Who Are the Playwrights

Jaclyn Backhaus

Resident Playwright

2021 — 2029

Jaclyn Backhaus is a playwright, screenwriter, & educator hailing from Phoenix, Arizona. Her Off-Broadway plays include OUT OF TIME (NAATCO and The Public Theater, dir. Les Waters), WIVES (Playwrights Horizons, dir. Margot Bordelon), INDIA PALE ALE (Winner, 2018 Horton Foote Prize, MTC, dir. Will Davis), MEN ON BOATS (Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Horizons, dir. Will Davis), FOLK WANDERING (dir. Andrew Neisler, Pipeline), and YOU ON THE MOORS NOW (TRE, dir. John Kurzynowski). Other plays include DANA DURING TECH WEEK, ORACLE/BOB'S BACCHAE, and END-OF-LIFE. Her work for TV/film includes DOULAS, a half-hour comedy pilot about birth workers in New York City, and PREETI POPPED IT (written with Mahira Kakkar and Purva Bedi), a Punjabi-American road trip comedy that was selected for last year's 1497 Features Lab. She is one the core members of The Kilroys, a professor of playwriting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and a creative director at Fresh Ground Pepper, an artistic process lab in NYC. She was the 2016 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Clubbed Thumb and is currently a New Dramatists resident playwright. jaclynbackhaus.com 

headshot credit: photo by Marcus Middleton