Jenny Lyn Bader

Jenny Lyn Bader is a playwright living in New York City. Her recent productions include the virtual shows My First Time (Voting Writes/Luna Stage Co.) and  Guru of Touch (Edinburgh Fringe) and the solo play Equally Divine (Theater at the 14th St. Y). Her other plays include Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (Luna Stage), In Flight (Turn to Flesh Productions/Workshop Theatre), and None of the Above (New Georges). One-acts include Worldness (Humana Festival of New American Plays), Miss America (NY Int’l Fringe Festival/”Best of Fringe” selection) and Beta Testing (Symphony Space). Her play cycles are The Age of Trump (La Jolla Theatre Ensemble), Out of Mind (NYU/Strasberg), and Emotionally Correct (Center Stage NY). Jenny Lyn co-founded Theatre 167, winner of the NY Innovative Theatre Foundation’s Caffè Cino Award. A Harvard graduate, she has received the “Best Documentary One-Woman Show” Award (United Solo Festival); Athena Writes Fellowship; Randall Wreghitt Award (Theatre Resources Unlimited); Lark Playwriting Fellowship (nominated by Wendy Wasserstein); and the O’Neill Center’s Edith Oliver Award for a playwright who has, in the spirit of the late New Yorker critic, “a caustic wit that deflates the ego but does not unduly damage the human spirit.” For This Is Not a Theatre Company, she wrote International Local: 7 (Subway Plays app); co-authored Café Play (Cornelia St. Café); and co-wrote Play in Your Bathtub: An Immersive Audio Spa. Her work has been published by Dramatists Play Service, Smith & Kraus, Applause, Vintage, W.W. Norton, The Lincoln Center Theater Review, Plays International & Europe magazine, and The New York Times, where she served as a frequent contributor to the "Week in Review.”  She belongs to the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, the League of Professional Theatre Women, and Honor Roll.

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.jennylynbader.com
TW: @JennyLynBader
IG: jennylynstagram

MORE ABOUT ME
I used to believe that the core of theatre is the collective audience experience in a shared room, but in pandemic times I have come to believe that theatre is the art of making the impossible possible. I am working on audio plays and site-specific zoom plays and outdoor plays. In the "before times" my most gratifying moment in theatre was when audiences of wide-ranging political views all responded to my play Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library. I wondered if perhaps this play could help bridge divides and offer common ground. I believe that storytelling can help save us, whether we are in a room together or around a virtual campfire, if we can find the right stories to tell or just tell them right.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
Upcoming productions include: Switch, an audio comedy designed to change your relationship to stress (produced by Anya Layfield/Beyond Immersive); Strange Happenings in the School Library (co-authored with Martine Sainvil), a zoom play for young actors; and Secret Story, a solo audio piece (This Is Not a Theatre Company). Works-in-progress include: The Invitation to Damon, a comedy about the extremes people go to in order to avoid extremists; Makeover Artist, a comedy about the side door admissions scandal; The Slippers of Alexander the Great, a comedy about a museum of fakes and forgeries; and Natives, based on a science fiction story.

KEYWORDS
Comedy, Drama, Historical, Adaptations, Solo work, Collaborations, Politics, Inclusion, Identity, Jewish, Fables/folktales, Immersive, site-specific, satire, biography, fantasy, science fiction, audio plays, verse plays, musicals, period, Young Audiences, farce, holiday