Playwright and poet Jennifer O'Grady's plays have won awards and been produced throughout the U.S. and internationally. Her full-length plays include Charlotte's Letters (Rising Artists Award; 1st Place Henley Rose Awards; O'Neill Semifinalist, other honors); Paranormal Love (MTWorks Newborn Award; NEWvember Finalist; Panndora's Box Honorable Mention); Fertile Ground (Semifinalist for the O'Neill Conference, Princess Grace Award/New Dramatists Fellowship and Panndora's Box); still small voice (Moxie Incubator Finalist); Juggling with Mr. Fields (Finalist for Southwest Theatre Production's New Play Contest); Ellery (WATERWORKS Finalist) and more. Her work is included in multiple editions of the annual Best Ten-Minute Plays, Best New Ten-Minute Plays and Best Women's Stage Monologues among other anthologies and publications. She is also a widely published poet and author of the poetry books White (Midlist First Series Award for Poetry) and Exclusions & Limitations (MadHat Press). Born and raised in NYC, she holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and a BA from Vassar and lives with her family near NYC. (www.jenniferogrady.net)
Plays
(Full Length) A fresh new take on the Brontës, intertwining novelist Charlotte Brontë’s two years as an unpublished young woman at a Belgian school—where she became increasingly close to her married tutor/employer, Monsieur Heger—with her friend and biographer Mrs. Gaskell’s struggle to salvage Charlotte’s posthumous reputation and feminist novels. When an alarming letter arrives from Brussels, Mrs. Gaskell is forced to investigate just how much of Charlotte's novels, including the bestselling but scandalous Jane Eyre, was based on her own life. A theatrical play about love, friendship, and the making of art and identity. (Winner: 2020 Rising Artist Playwriting Award; 1st Place Henley Rose Award; NEWvember Festival Dublin; O'Neill Semifinalist and other honors)
(Full Length) Becca hates her psychic abilities and is suddenly being haunted by her dead but still-critical mother and dead grandmother, for reasons none of them understands. When a dead young woman appears and pleads confusingly for help, Becca turns away--but unwittingly give her best friend the chance to pursue a dangerous course that could harm Becca and another living woman. A play about living responsibly and being different. (Selected for The Best Women's Stage Monologues 2017 and a 2019 Bechdel Group selection.)
(Full Length) Kevin and Davis were a loving couple, but now Kevin is dead and stuck in a boring afterlife with little to do but eat popcorn and watching the living. When David decides to marry a woman, Kevin seizes the chance to wrap up unfinished business with the aid of two dead friends, until things begin to go wrong. A new play about love, loss and the power of memory. Play 1 in The Paranormal Triology. (Winner: MTWorks NewBorn Festival; Finalist: NEWvember Festival; Honoral Mention: Pandora's Box New Works Festival; Semifinalist: SWTP)
(Ten Minutes) A modern riff on the myth of Persephone, forced to leave her family behind forever. This Persephone returns to give her small child an unusual gift--a new mom. (Included in The Best New Ten-Minute Plays 2019).
(Ten Minutes) Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edith Wharton gives a tea party for F. Scott Fitzgerald, struggling young author of The Great Gatsby, with disastrous results. (Published in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2016)
(One Act) Former U.S. Navy Rear Admiral and computer pioneer Grace Hopper speaks about life, computer compilers, and kicking some ass in this short monologue play about perseverance and passion. (World Premiere: Rover Dramawerks, 2018)
(Ten Minutes) At a New York publishing house an impoverished assistant has just been informed that one of the world's wealthiest women--editor Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis--might want to bum cigarettes from her. (Published in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2017)
(Short) An imagined glmpse into mystery writer Agatha Christie's troubled first marriage and the roots of her long career as a novelist.
(Full Length) Josh is a blocked sculptor and stay-at-home dad to nine-year-old Eva. When his beloved wife Erin becomes seriously ill but won't slow down, Josh takes secretive measures to keep her at home. But Eva witnesses his ploys, bringing unwanted scrutiny from an uncertain priest. As Karen's illness worsens Josh must learn to let go--and try to grow up--with the help of a troubled priest and a strange young women with piercings. (Included in The Best Women's Stage Monologues 2014 and Best Contemporary Monologues for Women 18-35)
(Full Length) In 1940s Hollywood, 64-year-old, irreverent, nearly alcoholic movie star W.C. Fields--shunned by film studios yet eager for work--grudgingly hires a young English manservant, while Fields' live-in girlfriend Carlotta and his rising-actor friend Anthony Quinn vie for his attentions. But new servant Rodney brings a link to the past that will have shattering consquences, in this imagined look at the hidden side of an inconic film star and drama about longing and belonging. (Finalist in Southwest Theatre Productions' 2020 New Play Contest)
(Ten Minutes) Traumatized by a recent loss, Elena finds it hard to leave her NYC apartment--until she meets Clara, her older neighbor, and the two women discover they have more in common than they realized. (Published in Stage It! 3)
A woman and her fridge. A ten-minute play about failture and acceptance. (Included in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2021)
(Ten minutes) Two unemployed roommates learn the meaning of Christmas with help from a can of beans and some dental floss. (Included in The Best New Ten-Minute Plays 2021)
(Short) Noveslit Charles Dickens and his wife Kate Dickens speak about the legal separation Dickens initiated after 22 years of marriage and nine children--narratives that differ substantially from each other. A play about power and women's lives. (Produced by Short+Sweet Sydney 2021)
(Ten Minutes) When a popular YA action novel appears on the shelves, a bored poetry book decides to make a little mischief.
(Ten Minutes) Two bickering French books stuck in the basement stacks of a library (and subjected ot the inexplicable glares of the librarian) find themselves uniting when forced to foil a robbery play.
(Ten Minutes) Stuck for the weekend at her preoccupied, divorced dad's house (and never mind having to deal with Dad's new girlfriend, Sandra), 16-year-old Hailey learns that listening to old-people music can actually be life-altering. (Audience-choice winner in Weathervane Playhouse's 8x10 Theatrefest)
(Ten-minutes) Sixteen-year-old Ethan needs to defrost a meal before his basketball game but Mike, an aging microwave oven, refuses to open her door--forever. A play about give-and-take with a common household appliance. (Produced by PlayZoomers as part of "Microwave&Fridge" in 2021)
Lilia is startled when her new neighbor Jaden knocks on her door and asks to borrow sugar. But Jaden has an urgent ulterior motive that has nothing to do with sugar, and everything to do with Lilia.
Successes
"Sugar" has been selected for Stageworks 2024 One-Act Jamboree July 26-28, 2024 in Pompton Lakes, NJ.
"Fridge" will have a production at Bigelow Middle School in Newton, MA, May 31-June 1, 2024.
"New Kitten" will have a new production as part of Gi60: The International One-Minute Play Festival (NYC, 5/15-19, 2024).
My full-length Ellery was named a Finalist for the 2024 WATERWORKS Festival.
"Fridge" will have a production by St. Aloysius College in Adelaide, Australia.