About

JACOB JUNTUNEN is a founding member of Mortar Theatre, where he serves as Managing Director. He was named a Senior Network Playwright at Chicago Dramatists for 2010-2012; he was also Playwright in Residence at Scrap Mettle SOUL, Uptown Chicago’s only theatre for development, from 2006-2008. Further recognition includes the Agnes Nixon New Play Award and finalist status for the Sundance Screenwriters Workshop and the Christopher Brian Wolk Award. The Driehaus Foundation selected his play Under America for submission to the Sundance Institute Theatre Program Chicago Roundtable, and the script also received Lee Blessing and Tennessee Williams Scholarships, providing him with creative residencies at the Timberlake Playwrights Colony and the Sewanee Writers Conference, respectively. Jacob’s plays have been produced in Houston; Austin; Washington, D.C.; Portland, Oregon; and in his current hometown of Chicago. There, his work was produced or developed at theatres such as the side project, Prop Thtr, Caffeine Theatre, Infamous Commonwealth, and others. Chicago dramaturgical credits include TUTA, New Leaf, Circle, Infamous Commonwealth, and Steep. His short film Breaking Bread was produced by ½-Off Productions and may be viewed in its entirety on IMDB. A high school dropout, Jacob trained as a playwright with Edward Albee at the University of Houston and attended Clackamas Community College (A.A. 1996), Reed College (B.A. 1999) and Northwestern University (Ph.D. 2007).

Recipient of multiple academic  honors including a Diedrich & Johnson Scholarship at Northwestern University, he currently teaches theatre history at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) and writing at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago (SAIC). He is also the current faculty liaison for Chicago Circle Players, UIC’s independent, student-run theatre organization.

His scholarship includes “Repairing Reality: The Media and Homebody/Kabul in New York, 2001” appearing in Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays, and his contribution: “Mainstream Theatre, Mass Media, and the 1985 Premiere of The Normal Heart: Negotiating Forces Between Emergent and Dominant Ideologies” in the volume “We Will Be Citizens”: New Essays on Gay and Lesbian Drama. His essay “Imprisoned by Realism: How Realistic Dramaturgy Represents Incarceration and Obscures the Economics of the U.S. Prison Industry” will be published in “To Have or Have Not”: New Essays on Commerce and Capital in Modernist Theatre in 2011. He has presented at many national and international conferences garnering the Graduate Student Debut Award from the American Theatre and Drama Society (2002), and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs Association Debut Panel Award (2005), both at Association for Theatre in Higher Education conferences.