5 by JuCoby Johnson

Best friends Jay and Evan run a convenience store in a rapidly changing neighborhood. When a real estate developer stops by with an offer to buy the place, their deep-rooted connection is tested. As the choice to sell weighs on Evan’s shoulders, their community is ripped apart and the very foundation of the world around them begins to rumble and quake. An intimate play that races towards apocalyptic ends, 5...
Best friends Jay and Evan run a convenience store in a rapidly changing neighborhood. When a real estate developer stops by with an offer to buy the place, their deep-rooted connection is tested. As the choice to sell weighs on Evan’s shoulders, their community is ripped apart and the very foundation of the world around them begins to rumble and quake. An intimate play that races towards apocalyptic ends, 5 examines a friendship tested by money, race, and family secrets come to light.
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5

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  • Daniel Smith:
    20 Dec. 2023
    “ I saw this play in previews at Jungle Theater in Minneapolis and thoroughly enjoyed it as a complex emotional and intellectual experience. The production was funny, moving, surprising, and thought-provoking. In reading the script, I especially appreciated the supernatural world-building of the stage directions and the aesthetic background of the recommended music selections. Depicting the co-owners of a convenience store as they struggle with gentrification amid signs of the apocalypse, the play uses a small-scale setting to grapple with large-scale questions. What do we do in the face of the inevitable? ”
  • Ben F. Locke:
    6 May. 2022
    “ Wow. This play is so gorgeously messy and heartfelt. The relationships are so complex and real. I love the Biblical/magical moments that just amplify this story and the message. I'd love to see a production of this show because it reads so beautifully on the page ”
  • Nick Malakhow:
    3 Jul. 2021
    “ Superb piece that tells a gorgeously rendered, human story amplified with moments of high theatricality and some potent and powerful metaphors and stage images of biblical proportions. Johnson manages to explore huge themes of privilege, race, gentrification, found and blood family, legacy, and much more with his microscopic focus on the relationship between Jay and Evan. All the characters are compelling beyond those two, however, especially Stacy who is so awesomely empathetic and antagonistic all at once. I hope to see this on its feet sometime soon! ”

3M 2F 1 Gender Non-Specific