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JACLYN BACKHAUS

(she/her)
is a playwright, screenwriter, & educator hailing from Phoenix, Arizona. Her Off-Broadway plays include OUT OF TIME (NAATCO and The Public Theater, dir. Les Waters), WIVES (Playwrights Horizons, dir. Margot Bordelon), INDIA PALE ALE (Winner, 2018 Horton Foote Prize, MTC, dir. Will Davis), MEN ON BOATS (Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Horizons, dir. Will Davis), and YOU ON THE MOORS NOW (TRE, dir. John Kurzynowski). Her work for TV/film includes DOULAS, a half-hour comedy pilot about birth workers in New York City, PREETI POPPED IT (written with Mahira Kakkar and Purva Bedi), a Punjabi-American road trip comedy that was selected for this year's 1497 Features Lab, and ORACLE, an hourlong metaphysical drama set in the Sonoran Desert. She is one the core members of The Kilroys, a professor of playwriting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and a creative director at Fresh Ground Pepper, an artistic process lab in NYC. She was the 2016 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Clubbed Thumb and is currently a New Dramatists resident playwright.

Her work in theater and for the screen centers the multigenerational impact of South Asian diasporic immigration to America, and many of her works examine the intersection of underhistoricized people and known historical timelines. She has several projects in development in film, tv, and theater. She is currently available for staffing.

theater agent contact

derek zasky, dsz@wmeagency.com

tv&film agent contact

dani potter, dpotter@wmeagency.com

bash naran, bnaran@wmeagency.com

tv&film manager contact

greg shephard, gshephard@writ-large.com

publisher

broadway licensing

more

jaclyn's nytimes profile

fresh ground pepper

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