Jenny Stafford is an award-winning bookwriter, lyricist, playwright, and essayist whose works have been heard on Broadway, regionally, and internationally. Broadway: Cirque du Soleil’s Paramour. Regional:The Homefront (with Sam Salmond, Village Festival of New Musicals, Village BETA series, NAMT and Kleban finalist), The Artist and the Scientist (with Brandon Anderson, CAP21), Extended Stay (with Scotty Arnold, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Florida Festival of New Musicals), Prodigy (CCU, Collaborative Development Project, Two Rivers Theatre Company, and Indiana University), To Have and to Hold (Prospect Theatre Company, Barrington Stage), Cinderella (commissioned/produced by the Spotlight Youth Theatre), Two Bugs are Better Than One (commissioned/produced Off-Broadway by the New York City Children’s Theatre, all with Willem Oosthuysen), The Star Child (with Sarah Underwood and Josh Freilich, produced at French Woods), Awakening (with Joel B. New and J. Oconer Navarro), Beating a Dead Horse (winner of the 2017 Reva Shiner Comedy Award, produced through the Bloomington Playwrights Project and the Athena Project), Secret Hour (upcoming World Premier at the Capital Repertory Theatre, developed at Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company, And Toto Too, Virtual New Works Festival, Prologue Theatre Workshop, finalist for the PlayPenn Conference), Color Inside the Lines (Denver Fringe Festival—winner of the “Best Solo Show” award), Eleanor and Dolly (upcoming world premier at Vintage Theatre) and Skittles (Woolly Mammoth). International: Some Kind of Weasel (2020 Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Cirque du Soleil’s Paramour (Hamburg, Germany), Alive (The Space UK, Edinburgh, nominated for the Spirit of the Online Fringe Award and the Fringe Review Hidden Gem Award, published through Pioneer Drama), Color Inside the Lines (2021/2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival). Her work has been featured at the Lincoln Center Songbook Series (The Lyrics of Jennifer Stafford), Prospect Theatre Company, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre Songwriter Salon, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, 54 Below, Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub, and numerous other NYC venues, including multiple inclusions in William Finn’s Ridiculously Talented concert series. Artist in Residence: Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Village Theatre, Johnny Mercer Writers Colony, Catwalk Institute, Hypatia in the Woods, Goodspeed Musicals, CAP 21, the Ross Ragland Theatre, the Berkshire Playwrights Theatre. She is also an essayist, with essays published in the Colorado Sun, the Santa Ana Review, and the Ponder Review. Dramatists Guild member. MFA, Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. www.jennystafford.net
Awards: Capital Rep New Works Award, 2017 Reva Shiner Comedy Award, 2021 and 2022 ASCAP Plus Award, Denver Fringe Best Solo Show (Color Inside the Lines), the Paulette Goddard Award. Nominations for the Spirit of the Online Fringe Award and the Fringe Review Hidden Gem Award in Edinburgh. Finalist status for the Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre (2018 and 2021), the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference, and the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Conference, and the PEN Fellowship, and the Ronald M. Ruble New Play Competition. Second prize in the McLean Drama Company Playwriting Competition.