Jennifer Blackmer is a playwright, screenwriter and Professor of Theatre at Ball State University. Her plays have been produced off-Broadway and across the country, and her writing has won numerous awards, including the Joseph Jefferson Award, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award for Emerging American Playwright, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation prize from the Tribeca Film Institute. Read Jennifer’s full biography here.
"The theater community is immensely the better for her presence among us. She is doing work that matters."
Judges' Citation, PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Emerging American Playwright Award
Artistic Statement
I consider my work as a storyteller to be a natural extension of my favorite childhood pastime: lying in the damp grass after dark, staring at the stars, contemplating ridiculously large notions such as “light year,” “infinity,” “multiple dimensions.” The rural Indiana skies of my girlhood were boundless, and I wanted nothing more than to fly into them; I wanted to experience a light year, feel infinity and explore those other dimensions.
This deep longing for “bigness” eventually found solace in writing, plays first, then screenplays, where the entire POINT is to make the impossible possible. Writing is my way of wrestling with an unruly cosmos. Through my work, I seek to create deep and complex roles for women as central protagonists, struggling with dilemmas usually reserved for men.
I want audiences to bond with these women and feel that they, too, can fall up into the sky and soar (if they want it badly enough). And I hope to tell stories that challenge and celebrate a uniquely child-like, very human propensity to ask ridiculously large questions while staring at the stars.