Jennifer Barclay
Hot Little Slice
Jennifer Barclay (Playwright) is a Chicago actor-turned-playwright, now living in DC. Her two primary missions as a playwright are to increase the canon of juicy, stereotype-busting roles for women, and to write intimate socio-political stories which inspire curiosity and empathy. Her play, Ripe Frenzy, won the National New Play Network (NNPN) Smith Prize for Political Theatre and the Dramatists Guild Fund Writers Alliance Grant. Ripe Frenzy was developed at The MacDowell Colony, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, and NNPN/PlayPenn. It had a 2018 NNPN Rolling World Premiere at New Rep in Boston, Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta and Greenway Court in LA. Jennifer’s other plays include Housebound, Obscura, Freedom, NY, The Human Capacity, Danny, Red Helen, The Attic Dwellers, Eat It Too, and she is in the midst of developing a trilogy set in the national parks which includes Yellowstone, This Profound Abyss (set in Yosemite) and Behave Yourself (set in Glacier, a commission from Arizona Theatre Company, with a March 2023 reading at Signature Theatre in VA). Jennifer is also developing Murdered Men Do Drip and Bleed, a three-theatre international commission with Mosaic Theatre (DC), Solas Nua (DC) and Fishamble (Dublin, Ireland) co-written with Irish-Palestinian playwright Hannah Khalil, with an upcoming reading at Mosaic Theatre in DC on May 6-7, 2023. Also in development: a play about the pacifist Alabama Quaker resettlement in Costa Rica; a smash-up intersection between the worlds of women’s basketball and compassionate surrogate pregnancies; and Bacchanal, a digital-in-person hybrid interactive, immersive, promenade party-play. Jennifer’s plays have been produced and developed by Steppenwolf, La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, RedCat, The Kennedy Center, Center Stage, Round House Theatre, Signature Theatre, Boulder Ensemble Theatre Co, Andy’s Summer Playhouse, American Blues Theatre, The International Theatre of Vienna and The Edinburgh Fringe, among others. Other awards include Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award, Kennedy Center National Science Playwriting Award, Pinter Review Gold Medal, BETC New Generations Award. Jennifer has had fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, the New Harmony Project, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Hawthornden International Writers Retreat in Scotland. She has been a playwright in residence at South Coast Rep (Shank Playwright in Residence), Center Stage (Playwrights Collective) and Arena Stage (Playwrights Arena). She has a Bachelors in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Playwriting from UC San Diego, where she studied with Naomi Iizuka. She is proud to be an NNPN Affiliated Artist, a member of the Dramatists Guild, and an Associate Professor of Playwriting and Performance at the University of Maryland.