| PROFILE | PLAYS | LINKS |
Jennifer Fell Hayes I have loved theatre since I was seven or eight, when I often tried to put on little shows with neighborhood children and my reluctant little brother. When I was nine my parents took us to London where I saw a West End production of LOVE FROM JUDY and refused to speak to anyone on the way back to the hotel, dumbstruck with the magic and power of it!
I began creating plays when I was teaching in London, as I had so many talented and enthusiastic students that I couldn't find plays with enough parts for them all.
I am currently director of the drama program at Friends Seminary, in New York City. I teach and direct there, and love my job and my students. I was a recipient of a Yale Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007.
My play, SEALSONGS, was selected for the Samuel French Short Play Festival in summer 2008. I wrote a companion piece to go with it, and the double bill was one of the big hits of the New York Midtown International Theatre Festival in summer 2009, and was chosen to have an excerpt performed at the MIFT Awards Dinner. More information can be found at Sealsongstheplay.com.
SEALSONGS, and ENDURANCE, winner of TRU Voices New Plays Readings Series,2004, have had rehearsed readings at the Algonquin Theater, with which I am connected.
I have written a number of plays for museums, and coauthored PIONEER JOURNEYS: Drama in Museum Education with Dorothy Napp Schindel. The book won the American Alliance for Theatre and Education Distinguished Book Award in l995. I am a member of the Dramatists Guild and the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, and am published by the Dramatic Publishing Company and Samuel French.
I live in Manhattan with my husband. We have one daughter.
| KNIGHT'S CASTLE #8 Available from playwright, $8. Middle school audiences; 2 acts, very expandable cast; minimal staging. KNIGHT'S CASTLE, #8 is based on the children's book by Edward Eager. Roger and Ann spend the summer in Baltimore with their cousins, Jack and Eliza. Their aunt gives them a toy castle and a doll's house. The castle comes to life, the children grow small and have adventures with Ivanhoe, Rebecca, the wicked Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Rowena, Robin Hood, and his Merry Men. The next time the magic happens the knights and ladies have become up-to-date with hilarious effects. |
| SEVEN AGES OF ANNE Dramatic Publishing, $5.95. Junior high/high school/college audiences; 2 acts, 12-15f, video recorder, minimal staging. Seven Ages of Anne follows the tough challenges and joys of a woman’s life in the first half of the 20th century, from adolescence to old age, in a nontraditional style. Anne is played by seven actresses, and the second act has four simultaneous scenes between three pairs of Annes and Anne at 87 talking to her inner self on video. |
| ENDURANCE (Winner of the
6th Annual Theatre Resources Unlimited Play Reading Series in New York,
2004.) Available from playwright, $8. High school audiences. 2 acts, but runs without intermission. Length 1 hour. Minimal set: white background, possibly some slide projections, a few chairs. 9m, 2f (7 actors with doubling) Teenage Fithian has to undergo a painful, lengthy medical procedure twice a week to keep his older brother, Ray, alive. To survive this, he spends time going in his mind to the South Pole with Sir Ernest Shackleton, his hero. He feels trapped and resentful, and hostilities develop between the very different brothers: one, slight, artistic, and possibly gay; the other tall, athletic and heterosexual. Finally the treatment stops working, and Ray becomes sick. The brothers recognize their love for each other as Ray dies. Fithian is able to see Ray's courage and acceptance of death, and understand his brother is now part of him. |
| TIME AND TIDE Dramatic Publishing, $6.95, includes study guide. High school audiences; 2 acts, 7m, 8f, chorus, minimal staging. TIME AND TIDE juxtaposes two colorful worlds: a Yorkshire fishing village of a hundred years ago, and the struggle of life against the sea; and a traveling British music hall show. Tom and Polly’s bittersweet romance is punctuated by lively music hall songs, the high jinks of the theatre troupe, and the roar of the sea, represented by a “chorus.” The sea permeates the play and reflects its themes of survival and the cyclical nature of life. Photo credit: Friends Seminary |
| WAY'S END Dramatic Publishing, $5.95. Middle school/junior high audiences; 2 acts, cast of 30-60, minimal staging. WAY'S END is a large-cast play about 13-year-old Lexi, in trouble at home and school, when she is catapulted into an imaginary journey that becomes the perfect metaphor for the journey to adolescence. Scenes in “The Lost and Found,” the zany “Opposite Land,” the disturbing “Land of Herself,” or the playful “Land of Childhood Past” include springboards for an individual director’s own creativity, and great opportunities to include everyone who tries out! Photo credit: Collegiate School, Richmond, VA |
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