OTR: Provenance at Chance Theater

The daughter of an adhesives manufacturer and a teacher, Jennifer Maisel grew up in a picture perfect Long Island suburb where she once found a dead man in her driveway.

Her THE LAST SEDER, starring Gaby Hoffmann, premiered off-Broadway produced by Rosalind Productions after productions in D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles. Her THERE OR HERE premiered with NYC’s Hypothetical Theatre and will have its London premiere in 2018. @thespeedofJake, a 2015 Kilroy Honorable Mention, premiered with Playwrights’ Arena in Los Angeles and was named a PEN West Literary Award finalist. Her OUT OF ORBIT – workshopped at the Sundance Theatre Lab @ Mass MoCA, Berkshire Playwrights Lab, Cal Rep and the Gulf Shore New Play Festival, and recipient of an Alfred P Sloan rewrite commission, the Woodward-Newman Award for Drama and the Stanley Award for Drama – made the 2016 Kilroy List and will be produced at Williamton Theatre and Bloomington Playwrights Project in 2018.

Jennifer’s plays have been developed and produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Magic Theatre, The Organic Theatre, Rattlestick Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre (NYC and LA), South Coast Repertory, Playwrights’ Arena, The Bat at the Flea, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, The LARK, The Hypothetical, Epic Theatre Ensemble, Theatre J, Rorschach Theatre, Inkwell, The Victory Theatre, Circle X Theatre, Theatre of NOTE and Teatro da Juventude (Brazil) among others. She developed plays at the Playwrights Center’s PlayLabs, ASK Theatre, NYU’s FirstLook@NewPlays in New York, University of the Arts New Play Festival, Moving Arts MADLabs, Cypress College’s New Play Festival, the Berkshire Playwrights Lab, PlayPenn and the Sundance Theatre Lab @Mass MoCA

Jennifer received the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays Award and their Charlotte Woolard Award for Promising New Voice in American Theatre, as well their Roger Stevens Award for Playwrights of Extraordinary Promise. She won SCR’s California Playwrights Competition and was a finalist for the PEN West Literary Award (3x), the O’Neill Theatre Conference (2x), the STAGES International Playwriting Competition, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, Abingdon Theatre’s Christopher Brian Wolk Award (2x), the Ojai Playwrights Festival and the Heideman Award (5x). Backstage included Jennifer amongst their “favorite female playwrights” and The Dramatist Magazine named her one of their “Ones to Watch. She was one of seven playwrights commissioned by Playwrights’ Arena and Center Theatre Group for the collaborative THE HOTEL PLAY. She is one of five playwrights chosen for the 2017/18 Humanitas PlayLA workshop.

Jennifer teaches playwriting at USC, and television and screenwriting for the Stephens College MFA program and has guest lectured around the country. She has participated in several political theatre actions, including the recent AFTER ORLANDO. She writes for film and television and recently sold a pilot with Momentum TV to SuperDeluxe.

A graduate of Cornell University, Jennifer received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the WGA, the Playwrights Union, and The Dog Ear Playwrights Collective.