Jennifer Blackmer

Jennifer Blackmer is a playwright and director, and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Ball State University, where she received the 2010 Excellence in Teaching Award for courses in Playwriting, Theatre History and Theatre Management.  An Indiana native, Jennifer is a graduate of the MFA program in Directing at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where she also completed a minor in the History of Science and Technology.  Jennifer’s work has been seen at theatres and museums in New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., Minneapolis and Indianapolis, and at Ball State University. She currently serves as Playwright in Residence at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (the world’s largest children’s museum), where she develops scripts and leads seminars during the Museum’s annual Theatre in Museums Workshop.  Recent plays include Elegy No. 5, seen as part of the Emerging Female Voices Festival presented by the Manhattan Shakespeare Project; Delicate Particle Logic, recipient of Ball State University’s Outstanding Creative Endeavor Award; and The Human Terrain System, recipient of a Roundtable Reading at The Lark Play Development Center. Other notable works include four pieces written collaboratively with undergraduates: Daughters of Trinity: The Women of the Manhattan Project, which was workshopped at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis and produced at Ball State University; The Human Faustus Project, which premiered in a staged reading at Indiana Repertory Theatre; and the original film/television/web event Reality TV Bytes, which was nominated for two Billboard Magazine Digital Entertainment Awards.  Jennifer’s articles have appeared in the New England Theatre Journal, Insights, and the CUR Quarterly, and she is the author of a chapter in the forthcoming book Faculty Support and Undergraduate Research: Innovations in Faculty Role Definition, Workload, and Reward. Jennifer is treasurer of the Mid-America Theatre Conference and an active member of The Playwrights’ Center, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) and the International Museum Theatre Alliance (IMTAL).