About
MJ Kaufman is a playwright and screenwriter from Portland, OR/Multnomah Territory currently living in New York City/Lenapehoking. Their plays have been seen at the Public Theater, WP Theater, National Asian American Theater Company, Clubbed Thumb, Colt Coeur, Williamstown Theater Festival, InterAct Theater, Yale School of Drama and numerous other theaters and schools around the country as well as in Russian in Moscow and in Australia. Their work has been developed by the Lark Play Development Center, the Playwrights Realm, Page73 and New York Theater Workshop among others.
MJ received a 2022 grant from the The NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre Fund. They have also received a Helen Merrill Emerging Writers Award, an ASCAP Cole Porter Prize in Playwriting, the Global Age Project Prize, and the Jane Chambers Prize in Feminist Theatre. MJ has held residencies at the New Museum, 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 Yale College, Fordham University, Wesleyan University, SUNY Purchase College and University of the Arts. MJ is currently an Assistant Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
MJ curated the 2016 and 2017 seasons of Trans Theater Fest at The Brick and, along with Kit Yan and Cece Suazo, founded Trans Lab Fellowship, a program to support emerging transgender theater artists.
MJ’s short film THERAPIST CRUSH won the Audience Choice Best Film Award at TRANSlations film festival. MJ has also written for Netflix and is currently developing a feature film with Anonymous Content.
Find out about upcoming shows by joining MJ’s mailing list at: https://mjkaufman.substack.com/
