Playwright

Jacob Juntunen is a playwright and scholar who heads the MFA and PhD Playwriting programs at SIU (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale). He is the founding Artistic Director of Contraband Theatre. His scripts focus on characters having crises of faith in the broadest possible terms, mixing U.S. and East European aesthetics. His plays are produced across the U.S. and Europe, and have been developed at Playwrights Horizons, the Alliance Theatre, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Chicago Dramatists, Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, and Chicago’s DCase “In the Works.” He creates politically relevant work, with dedication to diverse casting opportunities.

Scholar

Jacob Juntunen authored Mainstream AIDS Theatre, the Media and Gay Civil Rights: Making the Radical Palatable (Routledge: 2016). His current scholarly book project, Journeys to Impossible Places: Tadeusz Kantor, Post-Holocaust Art, and the Ghosts of Multicultural Poland, expands his geographic scope to examine artistic resistance to the genocidal discourse of the Nazi and Soviet regimes, particularly examining the theatre of Polish auteur Tadeusz Kantor. His reviews and articles have been published in Theatre Journal, European Theatre Journal, AngloSaxon Studies, Peace History, HowlRound.com, and several anthologies. He is a performing arts reviewer online and on air for 88.1 KDHX St. Louis, is the St. Louis area’s Regional Managing Editor for www.TheTheatreTimes.com, the most far-reaching and comprehensive global theatre portal, and is the founder of @STLTheatre, an instagram site providing microreviews.

Honors

Jacob’s scholarship and playwriting have been supported by the Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, the Tectonic Theatre, Kraków’s International Cultural Center, the Illinois Arts Council, SIU’s Seed Grant, and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.