Jordan Harrison
c/o Val Day
William Morris Agency
1325 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
(212) 903-1192
(212) 632-1283 fax
Agent Email:
VDay@wma.com
Email:
newdramatists@newdramatists.org
Website: www.playjournal.com
Jordan Harrison grew up on an island near Seattle and currently lives in San Diego. His plays tend to have misbehaving timelines, sexual initiations, fastidious formatting, props with emotional lives, and words people don‘t use any more.
Jordan has received commissions from South Coast Repertory, Cypress Films, Guthrie Theater and Children’s Theatre Company, Perishable Theatre, and Emigrant Theater. He has been a resident playwright at Theatre de la Jeune Lune, The Empty Space Theatre, and Commonweal Theatre Company. Jordan has been supported by a Lucille Lortel Fellowship, two Jerome Fellowships and a McKnight Grant from The Playwrights’ Center, an NEA/TCG Playwright-in-Residence Grant, and a New Works Grant from the Rhode Island Foundation. He is the recipient of the Weston Prize, the Heideman Award, and an Arch and Bruce Brown Playwriting Award, and was twice a Finalist for the Weissberger Award.
Jordan’s plays KID-SIMPLE and ACT A LADY are published by Playscripts, Inc. Excerpts of his plays appear in anthologies by Smith and Kraus, Samuel French, Routledge, and Heinemann, and in journals such as Factorial, Performance Research, and Encyclopedia. With Sally Oswald, he edits the annual Play: A Journal of Plays, dedicated to reinventing the life of plays on the page.
Jordan is a graduate of Stanford University and the Brown University M.F.A. Playwriting program. He is currently working on a musical adaptation of The Invisible Man and a play about the dark, untold history of fonts.
ACT A LADY
Full-Length
3M, 3W
When the men of a small Prohibition-era town decide to put on a play
dressed in “fancy-type, women-type clothes,” the whole community is
affected: gender lines blur, eyebrows raise, identities explode, and
life and art are forever entangled. A Midwestern fable about the woman
in every man, the man in every woman and the power of theatre to uncover
both. Accompanied by accordion.
Premiere: 2006 Humana Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Productions at Portland Center Stage (2007) and Illusion Theater (2007).
Workshops at Playwrights Horizons (2006), PlayPenn Conference (2005),
JAW/West Festival at Portland Center Stage (2005). Readings at
Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Tokyo International Arts Festival.
AMAZONS AND THEIR MEN
Full-Length / 90 minutes
2M,
2W
Unit Set
The Frau used to make beautiful films for a fascist government. Now
she's trying to direct a film that's simply beautiful. But when her
actors start disappearing, it becomes difficult for the Frau to ignore
the real war in favor of the glamorous war on her sound stage. Unfolding
like scraps of film recovered from the cutting room floor, Amazons and
Their Men considers the role of artists during wartime.
Workshops at PlayLabs, The Playwrights' Center (2006) and Geva Theatre
(2006). Readings at Ars Nova, Perishable Theatre, and Washington
Ensemble Theatre.
THE MUSEUM PLAY
One-act Comic Drama / 90 minutes
3M, 3W
Flexible Set
When the mastodons escape, Jame needs another exhibit for the Museum.
Luckily, he has a friend with wonderful bones. The Curator is delighted
with her new specimen, but she can’t help wondering: Who, or what, is
behind the mysterious exodus of flora and fauna? An elegiac and absurd
look at the intersections of memory and desire, set to the tune of a
music box.
Workshop production at the Brown
New Plays Festival (2003). Staged readings at Polybe+Seats (2003),
Playwrights Horizons (2003), and Signature Theatre Company (2004).
Workshopped at Soho Rep (2005) and Name Drop Productions (2005). Staged
readings at Polybe+Seats (2003), Playwrights Horizons (2003), Signature
Theatre Company (2004), and Circle X Theatre (2004).
KID-SIMPLE
a radio play in the flesh
One-act Comedy / 95 minutes
3M, 3W, 1 nonspecific
Flexible Set
In which Moll, a girl who invents things, wins the science fair with a
machine for hearing sounds that can't be heard. But when a shapeshifting
Mercenary steals the invention (and her heart), she must embark on a
quest to save noise as we know it. Accompanied by the last boy-virgin in
the eleventh grade, Moll crosses chasms and rafts rivers into a world
where there’s more to sound than what meets the ear. A fable of
innocence and experience, featuring live sound effects, mutinous
onomatopoeia, and a host of woodsy temptations.
Premiere, Humana Festival of New
American Plays, Actors Theatre of Louisville (2004); Productions at
Sledgehammer Theatre, Perishable Theatre, SPF: Summer Play Festival, and
American Theatre Company.
FINN IN THE UNDERWORLD
Two-act Drama / 90 minutes
2M, 2W
Flexible Set
In this contemporary Gothic tale, Gwen and her sister are packing up the
belongings – and the secrets – in their crooked childhood house. When
Gwen’s wayward son Finn arrives to harvest the more fashionable
heirlooms, he meets a neighbor who is not what he seems. Finn’s sexual
curiosity draws him down into the fallout shelter, into the heart of an
unfinished ghost story.
Premiere, Berkeley Repertory
Theatre (2005). Staged readings at PlayLabs, The Playwrights' Center
(2004) and the Hot Type Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre (2005).
FIT FOR FEET AND OTHER
SHORT PLAYS
Comedy
3W, 1M
As her perfect wedding day approaches, Claire is faced with something
even more pressing than china patters— her fiancee thinks he’s famed
Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. If this union is to be a success, Claire
has to answer one question: will she be fit for Jimmy's increasingly
flashy feet? Accompanied by other short works of the produceable and
semi-produceable persuasion.
Fit for Feet, co-winner of the
Heideman Award, premiered at the 2003 Humana Festival at the Actors
Theatre of Louisville. Careers in Space was a 2004 Finalist. Mister
Thrope received a workshop in PlayLabs 2004 at The Playwrights’ Center.
Installation for an Unsuspecting Home and Butch were published in
Performance Research and Encyclopedia magazine, respectively.