Jennifer Barclay Main Page

Until now, I’ve only lived in cold places. I grew up in Rochester, NY, and then moved to Chicago to go to Northwestern University. At Northwestern, I studied acting with David Downs, performance studies with Frank Galati, playwriting with John Logan, and solo performance with Mary Zimmerman. During Zimmerman’s class, I developed my one-woman show, Clearing Hedges: Babe Didrikson Zaharias, in which I snap swiftly between seven different characters (including Babe, her lesbian lover, and her 400 pound Greek wrestler husband).

After graduating, I backpacked solo across Europe for a year, until I found a home at the International Theatre of Vienna. I stayed on for a while as a company member, performing Clearing Hedges during the week, and acting in the now-and-forever-masterpiece The Mousetrap on weekends. In 2002, I took Clearing Hedges to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. After some great reviews and a crash course in what it means to be a producer, actor, and playwright all at once, I continued touring the show to Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.

When my backpack grew too heavy, I settled back in Chicago. For six years, I worked as an actor at Steppenwolf, Court Theatre, Collaboraction, Live Bait, and others. I taught acting at Piven Theatre, Court, and Apple Tree, taught playwriting with Pegasus Players, and taught an absurd amount of pilates and spinning classes across the city. But eventually, I found it more rewarding to shift my focus to playwriting and headed west to get my MFA in Playwriting at UC San Diego.

My first ensemble play, The Human Capacity, was given a staged reading at Steppenwolf in their First Look Festival of New Works. The Human Capacity and my next play, Plunder, were developed through readings and workshops across Chicago at Piven, A Red Orchid, Northlight, Breadline, Stage Left, and American Theatre Company.

Freedom, NY was produced in UC San Diego’s Baldwin New Plays Festival 2007, and was co-produced by Teatro Vista and Remy Bumppo at Victory Gardens in Chicago. The Attic Dwellers was produced in UC San Diego’s Baldwin Festival 2008, and won 2nd place in the Kennedy Center’s National Science Play Contest. My play, Eat It Too, has been read in St. Louis and NY City. My play, Red Helen, will be workshopped this spring and summer in San Diego and DC. My newest play, Obscura will be produced at UC San Diego in April as my thesis production.

My writing for film and TV includes the screenplays Prank, The Fontaines, The Human Capacity, Freedom, NY, and several spec scripts. I’m currently developing two new romantic comedy screenplays and a TV pilot titled Flesh & Blood.

My work has taken me to writing residencies from the hills of Virginia to the backcountry of Scotland. While living and writing in Scotland’s Hawthornden Castle, I met the English writer Andrew Newsham who wrote me love poems and took me on walks along the North River Esk. We got married and moved to San Diego where I completed my MFA in Playwriting at UC San Diego, studying under Naomi Iizuka. Immediately after graduation, I was selected to be the 2009-10 Shank Playwright in Residence at the Tony-award winning South Coast Repertory. Now I teach playwriting and acting at UC San Diego, MiraCosta College, La Jolla Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, and the Old Globe while continuing to enjoy the surreal southern Californian life where, on my writing breaks, I can go lie under a palm tree in the sun by the pool.

For a full list of credits, please see Jennifer’s resume.