Julia Jarcho is an American experimental
playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
and
director
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''Di ...
and
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
of theater and performance studies. The NYC company
Minor Theater
The Minor Theatre, located at 1001 H Street in Arcata, California, reopened under independent ownership in 2016. It is the second oldest movie theater in the United States to be built for that purpose. (The oldest movie theater in California is th ...
produces and debuts her new works. She won the 2013 Obie for Best New American Play for ''Grimly Handsome''. Chief theater critic for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''
Ben Brantley
Benjamin D. Brantley (born October 26, 1954) is an American theater critic, journalist, editor, publisher and writer. He served as the chief theater critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1996 to 2017, and as co-chief theater critic from 2017 to ...
has called her "a queen of experimental mayhem".
Jarcho is an Associate Professor and Head the MFA Playwriting Program at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
.
Background
Jarcho grew up in New York City, where she attended
Hunter College High School
Hunter College High School is a secondary school located in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is administered by Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Hunter is publicly funded, and there i ...
. She graduated from
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...
with a degree in literature. Her senior thesis, ''Going on: Wittgenstein's Liveness and the Grammar of Theater'', included the production of an original play, ''Grammar''. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley's Rhetoric Department in 2013.
Career
Jarcho began her career in experimental theater as a performer, acting in plays by
Richard Maxwell in Downtown New York theaters such as the
Ontological Theater and
Soho Rep
The Soho Repertory Theatre, known as Soho Rep,The official website'now use "Soho", with a lowercase h, as do most articles from th''New York Times''/ref> is an American Off-Broadway theater company based in New York City which is notable for prod ...
.
Plays
Nursery, written when she was a senior at
Hunter College High School
Hunter College High School is a secondary school located in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is administered by Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Hunter is publicly funded, and there i ...
, was a winner of the Young Playwrights Festival National Playwriting Competition and was performed at the Cherry Lane Theater in 2001.
Her adaptation of
Alfred Noyes
Alfred Noyes CBE (16 September 188025 June 1958) was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright.
Early years
Noyes was born in Wolverhampton, England the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. When he was four, the family moved to Abe ...
’ poem, ''
The Highwayman'' was presented at the
NTUSA performance space in Brooklyn in December 2004 and published in ''The Best American Short Plays 2005-2006''.
''Delmar'' was staged at the Prenzlkasper theater in Berlin, Germany, in October 2005. Jarcho later collaborated with visual artist, Meredith James, who adapted the play as a video installation at the Jack Hanley Gallery.
As a member of the playwrights' collective, 13P, Jarcho's ''American Treasure'' was staged at Paradise Factory Theatre in November 2009. ''The New York Times'' called the play, "an odd, dense, oblique but haunting work" and noted that Jarcho is "a remarkably clever, bewitching writer and a master of stylized behavior."
''Grimly Handsome'' premiered at the Incubator Arts Project in January 2013 as part of the Other Forces Festival and won the Obie for Best New American Play that year. In January 2015 it was remounted at JACK in Brooklyn.
Other productions by Jarcho include: ''Dreamless Land'' which premiered with
New York City Players
New York City Players is a not-for-profit New York City-based experimental theatre company founded in 1999 by playwright and director Richard Maxwell to present his work. The company has produced approximately 30 new plays in New York and has ...
at the
Abrons Arts Center
The Henry Street Settlement is a not-for-profit social service agency in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City that provides social services, arts programs and health care services to New Yorkers of all ages. It was founde ...
in November 2011; ''Nomads'', directed by
Alice Reagan, was the final play performed at the Incubator Arts Project in June 2014; ''Every Angel is Brutal'', directed by Knud Adams, was part of
Clubbed Thumb
Clubbed Thumb is a downtown theater company in New York City that commissions, develops, and produces "funny, strange, and provocative new plays by living American writers." Since its founding in 1996, the company has earned five OBIES (including t ...
's Summerworks 2016 lineup and staged at the Wild Project.
Her most recent play, ''The Terrifying'', premiered at the Abrons Arts Center in March 2017.
Style
The playwright
Mac Wellman
Mac Wellman, born John McDowell Wellman on March 7, 1945, in Cleveland, Ohio, is an American playwright, author, and poet.[Menippean satire
The genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, that is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities. It has been broadly described as a mixture of allegory, picaresque narrative, and ...]
...dealing with the whole analysis of what theater is.”
Structurally, Jarcho's plays have employed unconventional storytelling techniques
—what the ''New Yorker'' and others have called, "non-linear," and ''Time Out New York'' and ''New York Theatre Review'' have referred to as "shifting" narratives. Actors in Jarcho's productions often perform multiple roles to engage audiences in questions of coherent selfhood and stable identity.
Works
As playwright and director
* ''Pathetic'' (Minor Theater, June 2019)
* ''The Terrifying'' (Minor Theater, March–April 2017)
* ''Grimly Handsome'' (Incubator Arts Project, January 2013 and JACK, January 2015)
* ''Dreamless Land'' (New York City Players, November 2011)
* ''American Treasure'' (13P, New York, November 2009 and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, May 2009)
* ''Aria Da Capo'' (Target Margin, New York, June 2009)
* ''All I Do Is Dream Of You'' (Festival 100º/Sophiensaele, Berlin, February 2006)
* ''The Highwayman'' (NTUSA performance space, New York, December 2004)
As playwright
* ''Every Angel is Brutal'', directed by Knud Adams (Clubbed Thumb, May 2016)
* ''Nomads'', directed by Alice Reagan (Incubator Arts Project, May/June 2014)
* ''A Small Hole'', directed by Alice Reagan (Performance Lab 115, NYC Fringe Festival, August 2006)
* ''Nursery'', directed by Brett W. Reynolds (Young Playwrights Festival/Cherry Lane Theater, New York, Fall 2001; directed by
Mark Ravenhill
Mark Ravenhill (born 7 June 1966) is an English playwright, actor and journalist.
Ravenhill is one of the most widely performed playwrights in British theatre of the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His major plays include ''Shoppin ...
at UC Davis, Fall 2005)
Awards and honors
Jarcho is the recipient of the Mark O’Donnell Prize, a Doris Duke Impact Award, an Obie for Best New American Play, a Berrilla Kerr Award for Excellence in Playwriting, and a Sarah Verdone Writing Award. She has been a resident at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Playwrights Foundation, the Macdowell Colony, and SPACE at Ryder Farm.
Teaching and research
Jarcho is an Associate Professor and Head the MFA Playwriting Program at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
.
She previously taught in the Dramatic Literature department at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
.
Her first academic book is ''Writing and the Modern Stage: Theater Beyond Drama'' (2017).
Publications
* Nursery in ''Rush Hour II: Bad Boys''
* The Highwayman in ''The Best American Short Plays 2005-2006''
* American Treasure in '
* ''Minor Theater: Three Plays''
* ''Writing and the Modern Stage: Theater Beyond Drama''
* ''Grimly Handsome''
References
External links
Minor Theater
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jarcho, Julia
Living people
21st-century American dramatists and playwrights
American theatre directors
American women theatre directors
Obie Award recipients
Postmodern theatre
Harvard College alumni
Hunter College High School alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
American women dramatists and playwrights
People from New York City
21st-century American women writers
Year of birth missing (living people)
Brown University faculty
American women academics