Jacqueline Goldfinger

Jacqueline Goldfinger is an American playwright and librettist best known for her award winning plays Babel and The Arsonists. She wrote the popular book, Playwriting with Purpose: A Guide and Workbook for Playwrights.

Career Writing for the stage Goldfinger began her career in fringe theater creating site-specific work with the San Diego Playwrights Collective and touring a one-act version of The Terrible Girls to the New York International Fringe Festival.

Her full-length original plays include:

The Burning Season Slip/Shot (Barrymore Award) Bottle Fly (Yale Prize) (publisher Yale Press) Babel (Smith Prize, Generations Award) (publisher Theatrical Rights Worldwide/TRW Plays) Arsonist (publisher Samuel French/Concord Theatricals) The Terrible Girls (publisher Playscripts) Click (publisher Theatrical Rights Worldwide/TRW Plays) Skin & Bone Backwards Forwards Back (Glaspell Award) Her full-length adaptations include: A Wind in the Door (publisher Stage Partners) The Little Mermaid (publisher Theatrical Rights Worldwide/TRW Plays) Little Women (publisher Playscripts) A Christmas Carol (publisher Playscripts)

Her libretti include:

Generations Cycle: The Morning Song, The Darkest Hour, and The Great Work (choral): Composer Melissa Dunphy A Bright Morning Dawns (choral): Composer Dominick DiOrio Twa (opera): Composer Justine F. Chen Alice Tierney (opera): Composer Melissa Dunphy Halcyon Days (choral): Composer Melissa Dunphy, (publisher Edition Peters) Letter to Our Children (short opera): Composer Justine F. Chen,

Her works have been developed and produced at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, BBC 3 Radio (UK), Perseverance Theatre, Hangar Theatre, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, National Theatre (UK), La MaMa (Italy), Voces8 (UK), New Wave Opera, Disquiet (Portugal), Gate Theatre (New Zealand), New Georges, Oberlin Opera, St. Martin in the Fields (UK), McCarter Theatre, Hangar Theatre, Theatre Exile, Unicorn Theatre, Resonance Works, Capitol Stage, Azuka Theatre, Wilma Theatre, Arden Theatre, The National Theater (UK), Philadelphia Theatre Company, People's Light and Theatre Company, Amuse Singers, Vortex Rep, Women's Theatre Festival, NYC International Fringe, and others. She's been a dramaturg for theatre companies including La Jolla Playhouse, Old Globe (San Diego), Philadelphia Theater Company, Native Voices, and the Arden Theater. She's taught at University of California, Davis, University of California, San Diego, and University of Pennsylvania.

Major publications

Halcyon Days (choral), Edition Peters Bottle Fly (play), Yale Press The Arsonists (play), Concord Theatricals The Terrible Girls (play), Concord Theatricals

Guest Editor, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Spring 2023, theme of "Revolutions in New Work Development"