Sitting in the upstairs conference room at Steppenwolf Theatre in Lincoln Park, I see a wall lined with artifacts from the institution’s storied history. Fixating on a lifelike prop — a pair of severed hands — I’m reminded: This is not the theater for fun musicals.

Phylicia Rashad walks in, flanked by her publicist, Irene Gandy. Rashad is familiar to most as Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show; she’s also the winner of two Tonys. But Gandy is a star in her own right, known for representing famous musicians such as The Jacksons and Earth, Wind, and Fire, as well as Broadway stars like August Wilson.

Rashad is in Chicago to direct Steppenwolf’s upcoming world premiere of Purpose, which officially opens March 24 (it’s in previews starting Thursday). But if you didn’t know any better, you would think Gandy was the person here to be interviewed. Clad in a fur hat and an elegant blouse with red flowers that perfectly match her lipstick, Gandy warmly shakes my hand and compliments my hair.

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Rashad, on the other hand, seems eager to end the gauntlet of press interviews and get to rehearsal with the cast. She politely pushes through most of my questions with haste, but noticeably perks up when I ask about the script, written by award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

“The opening monologue,” Rashad says with a smile when asked what in the script made her agree to take on the project. “That was some intelligent writing. That’s when I said, ‘Yeah, I want to do this.’ ”

Purpose is, for a theater company that was founded nearly 50 years ago by a group of white actors, a dive headfirst into the complexities of one political Black family. And it is powered by a unique trio — a celebrity director, a talented playwright and the theater’s first Black co-artistic director — who have been building up to this moment, staging a contemporary family drama that challenges audiences to think about how the dynamics of politics and religion can seep into familial relationships.

And it all unfolds in a city with its own unique ties to political Black dynasties, from civil rights leader Jesse Jackson’s family to the Obamas.

“I was really fascinated by Chicago as a city of Black political life,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “I was very interested in imagining a Black political dynasty. I wanted to think about a Black family that was power adjacent and had ties to significant cultural and political moments in the 20th century. That’s where I began.”

For the trio driving the show, the goal is a play that has something to say about contemporary life. Rashad is most notable for portraying the matriarch of the quintessential Black middle-class TV family on The Cosby Show. This was a character rarely seen on TV at the time — a hardworking lawyer and mother with strong feminist values. But she eventually went on to have a successful Broadway career, which brings her to Steppenwolf and this conference room.

Davis, named co-artistic director of Steppenwolf in 2021, is known for staging shows like King James, a contemporary work about two friends debating the legacy of basketball player LeBron James. When Davis saw an early version of the Purpose script, he immediately knew Rashad was the director needed to parse the nuance of the complex themes facing the family on stage.

Then there’s Jacobs-Jenkins, an experienced writer who has achieved stardom both on stage (Appropriate just finished a Broadway run) and on television (as writer and showrunner of Kindred ’ on FX and Hulu).

With Purpose, Jacobs-Jenkins takes a huge swing at the reimagining of the Black family onstage. Danielle Bainbridge, assistant professor of theater at Northwestern University, said there has always been representation of Black families in American theater, but Black people themselves have not always been the authors of those stories.

“There’s been theatrical representation [of Black people] at least as early as the 19th century,” Bainbridge said. “There were lots of different iterations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And plays like The Octoroon, which is not necessarily focused entirely on a Black family, but does deal with some structures of Black family life. And these were plays that were written by white people.”

What has shifted over time is that Black people are telling their own stories — beyond the prominent plays that continue to be restaged, such as A Raisin in the Sun or selections from August Wilson’s cycle. Jacobs-Jenkins said he hopes to create a modern-day entry into the canon that speaks to Black families today.

“I love the characters and the revelation of who they are through their interaction with one another,” Rashad said of the script. “I love it, because it’s life. And that’s what theater is. Theater is life.”

Jacobs-Jenkins pulled some of the play’s narrative from his own roots. His mother was raised in Camden, Ark., a mill town just east of Texas. She was born the year President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty. Johnson’s education act led to college recruiters coming to her town and offering young people opportunities to attend universities.

“She was one of the first Black women to graduate from Harvard Law,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “And when I asked her about that, she’s like, ‘Yeah, they just told me to apply.’ She didn’t grow up [thinking about] law school. That wasn’t a thing that was conceived for her in her life. And obviously, I’m here as a result of making those choices.”

Jacobs-Jenkins’s father comes from a Great Migration family that moved from the tobacco fields in the Carolinas to Baltimore. He was likely on his way to a career in the steel factory, his son said, before being offered the chance to go to dental school.

In his real life, Jacobs-Jenkins saw the impact of the education act reshaping the future of his parents — and in turn leading his own path toward an Ivy League education (Princeton alumni). He explores in his play that connection between political policy and the everyday life of citizens.

“I thought about how all the privileges I’ve had in my life, luxuries, they’ve all been because of politics,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “I’ve been shaped by American political history, so for me, it’s right to think about family as a thing that is very much history bound. It’s affected by history, but also in some ways contributes to the making of history. All these things, like politics, policy and the great movements, are actually very much domestic things.”

If you go: Steppenwolf Theatre’s Purpose  opens March 14 and is currently running through April 28 at 1650 N. Halsted St. Tickets from $46 during previews, $60 after press opening March 24.

Mike Davis is WBEZ’s theater reporter.