jacobs-Jenkins wrote Everybody after winning the MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 2016. The play was nominated for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is his most widely produced play. Jacobs-Jenkins is also the author of An Octoroon, first performed in 2014.

Plot Summary

All of the roles for each performance are assigned through a lottery that takes place before the play begins.

God orders Death to bring Everybody through the process of dying. God wants Everybody to present their life and choices to God, so God can learn why the human experiment has been so troublesome. Afraid to die alone, Everybody is determined to find someone to go with them.

Everybody has conversations with disembodied voices describing what is happening as a dream, gives angst-filled monologues, lip-synching a growing chorus of voices from their thoughts, and encounters the embodiments of Friendship, Family, and Stuff accumulated in life. Each of these encountered characters refuses to accompany Everybody into Death. Then Everybody meets Love, who does agree to go with them, but only after breaking them down and stripping them naked. Further along their march with Death, Everybody meets Understanding and four virtues: Strength, Beauty, Mind, and Senses, all of which abandon Everybody at the point of death. At the last minute, Evil shows up and, to Everybody’s dismay, also accompanies them into the grave.