Jennie Redling
Jennie Redling is a recipient of BMI’s Jerry Harrington Musical Theatre Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement as a Librettist, the national Stanley Drama Award and the Arlene R. and William P. Lewis Playwriting Award for Women. She is a finalist for the 2020 American Theatre Wing’s Jonathan Larson Grant, the 2020 Ensemble Studio Theatre Alfred P. Sloan Project, the 2016 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater, the Arts & Letters Prize for Drama, 2009 Firehouse Theatre Contest of New American Plays, and The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.
Jennie is the book writer for the musical My Heart is The Drum (with composer Phillip Palmer and lyricist Stacey Luftig) which began in the BMI Lehman-Engle Musical Theatre Workshop. Development continued at the NAMT Festival of New Musicals, the Goodspeed Johnny Mercer Writers Colony, Kent State University, and it's world premiere at Village Theatre in 2016, all performances directed by Schele Williams (The Notebook, The Wiz, Aida).
Jennie’s national award-winning play, Gone Astray, about the fight between a white woman and a Lakota girl over the spirit of a lost child, was developed with Penguin Rep, aired by Pittsburgh’s 12 Peers Theatre in their 2016 Modern Myths Play Series and is currently in development as a musical with Christopher Blacker, Natalie Barnes (Ojibwe) and Ed Koban (Mohawk). Jennie's play, Miscast, premiered at Soho Rep, was included in Ensemble Studio Theatre One-Act Marathon and produced by the Mefisto Theatre Company as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Jennie’s screenplays include Zone One with Mark V. Olsen (HBO Big Love. Getting On) and The Six Candles.
Jennie's journey as a dramatist began before she was born, when her mother was directed by Lotte Lenya in a play at Maxwell Anderson's estate's theatre group in Rockland County, New York where Jennie grew up. Anderson's artist group became local community theatres where Jennie began an acting career at sixteen. Her memberships include the Dramatists Guild of America (Lifetime), the BMI Musical Theatre Advanced Book Writers Workshop (Alumnus), Maestra Music, the International Centre for Women Playwrights, AEA and SAG-AFTRA. She is a Neighborhood Playhouse trained Drama Coach and a certified rape crisis counselor as well as a professional portrait artist. Jennie is a decades long promoter of Native American culture and birthrights, having entrenched herself in enlightenment of original people's history, identity and traditions.
