Jennifer Haley

Last updated
Jennifer Haley
OccupationPlaywright
Education University of Texas, Austin (BFA)
Brown University (MFA)
Notable worksThe Nether
Notable awards2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
Website
jenniferhaley.com

Jennifer Haley is an American playwright.she was born in Oct. 3,1974.She grew up in San Antonio, Texas and studied acting at the University of Texas at Austin for her undergraduate degree. Haley also received a MFA in playwriting at Brown University in 2005, where she worked under American playwright and professor, Paula Vogel. Now living in Los Angeles, Haley is pursuing a career in theatre, film and television. [1]

Contents

Early years

She grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and lived there until she was nine, then moved to Houston, where she attended Jack Albright Middle School and Alief Elsik High School. [2] She went to University of Texas, Austin as a double major of Liberal Studies and Theatre. Haley first began writing during her last few years of undergrad to increase the number of roles available to women. [3] Susan Zeder, her playwriting professor, approached her after a piece she had written, and Haley deferred that she was not a playwright, but Zeder told her she was. [3] She would go to pursue a playwriting degree at Brown University. Both Vogel, her mentor and professor at Brown, and Zeder's guidance, she began to shift her focus towards playwriting over the next few years.

In the late 1990s, she moved to Seattle to become a web designer, while still writing plays at night. This would influence her work, as technology is prevalent in many of her plays. [4]

Career

Her play, The Nether, was developed at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Lark Play Development Center, and the Philadelphia Theatre Company. [5] It had two workshops at the Center Theatre Group before it was staged in March 2013, at the Royal Court Theatre in July 2014, and at the MCC Theater in February 2015. It won the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize [6] and seven Los Angeles Ovation Awards. [7] In January 2015, the Royal Court production transferred to the West End. [6] It was nominated for Best New Play at the 2015 Olivier Awards.

The Nether, produced at the West End's Duke of York's Theatre in 2015. The Nether, The Duke of York's Theatre.JPG
The Nether , produced at the West End's Duke of York's Theatre in 2015.

Haley has worked with Center Theatre Group, the Royal Court Theatre, the Humana Festival of New American Plays, American Conservatory Theater, Theater 150, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, The Banff Centre, Sundance Theatre Lab, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Lark Play Development Center, Sacred Fools Theater Company, PlayPenn, Page 73, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.

She is a member of New Dramatists and the founder of LA's The Playwrights Union. Hosting events throughout the year, The Playwrights Union is a casual collective of playwrights in Los Angeles seeking to encourage new work for theatre, film and television. [8]

Haley's other plays include Froggy and Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, which premiered at the Actor's Theatre of Louisville 2008 Humana Festival. [9]

TV and Film

In addition to her work for the theatre, Haley wrote for the Netflix series Hemlock Grove and for the David Fincher-helmed series Mindhunter .

Awards and honors

In 2012 Haley was the recipient of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her production of The Nether .

For television, Haley, along with Erin Levy, won the 2017 My Entertainment World award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama for Mindhunter's "Episode 8". [10]

Filmography

YearRoleTitleNotes
1999 Dai-Guard DomekiEnglish version; Voice
2014 Hemlock Grove Writer, 2 episodes
2017 Mindhunter Writer, 1 episode; co-producer, 8 episodes

Plays

Personal life

Haley lost her father to alcoholism in 2010. [4]

She listed Qui Nguyen, Anne Washburn, Lisa D'Amour, Young Jean Lee, Luis Alfaro, [11] and Caryl Churchill [12] as some of her favorite contemporary playwrights. [5] She cited Black Hole and Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron as favorite graphic novels, the latter inspiring Froggy. [13]

Related Research Articles

Theresa Rebeck is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television. She is a 2009 recipient of the Alex Awards. Her works have influenced American playwrights by bringing a feminist edge in her old works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynn Nottage</span> American playwright (born 1964)

Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheila Callaghan</span> American dramatist

Sheila Callaghan is a playwright and screenwriter who emerged from the RAT movement of the 1990s. She has been profiled by American Theater Magazine, "The Brooklyn Rail", Theatermania, and The Village Voice. Her work has been published in American Theatre magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lydia R. Diamond</span> American playwright (born 1969)

Lydia R. Diamond is an American playwright and professor. Among her most popular plays are The Bluest Eye (2007), an adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel; Stick Fly (2008); Harriet Jacobs (2011); and Smart People (2016). Her plays have received national attention and acclaim, receiving the Lorraine Hansberry Award for Best Writing, an LA Weekly Theater Award, a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and the 2020 Horton Foote Playwriting Award from the Dramatists Guild of America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Loomer</span> American playwright and screenwriter (born 1950)

Lisa Loomer is an American playwright and screenwriter who has also worked as an actress and stand-up comic. She is best known for her play The Waiting Room (1994), in which three women from different time periods meet in a modern doctor's waiting room, each suffering from the effects of their various societies' cosmetic body modification practices. She also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Girl, Interrupted. Many of her plays deal with the experiences of Latinas and immigrant characters. Others deal with social and political issues through the lens of contemporary family life. Beyond that, Loomer's play The Waiting Room discusses issues such as body image, breast cancer, and non-Western medicine.

Hilly Hicks Jr. is an American playwright and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katori Hall</span> American playwright (born 1981)

Katori Hall is an American playwright, screenwriter, producer, actress, and director from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall's best known works include the hit television series P-Valley, the Tony-nominated Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and plays such as Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho, Children of Killers, The Mountaintop, and The Hot Wing King, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Bathsheba Sarah Lee "Bash" Doran is a British-born playwright and TV scriptwriter living in New York City.

Elizabeth Wong is a contemporary American playwright, television writer, librettist, theatrical director, college professor, social essayist, and a writer of plays for young audiences. Her critically acclaimed plays include China Doll is a fictional tale of the actress, Anna May Wong; and Letters to A Student Revolutionary, a story of two friends during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Wong has written for television on All American Girl, starring Margaret Cho. She is a visiting lecturer at the College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, where her papers are archived, an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, USC School of Theater, and an associate professor at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Dramatic Writing Program (1991) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Broadcast Journalism from the University of Southern California (1980). She studied playwriting with Tina Howe, Maria Irene Fornes and Mac Wellman.

Melanie Marnich is an American television writer-producer and playwright. She co-created and serves as executive producer and co-showrunner for the upcoming Amazon series, The Expatriates. She has written for Big Love on HBO; Her episode, “Come, Ye Saints” for Big Love, earned her a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for best drama episode. It was also named Best Television Episode of 2009 by Entertainment Weekly, rated third in TIME Magazine's list of 10 Best TV episodes of 2009, and ranked in TV Guide's 100 Best Episodes of All Time.

Lila Rose Kaplan is a 21st-century American playwright. She currently lives in Somerville, MA, where she was a Huntington Playwriting Fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company (2012-2014) as well as a Next Voices Playwriting Fellow with New Repertory Theatre (2015-2016).

Erik Patterson is an American screenwriter, television writer, and playwright.

Sheri Wilner is an American playwright.

The Nether is a sci-fi crime drama play written by American playwright Jennifer Haley. The play received its world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in California in March 2013, after being first developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center as part of the 2011 National Playwrights Conference. Subsequent productions have been mounted at the Royal Court Theatre in 2013, MCC Theater in 2014 and in the West End at the Duke of York's Theatre in 2015. It won the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and was nominated for Best New Play at the 2015 Laurence Olivier Awards.

Virginia Grise is a playwright, and director. Grise's most recognized work is blu, the winner of the 2010 Yale Drama Series Award and a finalist for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' Latino/a Playwrighting Award. In addition, Grise is the co-writer of The Panza Monologues with Irma Mayorga, and edited a volume of Zapatista communiqués called Conversations with Don Durito. She is also a recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award and the Princess Grace Award in Theater Directing.

Laura Jacqmin is a Los Angeles–based television writer, playwright, and video game writer from Shaker Heights, Ohio. She was the winner of the 2008 Wasserstein Prize, a $25,000 award given to recognize an emerging female playwright.

Lauren Yee is an American playwright.

Dominique Morisseau is an American playwright and actress from Detroit, Michigan. She has written more than nine plays, three of which are part of a cycle titled The Detroit Project. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Paul Olmos</span> American dramatist

Matthew Paul Olmos is a Mexican-American playwright from Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his play a home what howls, which premiered at Steppenwolf Theater in 2024; as well as so go the ghosts of mexico a three-play cycle about the US-Mexico drug wars which was selected for a production at La MaMa by Sam Shepard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martyna Majok</span> Polish-American playwright (born 1985)

Martyna Majok is a Polish-born American playwright who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Cost of Living. She emigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in New Jersey. Majok studied playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and Juilliard School. Her plays are often politically engaged, feature dark humor, and experiment with structure and time.

References

  1. "Haley Traces Breadcrumbs at Ojai's Theater 150". LA Stage Times. Archived from the original on 18 February 2015. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
  2. Gray, Skyler. "Interview with Jennifer Haley" (PDF). Playbill.
  3. 1 2 "Living Out Our Imagination: An Interview with Jennifer Haley - Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 8 January 2014. Retrieved 2016-05-09.
  4. 1 2 "Studio 180 Theatre: 2020/21 Season – Toronto independent theatre company".
  5. 1 2 https://d2hf58r9a1e06k.cloudfront.net/pdf/Alley_Nether_Haley%20Interview.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  6. 1 2 "West End's THE NETHER to Play Duke of York's Theatre, Jan. 30". Broadway World. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
  7. "Ovation Awards 2013: Center Theatre Group, La Mirada win big". The LA Times. 4 November 2013. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
  8. "Interview: Jennifer Haley". Works by Women. 2012-03-13. Retrieved 2016-05-09.
  9. "Jennifer Haley | Samuel French". www.samuelfrench.com. Retrieved 2016-05-09.
  10. "The 2017 Critics' Pick Award Winners: TV". 17 April 2018.
  11. "Adam Szymkowicz: I Interview Playwrights Part 210: Jennifer Haley". 13 July 2010. Archived from the original on 4 May 2020. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
  12. "Nominee Interview Series: Mindhunter's Jennifer Haley". April 2018.
  13. Yeadon, Michelle (2018). The Nether Worlds of Jennifer Haley — A Case Study of Virtuality Theatre (PDF) (PhD). Graduate School of the University of Oregon.