Peggy Stafford
Peggy Stafford teaches Playwriting I, II, III, Junior Seminar in Playwriting, Plays and Playgoing, and serves as a Senior Project advisor to six students. She also produces the New Plays Now Festival in the fall and Making New Plays in the spring.
A Brooklyn-based playwright, Peggy Stafford’s plays include Everything Is Here (Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, Vineyard Reading Series), 16 Words or Less (Clubbed Thumb Summerworks 2016, The Kilroy’s 2014, 2015), Motel Cherry (Clubbed Thumb/New Georges, Huffington Post’s Top Ten Plays of 2012), Jewel Casket (New Georges/Dixon Place Puppet BloK), Three Miracles and a Giant (Annex Theatre, P73/HERE).
Peggy’s work has also been performed and developed at many theatres, including Soho Rep, Women’s Project, Playwrights Horizons, Two River, Bottom’s Dream, Circle X, On The Boards, Seattle Children’s Theatre, The Tank, as well as The Playhouse in Northern Ireland. She is an affiliated artist at Clubbed Thumb and New Georges in New York City. Prior to Purchase, Peggy taught playwriting at the University of Rochester’s International Theatre Program, Juniata College’s Gravity Project, and Marymount Manhattan College. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College.
Career Trajectory
Recalling her playwriting journey, Peggy said, “In my early-twenties, I helped start and run a small theatre in Seattle called Annex Theatre. During that time, I worked as stage manager, PR director, assistant director, actor, playwright, front of house, sound operator, strike crew, dramaturg, teaching artist, set painter, graphic designer, producer, ensemble member, box office manager, cleaning crew, and more. I was involved in every aspect of theatre-making during my years at Annex. I later moved to New York City, where I used my experience at Annex along with an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College to become an “emerging” playwright. I landed labs and residencies at places like The MacDowell Colony, Clubbed Thumb Writers’ Group, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Women’s Project Lab, The Vineyard, MACHIQQ, Playwrights Horizon SuperLab, P73, Pataphysics/Texas, and a New Georges Audrey Residency. My playwriting led me to playwrights who teach, including Sylvan Oswald, who gave me my first teaching gig at Purchase. I’m drawn to theatre that is surprising, irreverent, layered, funny, and hopeful. I try to make plays that wake people up.”
Fond Teaching Memories
Looking back at classes taught at Purchase, Peggy recalls them as “distinct communities or worlds unto themselves that I’m lucky to have been a member. Each one unique by the individual students in the room, their voices and stories. I remember an early morning Playwriting II class held in the basement of the Natural Sciences building with Francesco, an Italian student who wrote passionate, absurd melodramas. There was so much humor in that room. I remember an exercise where we were exploring the theatricality in different spaces, and someone brought in a sparkler (an object with a hidden inner life) that was placed on a windowsill and accidentally rolled off into a heater vent. Big theatrical moment!”
Peggy continues, “I remember pop-up play readings around campus with my Playwriting III students, staging scenes under trees, in hidden corridors, and public common rooms; re-imagining the campus within the context of their stories. I remember Playwriting I last fall asking students to pick an object that they wouldn’t want to part with and writing monologues from the perspective of the object – and Shamar wrote from his wheelchair, recalling a memory with him on a warm, summer afternoon when they went into a lake together to cool down. My students’ stories have moved and changed me – and I’m grateful for their honesty, refreshingly spectacular imaginations, and their willingness to play.”
Current Projects
Discussing her new work, Peggy said, “I’m currently developing two new plays Suomenlinna and Ambulette: A Non-Emergency Vehicle (Clubbed Thumb Writers’ Group); the stage adaptation of Sylvia Cassedy’s Behind the Attic Wall with Meghan Finn (The Tank); and a film adaptation of my play 16 Words or Less (Staging Film). I’m the recipient of a Eugene Grant Incentive Award from Purchase College to research and develop Listen/Hear, a book of overheard conversations in collaboration with photographer Joshua Lutz within an attention to place.”
Written by Susan Kouguell, Lecturer in Screenwriting