News
“Sugar” selected for “Pick of the Vine” 2023
Jennifer’s play Sugar has been selected (out of nearly 700 submissions) for Little Fish Theatre’s annual Pick of the Vine Festival running January 19-February 4, 2023. Sugar premiered in Lakeshore Players Theatre’s 2022 10-Minute Play Festival and was also selected for Rockford New Words 2022.
“Chem Class” to be published in Lanford Wilson Festival anthology
Jennifer’s play Chem Class will be published in The Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival 2022: The Short Plays, forthcoming from Southeast Missouri State University Press. An Official Selection of The Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival 2022, the play was also selected for production by the festival’s host, the Dobbins Conservatory of Theatre, as well as by City Lights Theater Company’s 2022 Lights Up! Festival.
CHARLOTTE’S LETTERS in Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2022
A monologue from Jennifer’s multiple-award-winning full-length play Charlotte’s Letters is in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2022, edited by Debbie Lamedman and published by Smith and Kraus. Monologues from Jennifer’s full-length plays Ellery and Quasars appear in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2017 and The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2014, respectively.
Jennifer O’Grady
I read there are things out in space called quasars. Nobody really knows what they are. I hadn’t heard of them, so I looked it up, and it said: “An extremely remote celestial object, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy.” They look like stars. Scientists think they have black holes inside them, but that maybe they’re the beginnings of new galaxies.
Imagine, a whole new galaxy in the process of being born. There’s hope in that, isn’t there? I think that’s hope.
(Excerpt from monologue published in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2014)
In twin chairs by the lakeside tonight
we’ve watched day’s last lightspread like a bright blush over treetops
past the point where cabins standabandoned, sealed against winter.
In the middle distance the island floats,fading. There alone the wild blueberries
hang like unmarked globes over waterseparating shore from shore.
Why they grow there but not herepuzzles, like love or the coming bereavements
of autumn, or rumors of empty, drifting skiffs.For now at least the island remains
part and not part of the unknowing nightas we are to each other
island and mainland, ship and shore,a familiar place; a mystery.
Educate girls and there will be no more guillotines. That is what my father told me.
My father knew nothing about girls.
(Excerpt from monologue forthcoming in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2022)
She is making herself and not herself—
anguish dressed in baroque repose,a motionlessness that is never still,
arranged, betraying nothing—the restrained line of an eyebrow or lip,
the arc of a neck, the skillful reflectionof a sleeve of the moon-white gown
in the olive-green watergradually assembled, balanced there
in this unexpected moment,this small world holding its breath.
Okay. So sue me. Do you have any idea what it’s like being me?
(To an Audience member:)
Maybe you do, but the rest of you don’t. People always thinking you’re fucked up or off your meds, eve when you try to hide it. But we can’t hide anything from them. They know. Ever try to ignore someone who’s yakking at you ceaselessly? And believe me, the dead can talk. They don’t have anything else to do.
(Excerpt from monologue published in The Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2017)