PLAYS
"Jennifer...writes rich roles for actors of color and her female characters are exhilaratingly vital, challenging and no less stubbornly problematic than her men."
Alias Grace
Based on Margaret Atwood's acclaimed novel, Alias Grace takes a look at one of Canada’s most notorious murderers. In 1843, 16-year-old Grace Marks was accused of brutally murdering her employer and his housekeeper. Imprisoned for years, Grace still swears she has no memory of the killings. A doctor in the emerging field of mental health arrives to try to find out the truth of the matter. Alias Grace is a fascinating study of memory, culpability, and the shadowy spaces within the human mind.
Delicate Particle Logic
Heralded as the woman who stole the bomb from the Nazis, physicist Lise Meitner became a human enigma when she fled battle-ravaged Germany directly into obscurity. The war long over, she visits with the painter Edith Hahn, wife of chemist Otto Hahn, and the two women reminisce, open up old wounds, and dissect the teeming worlds of possibility.
I Carry Your Heart With Me
Esther Shannon is a government stenographer working for the US Air Force during the tempestuous Vietnam War. Lonely, conflicted, and haunted by voices from her past, Esther finds herself smack dab in the middle of a troubling investigation that could change the course of her life. With plenty of twists and turns along the way, this play for one woman is a suspenseful mystery that packs a real emotional wallop at the end.
Unraveled
As a professor of physics and philosophy, Joy has spent her life exploring theories of space and time, but none of that has prepared her for the reality of watching cancer unravel her mother’s mind and body. As the hard work of care-taking begins to take its toll, she hires Anna, a hospice nurse, to help her mother. But when the rules of space and time no longer provide Joy the answers she needs, can Anna's simple lessons of how to care for another person help Joy knit the pieces of her life together again?
Borrowed Babies
As Judy London nears the end of her career as a Professor of Home Economics, an encounter with one of her former “practice babies” leads her to question her life’s journey and the sacrifices she’s made along the way. Loosely based on Ball State’s Department of Family and Consumer Sciences former operation of “practice houses,” BORROWED BABIES explores the ever-evolving role of women and mothers in American society over the last sixty years.
Human Terrain
Mabry Hoffman is an American anthropologist working in Iraq for The Human Terrain System, a military initiative created that embeds social scientists with combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan to bridge the cultural divide. During her time, she is accused of treason for befriending an Iraqi woman and helping her survive.
Predictor
Based on true events, PREDICTOR is the real-life story of Margaret Crane who, in 1967, defied all odds and shattered expectations to become the inventor of the first home pregnancy test. Moving fluidly through past, present and future in an "absurdist comic romp," the play takes us into the whirling complexities of Meg's mind as she contemplates a simple patent application: will Meg’s world-changing invention fall into the wrong hands and disappear, or will she make the ultimate sacrifice to change the shape of women’s lives forever?
Object Permanence from When The Promise Was Broken - Plays Inspired By The Songs of Bruce Springsteen
"When the Promise was Broken" is a remarkable collection built around an inspired notion - pull together a diverse group of first rate American playwrights to write original pieces inspired by the work of one of this nation's indispensable songwriters - Bruce Springsteen. Jennifer Blackmer contributed the play Object Permanence inspired by Springsteen's Terry's Song.
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