Jeni Mahoney
Jeni is a playwright, dramaturg, director, teacher and a new play development geek.
She is the Founding Artistic Director of Seven Devils Playwrights Conference in McCall, Idaho and served as Producing Artistic of Seven Devils New Play Foundry (formerly id Theater), for 23 years before stepping down in 2023. During her tenure she was instrumental in the development and presentation of over 200 new plays, developed programming in New York, Idaho and in the virtual space, established the Frances K. Starr Design Fellowship and was a founding member of the 4 Seasons Residency Program.
Jeni's plays including Mercy Falls, Fata Morgana, Kandahar, The Feast of the Flying Cow… and Other Stories of War, Come Rain or Come Shine, Running in Circles Screaming, The Martyrdom of Washington Booth, American Eyes, Scatter and Light have been presented at the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center, InterAct Theater, Greenwich Playhouse (London), L.A. Theater Center, the Lark, Rattlestick, Circus Theatricals, Key City Public Theater, Boston Theater Marathon and Boise Contemporary Theater, among others. Her work is published by Applause, Concord Theatricals and Smith & Kraus.
Directing and dramaturgy credits include Durango PlayFest, The National Winter Playwrights Retreat (Creede, CO), Sit-In NYC and Key City Public Theater's PT PlayFest (Port Townsend, WA). Jeni currently serves as mentor/dramaturg for Cadence Theatre’s Pipeline Writers Retreats in Virginia.
A self-professed new play development geek, Jeni has served a panelist or/and guest artist for the Dramatists Guild, The Statera Conference, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs Association, the Seabury Quinn Jr., Playwriting Festival and Bermuda's Famous for Fifteen Minutes New Play Competition. She has written about new play development for Howlround and The Dramatists and has been featured in numerous interviews and podcasts including David Dower's Friday Phone Call. Her work with Seven Devils is featured in Michael Wright’s book Playwriting at Work and Play.
As an educator, Jeni served as Head of the undergraduate Playwriting at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School/NYU's Tisch School of the Arts , has taught a variety of theater, playwriting and scriptwriting courses at Primary Stages Einhorn Performing Arts School, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Franklin Pierce University and Stonecoast, the University of Southern Maine's low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program where she currently teaches Scriptwriting.
A member of the Dramatists Guild of America and the National Theatre Conference (where she served on the Board of Trustees for six years), Jeni is serves on the Board of Open Sky (a conservatory-based acting program serving incarcerated individuals in the NH State Prison System), Fleischer Studios, and Seven Devils New Play Foundry, where she serves an Honorary Board Member.
Jeni is Vice President of Digital Media and Historian for Fleischer Studios, a position that encompasses everything from web design to writing historical content, serving as a liaison to filmmakers, museums and archivists, video editing, and even serving on panel at San Diego Comic Con. She is featured in Claire Duget’s award-winning 2019 documentary Betty Boop Forever.
Inducted into the IndieTheatre Hall of Fame in 2014, Jeni has been named a finalist for the The Gary Garrison Playwriting Award, Otis L. Guernsey New Voices Award at the William Inge Festival and The Bug n’ Bub Award. She was twice named an honorable mention on the Kilroy list. The world premiere of Fata Morgana, was awarded an Artworks Grant by the National Endowment of the Arts. She is the recipient of a Woolrich Postgraduate Fellowship from Columbia University, and Independent Artists Grant from The Field.
