Jenny Stafford is an award-winning bookwriter, lyricist, and playwright whose works have been heard on Broadway, regionally, and internationally.
Broadway: Cirque du Soleil’s Paramour.
Regional: The Homefront (with Sam Salmond, Village Festival of New Musicals, Village BETA series, NAMT finalist), The Artist and the Scientist (with Brandon Anderson, CAP21), Extended Stay (with Scotty Arnold, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Florida Festival of New Musicals), Prodigy (CCU, Collaborative Development Project, Two Rivers Theatre Company, and Indiana University), To Have and to Hold (Prospect Theatre Company, Barrington Stage), Cinderella (commissioned/produced by the Spotlight Youth Theatre), Two Bugs are Better Than One (commissioned/produced Off-Broadway by the New York City Children’s Theatre, all with Willem Oosthuysen), The Star Child (with Sarah Underwood and Josh Freilich, produced at French Woods), Awakening (with Joel B. New and J. Oconer Navarro), Beating a Dead Horse (winner of the 2017 Reva Shiner Comedy Award, produced through the Bloomington Playwrights Project and the Athena Project), Secret Hour (Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company, And Toto Too, finalist for the O’Neill Theatre Conference and the PlayPenn Conference), and Skittles (Woolly Mammoth).
International: Some Kind of Weasel (2020 Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Cirque du Soleil’s Paramour (Hamburg, Germany).
Her work has been featured at the Lincoln Center Songbook Series (The Lyrics of Jennifer Stafford), Prospect Theatre Company, The National Alliance for Musical Theatre Songwriter Salon, the New York Musical Theatre Festival, 54 Below, Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub, and numerous other NYC venues, including multiple inclusions in William Finn’s Ridiculously Talented concert series.
Awards include the 2017 Reva Shiner Comedy Award and the Paulette Goddard Award. Finalist for the Kleban Award, the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Conference, and the Ronald M. Ruble New Play Competition. Second prize in the McLean Drama Company Playwriting Competition.
She’s been an Artist in Residence at the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, Village Theatre, the Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed, the Catwalk Institute, Hypatia in the Woods, Barn Arts, Goodspeed Musicals, CAP 21, the Ross Ragland Theatre and the Berkshire Playwrights Theatre. Dramatists Guild member. MFA, Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Jenny is also a prolific teaching artist, teaching with the Metropolitan Opera Guild (where she was awarded the title of "Master Teaching Artist"), the New York City Children's Theatre, Trinity Music NYC, and Colorado Christian University. She has been a guest lecturer/artist at New York University, Baruch College, Indiana University, Santa Clara University, SUNY New Paltz, and Fordham University. She also spent two summers teaching theatre and songwriting at Shanti Bhavan in Bangalore, India, with Artists Striving to End Poverty.