Who Are the Playwrights

MJ Kaufman

Resident Playwright

2017 — 2026

MJ Kaufman is a playwright and television writer from Portland, OR.  Their work has been seen at the Public Theater, WP Theater, Huntington Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, the New Museum, NAATCO, Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Realm, Colt Coeur, Yale School of Drama, Lark Play Development Center and InterAct Theater, among others. Their work has also been performed in Russian in Moscow and in Australia. 

MJ received the 2017 Helen Merrill Emerging Writers Award, 2013 ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting, the 2013 Global Age Project Prize, and the 2010 Jane Chambers Prize in Feminist Theatre.

MJ has held residencies at the MacDowell Colony and SPACE on Ryder Farm and is currently a resident playwright at New Dramatists.  MJ has been a member of the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers’ Group, WP Theater Lab, a core playwright at InterAct Theatre and a playwriting fellow at the Huntington Theater.

An alum of Wesleyan University and Yale School of Drama, MJ has taught playwriting at Fordham University, Wesleyan University, SUNY Purchase College, the University of the Arts and as a teaching fellow at Yale College. 

MJ curated the 2016 and 2017 seasons of Trans Theater Fest at The Brick and, along with Kit Yan, founded Trans Lab Fellowship, a program to support emerging transgender theater artists.

They were recently a staff writer on seasons 1 and 2 of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix.

Find out about upcoming shows by joining MJ’s mailing list at: https://tinyletter.com/mjkaufmanster