Jennie Redling's award-winning play, Gone Astray , about the fight between a white woman and a Lakota girl over the spirit of a lost child, was aired by Pittsburgh’s 12 Peers Theatre in their 2016 Modern Myths Play Series, and she is currently librettist for a musical version with compose/lyricists Stephen A. Weiner and Ed Koban (Mohawk). Jennie is the book writer for the musical My Heart is The Drum (with composer Phillip Palmer and lyricist Stacey Luftig) which received a world premiere at Village Theatre in 2016 and was developed at the NAMT Festival of New Musicals, the Goodspeed Johnny Mercer Writers Colony, Kent State University, and the BMI Lehman-Engle Musical Theatre Workshop. Drum was featured in NAMT’s 46th Minute Concert in October 2017 and the Good to Go Festival of New Music by Women in March 2018. Jennie’s screenplays include Zone One with Mark V. Olsen and The Six Candles. Among theatres where her plays were read or produced are Buffalo’s Alleyway Theatre, New Jersey Repertory Theatre, Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Mint Theater, Urban Stages, Abingdon Theatre, The Barrow Group, New York Theater Festival and Penguin Repertory Theater.
Jennie 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, Ensemble Studio Theatre One-Act Marathon, 2009 Firehouse Theatre Contest of New American Plays, The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and Semifinalist for Prop Thtr National New Play Festival and 2020 Playmakers’ Thomas Wolfe International Playwriting Competition. Jennie's monologues and scenes are published in Smith & Kraus’s "Audition Arsenal for Women in Their 20’s" and "Winners' Scenes for Kids and Teens," JAC Publishings’ "Monologues at the Heart of Human Nature,” Volumes I and II and the International Centre for Women Playwrights' "Scenes from a Diverse World.”
Jennie is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, BMI Musical Theatre Librettists Workshop, the International Centre for Women Playwrights, AEA and SAG-AFTRA. She is a Neighborhood Playhouse trained Drama Coach and a certified rape crisis counselor having worked for over a decade with the Center for Safety and Change, Rockland County, New York, serving survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Jennie is a decades long promoter of Native American culture and rights, having entrenched herself in enlightenment re original people's history, identity, tradition and land rights.