Director of the Program in Theater & Music Theater Jane Cox won the 2024 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design of a Play for her work on Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play, Appropriate. This is Cox’s fourth nomination and first win. Appropriate received the Tony for Best Revival of a Play. Jacobs-Jenkins is a member of Princeton’s Class of 2006 and of the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Advisory Council, and has taught in the Theater Program at Princeton. The production garnered a third Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play to Sarah Paulson.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ’06 on stage at the Tony Awards with Appropriate team. Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions
“I’m so delighted to win a Tony for working on a play by one of the greatest writers of our time – the Princeton alum Branden Jacobs-Jenkins,” said Cox. “This brilliant, provocative and haunted play is an incredible vehicle for design, calling for precision and imagination in getting light into this metaphorical and literally dark space,” she said
“It was also delightful,” she added, “to be in the company of several Princeton folks, including the incredible Jeff Kuperman ’12, whose choreography (along with brother Rick) for the Tony-winning musical The Outsiders was brilliantly displayed during the awards ceremony.”
“We are thrilled to congratulate Jane on her much deserved Tony win,” said Judith Hamera, chair of the Lewis Center. “Her nationally renowned excellence as an artist is of a piece with her outstanding teaching and dedicated service to the Lewis Center for the Arts and to the University.”
Jane Cox with Jeff Kuperman. Photo courtesy Jane Cox
Appropriate follows the dysfunctional Lafayette family as they return to a decaying plantation mansion in Arkansas to battle over their recently deceased father’s inheritance. It’s summer, and the cicadas are singing. Toni, the eldest daughter, hopes they’ll spend the weekend remembering and reconnecting over their beloved father. Bo, her brother, wants to recoup some of the funds he spent caring for Dad at the end of his life. But things take a turn when their estranged brother, Franz, appears late one night, and mysterious objects are discovered among the clutter. Soon after the discovery of a relic buried deep in the recess of their family’s past, decades of resentment burst through centuries of historical sin. Suddenly, long-hidden secrets and buried resentments can’t be contained, and the family is forced to face the ghosts of their past. Variety describe the play as, “A searing narrative about family ties, past hurts and unbridled pain. It’s a shocking play centering on legacy, race and the fragility of memory.”
Jane Cox and her daughter Beckett Alexander after receiving her Tony. Photo courtesy Jane Cox
In describing her lighting for the play, Cox explained earlier to BroadwayWorld magazine: “It’s hard to get light into this house, which is a wonderful metaphor for this play. We wanted you to feel the dark corners inside, and the shadows in the space, and know that outside is oppressively hot and bright. Also, the story of the play is so exciting and keeps the audience guessing every step of the way – I love how fast the play moves and how brilliant the mind of the playwright is. The play is intended to be hilarious and also to make the audience really uncomfortable – the lighting tries to support that tension, using contrast and darkness as well as intense brightness to modulate the audience mood. Much of the play is set at night, listening to the sounds of cicadas outside; it was a delight to use all the different apertures to the dark box of the space to get directional light in, and to try to light scenes with the light of candles or a single lamp. I really enjoyed finding ways to get the audience to really listen – from the careful use of darkness to subtle ‘close-up’ lighting that really focuses on actors’ faces in the most intensely personal moments.”
The New York Times stated that director Lila Neugebauer’s staging and the set design by design collective dots are “nearly ideal, accentuating (with the help of Jane Cox’s painterly lighting) the conflicts and alliances among the characters.”
Images of cicadas on Jane Cox’s dress, designed by LCA’s Assistant Costume Shop Manager Caitlin Brown.
The relentless screaming of cicadas that contributes to the rising tension in the play inspired Cox’s dress for the Tony Awards ceremony. Using a print fabric featuring large cicadas on a green background, the dress was designed and constructed by the Lewis Center’s Assistant Costume Shop Manager Caitlin Brown. The look was heightened by a large cicada pendant.
Cox, a Princeton resident, was joined at the Tony Awards ceremony by her husband Evan Alexander and daughter Beckett.
Banner Photo of Jane Cox accepting her Tony Award by Theo Wargo / Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions
