Jennifer Maisel is an award winning playwright, television and film writer whose plays have been hailed as “inventive and sophisticated” and “human and eternal” with a “formidable flair for the mysterious”.
In 2007 Rorschach Theatre premiered Jennifer’s birds with Wendy McClellan directing. Jennifer and Wendy won the 2006 Women Working With Women Collaboration Award from the New York Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts and Media for the play, which they workshopped extensively through Rorschach and FirstLook@ NewPlays in New York. "Small, surprising scenes that feel polished to perfection….marked by moments of brilliance".Washington City Paper.
Her newest play, THERE OR HERE, opened at New York's Hypothetical Theatre in September 2008 to a rave review in the New York Times. THERE OR HERE, was a finalist for the 2007 Sundance Theatre Lab, the 2008 O’Neil Theatre Conference, and was workshopped at PlayPenn in Philadelphia and read in Forum at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey last October.
Jennifer’s 10 minute play, GOODY FUCKING TWO SHOES, was a finalist for the Heideman award and premiered at the 29th Humana Festival at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and was hailed as a brilliant little riff on Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" by the Chicago Sun Times.
THE LAST SEDER, received the 2002 Fund for New American Plays Award from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The play had previously been awarded a commission grant from The National Foundation for Jewish Culture and was workshopped at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and read in the Streisand Festival of New Jewish Plays at the La Jolla Playhouse and the JCC’s premiere Springboard reading series in New York. The Fund for New American Plays also honored Jennifer with the Charlotte Woolard award for most promising new voice in American Theatre. In May 2002 THE LAST SEDER was produced by the Organic in Chicago as part of the Fund’s grant and was subsequently staged at Theatre J (Washington, D.C.) in January of 2003 where critics hailed it as “this is what theater is for. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you think. It makes you feel. It is a shared experience, with the entire audience coming together emotionally even though they sit in the dark without making eye contact with each other”. The screenplay adaptation of the play won Showtime’s Tony Cox Screenwriting Award. Ensemble Studio Theatre, the LA Project, opened a critically acclaimed production of The Last Seder, June 20th, 2008, in co-production with Greenway Court. The play will also have productions this year in Minneapolis and St. Louis.
MALLBABY was part of ASK Theatre Project's Spring Writers Retreat and the Jerome Center’s Playlabs in Minneapolis, and was read at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco and The BAT at the Flea in New York City. It was workshopped by Playwrights Theatre of NJ and Circle X Theatre in Los Angeles. EDEN won the California Playwrights Competition and was workshopped at South Coast Repertory, New York's Lark Theatre Company and Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey. The premiere of EDEN opened at Los Angeles's Theatre of NOTE. The LA Times called EDEN a “fascinating millennial dreamscape of urban dread, psychic fragmentation and imperfect human connection.”
Jennifer’s MAD LOVE garnered the Roger L. Stevens Award for Playwrights of Extraordinary Promise from the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays and was a finalist for the California Playwrights Competition, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award and the PEN West Literary Award. MAD LOVE received a critically acclaimed production in New York where Jennifer was reviewed as “a sort of David Lynch on estrogen”. Jennifer’s first full length play, DARK HOURS - “a disturbing vision of Eros' dark side”(The LA Weekly) - won the Center Theatre International Playwrights competition and has been produced in Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago Her co-adaptation of THE DYBBUK - written with April Vanoff and Robert Fieldsteel, music by O-lan Jones - premiered with The Wilton Project in Los Angeles and was an LA Weekly “pick of the week”.
...AND THE TWO ROMEOS was a finalist for the O’Neill as well as Sonoma County Repertory’s new play award. It has also been workshopped at the Lark Theatre in N.Y.C. and Theatre of NOTE in L.A. and was part of Rattlestick Theatre’s 2004 Exposure Festival, directed by Kent Nicholson and Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey’s Playreading series, directed by Jim Glossman. The Victory Theatre has been workshopping …AND THE TWO ROMEOS under the direction of artistic director Tom Ormeny.
Jennifer has been part of two on-line theatrical collaborations moderated by Caridad Svich. The latest, RETURN TO THE UPRIGHT POSITION, is a response to September 11th, and has been read at Harvard University, the Gilmorehill Theatre in Glasgow Scotland, the Perishable Theatre in Providence RI, the Cherry Lane Theatre in NY, Portland Stage in Portland ME, Waging Peace Festival (theatre simple) in Seattle WA, rm 120 theatre in Austin TX, and The Women's Project in NYC. Jennifer has also worked extensively on a theatre collaboration with women who were victims of violent crimes. HARDER YET TO TELL – the culmination of their work – was staged at the Edge of the World Theatre Festival in Los Angeles.
Yearly, Jennifer runs a playwriting workshop with high school students, helping them turn nascent ideas into one act plays that are fully staged. She has been a guest lecturer and speaker at Fordham University, the UCLA Extension Writers Program, AFI, the David Hwang Playwriting Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca College, Footlights in Washington DC and Claremont College.
Jennifer is a member of playwrights groups Playwrights Ink, Dog Ear (dogearplays.org), and Circle Rising; the latter was formed out of Paula Vogel’s boot-camp at ASK Theatre Projects in Los Angeles. She participated in the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival and Workshop and studied with playwrights Maria Irene Fornes, Murray Mednick and Leon Martel. She has had the privilege to work with such wonderful directors as Joseph Megel, Kent Nicholson, Wendy McClellan, Charlie Stratton, Dan Oliverio, Matt Almos, Jim Glossman, Amy Feinberg and Veronica Brady.
Jennifer's shorter works, which have been produced for regional and off and off-off Broadway houses include GOODY FUCKING TWO SHOES, STORYTELLER, SEEN AND NOT SEEN, IMPENETRABLE and ANIMAL DREAMS. IMPENETRABLE and ANIMAL DREAMS were produced in L.A.’s Edge of the World Theatre Festival, directed by Wendy McClellan and Matt Almos (inventive and sophisticated…a provocative piece of expression – Backstage West). HOW I LEARNED TO SPELL and GOODY FUCKING TWO SHOES were finalists for the 2001 and 2004 Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Awards respectively; the former premiered off off Broadway with Women Seeking Theatre Company in 2003 while the latter was part of New Power Plays (newpowerplays.com), a marathon of new political plays presented at West Coast Ensemble in Los Angeles in 2004. Her monologues have been published in several editions of Monologues for Women by Women as well as the literary journal So To Speak. University of Texas Press published THE LAST SEDER in their 9 Contemporary Jewish Plays and GOODY FUCKING TWO SHOES was published in Plays from the 29th Humana Festival.
Contact:
For information regarding her plays, including production rights, please contact the playwright at maiselj at dogearplays.org or her agent Susan Schulman at Schulman at aol.com