In celebration of the literary art of playwriting, JaxbyJax is honored to host the esteemed and accomplished, Jennifer Chase for this month’s Last Sunday Sessions.
Jenn’s plays and music take her performances and recording projects to France, Spain, and Senegal, Africa. Her plays, musical performances, and writing workshops have been featured at fine venues and festivals such as “Park for Your Problems” at the Davenport Theater in NYC, National Park Services, DASOTA Writer’s Festival, Alliance Francaise, Body and Soul, the Cummer Museum, Mayo Clinice, FSCJ, and UNF. Her plays include dramas “Handmaid” and “Artichoke Soup”, a series of monologues: “Eva Chase Wood?” and musicals “Majigeen” and “La Caroline”. She has a B.A. in International Studies and French from the University of North Florida and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. Jennifer is an award-winning professor of Humanities, English, and Creative Writing at Florida State College.
Jennifer Chase Artist Statement shares: “My work is character driven. Whether my characters are historical or contemporary, African or American, autobiographical or fictional, refugees or rebels; they tell the truth. Whether my characters find themselves in my musicals or monologues, dramas or dreams, solo pieces or songs, they tell the truth. My characters tell the truth. Through them, I aim to uncover your curiosity about their seemingly exotic differences and stories. Like us, my characters are guided by a fundamental ache for home. You follow them and embark on their emotional journeys until you find yourself experiencing something familiar. Our shared truth. My work leverages that “something familiar” to self-discovery. It’s what gives us hope, love, identity, and perseverance.”
During this Last Sunday Session, Jenn will host a session titled, “Breaking the Fourth Wall: Building Character(s)” where she will explore how playwriting, particularly monologues, as a medium of exchange, a tool, to illuminate a piece of writing in process, whether it be memoir, performance, novel, film, song, or play.