DGI INSTRUCTOR

CALEEN SINNETTE JENNINGS

Their DGI Teaching History includes The Architecture of Plays: Family, Gender and Culture.

CALEEN SINNETTE JENNINGS is an actor, director, playwright, and a founding member of The Welders, a D.C. Playwrights’ Collective. Dramatic Publishing Company has published eight of her plays, and her work has appeared in seven play anthologies. She was recently commissioned by Arena Stage to write for their inaugural covid-driven May 22, 2020 project. She was also commissioned by Roundhouse Theatre to write an episode of their covid-driven series Homebound. In 2017, her adaptation of the Darius & Twig, for the Kennedy Center -----did a national tour after playing at the Kennedy Center Family Theatre. From 2015-2020, her Queens Girl Trilogy plays have been commissioned and produced by Theatre J, Mosaic Theatre and Everyman Theatre. Caleen has received five nominations for outstanding new play from the Helen Hayes Awards and play writing awards from the Kennedy Center and The Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. She is a Professor of Theatre, Emerita in the Department of Performing Arts at American University in Washington, D.C. where she taught for 30 years. In 2019, she received A.U.’s inaugural award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In 2003, she received the university’s Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award. She has been a faculty member of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute since 1994 and she was Project Manager on a 2016 NEH grant to the Folger entitled Crosstalk: D.C. Reflects on Identity and Difference. Jennings graduated from Bennington College with a B.A. in Drama, and received her M.F.A. in Acting from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.