Jennifer Barclay is a Chicago-bread and DC-based actor-turned-playwright who holds dual citizenship with the United States and Ireland. 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, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, and NNPN/PlayPenn. It had a NNPN Rolling World Premiere at New Rep in Boston, Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta and Greenway Court in LA.

 Jennifer’s other plays include Hot Little Slice, 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). 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 Not Beckett co-founder Hannah Khalil. Also in development: a play about the pacifist Alabama Quaker resettlement in Costa Rica; Possession, 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, Roundhouse Theatre, Signature Theatre, Mosaic Theatre, Solas Nua, Boulder Ensemble Theatre Co, Andy’s Summer Playhouse, American Blues Theatre, Fishamble (Dublin), 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).

Jennifer 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 Associate Professor of Playwriting and Performance at the University of Maryland.