Julie Jensen’s newest play, Winter, premiered at Salt Lake Acting Company. It was part of the National New Play Network’s Rolling World Premiere, with subsequent productions at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago and Central Works Ensemble in Berkerley, CA. The play has also been nominated for the Steinberg Award (her third nomination) for the best new play produced outside New York.
Jensen was commissioned by Kennedy Center to adapt Kathryn Erskine’s novel Mockingbird, which premiered at Kennedy Center in January 2015. It won the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award and was nominated for two Helen Hayes Awards, for Outstanding Original Play and Outstanding Production. It received seven professional productions in the last two seasons.
Recent productions of her other plays include The Lost Vegas Series at Redlands University; Christmas With Misfits at Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake City; Two-Headed at the Rose Theatre, Bankside, London, and the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Massachusetts; Cheat at Pygmalion Theatre in Salt Lake City; She Was My Brother at Borderlands Theatre in Tucson and Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake City; Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and Coterie Theatre in Kansas City.
She is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Award for New American Plays for White Money, the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work for The Lost Vegas Series, and the LA Weekly Award for Best New Play for Two-Headed. She has received the McKnight National Playwriting Fellowship and the TCG/NEA Playwriting Residency for WAIT! and a major grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts for Dust Eaters. She won the Mill Mountain Theatre Playwriting Competition three times for Tender Hooks, Last Lists of My Mad Mother and Two-Headed. Her play Two-Headed was included in the volume Best Plays by Women, and she has been nominated by the American Theatre Critics Association for the Steinberg Award for Winter, Last Lists of My Mad Mother and Dust Eaters. She was twice a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Playwriting for Two-Headed and Dust Eaters, and her play, Billion Dollar Baby, received the New American Plays Award from the Edgerton Foundation.
Her work has been produced in London, Hamburg, Istanbul and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well as in the United States in New York and theatres nationwide. She has been commissioned by Rivendell Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, ASK Theatre Projects, Kennedy Center (twice), Actors Theatre of Louisville (twice), Salt Lake Acting Company (twice), Geva Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Penn State University, and Dramatic Publishing. Her work is published by Dramatic Publishing, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Inc., and Smith and Kraus.
Jensen has taught playwriting at six colleges and universities, is a frequent speaker and workshop coordinator, conducting master classes for Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and Kennedy Center’s Summer Playwriting Intensive. She also works regularly as a dramaturg for Native Voices Theatre, and teaches for Script, a summer screenwriting and playwriting intensive. Her playwriting book, Playwriting: Brief and Brilliant, is published by Smith and Kraus.
She is Resident Playwright at Salt Lake Acting Company, was Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild of America, an Affiliated Writer with the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, and board member of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.
Jensen is currently at work on a commission for Rivendell Theatre in Chicago, a devised piece being developed with ten other people.