Award-winning USU playwright to be honored by her alma mater

A successful playwright will be honored by her alma mater Saturday, April 14 when Utah State University’s Theatre Arts Department presents a “Concert Evening of Scenes by Julie Jensen.”

            Jensen is the resident playwright at the Salt Lake Acting Company.

            The evening will feature scenes from several of Jensen’s plays presented by USU theater students and directed by department faculty, staff and students.

            It begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 14, at the USU Performance Hall.

            “They came to me with the idea and it was very touching,” said Jensen. “I have never seen such a performance of selected scenes I have written. They asked me if I had some I would like to suggest. So I did.

            “It really is an honor. A lovely thought.”

            Jensen, who earned bachelors and master’s degrees at USU, was an English major but did a lot of work in theater arts as a student.

            “I always loved it, my passion has always been theater. I was an actor as a student. After I graduated I was auditioning for a Shakespeare festival in California and didn’t make it in.

            “That is when I turned completely and said ‘I’m going to write’. It’s wonderful because no one has to let you in the gate. You can do your work without someone ‘allowing’ you to do your work. And, you don’t have to produce it.”

            The “Concert Evening of Scenes by Julie Jensen” is free and open to the public.

            Her play, “Two-Headed” is presented by USU’s Theatre Arts Department April 16-21 at 7:30 p.m. in the Morgan Theatre, named after Professor Floyd Morgan, Jensen’s first playwrighting teacher at USU.

            “It is a play about two women during the early part of the settlement of Utah by white people. The central event of the play is the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the effect that event had on these two girls. It is a complicated, intrigue-filled story.”

            <a href=”http://www.saltlakeactingcompany.org/playwrights/resident-playwright”>Jensen is the recipient of</a> the Kennedy Center Award for New American Plays for “White Money.” She is a frequent speaker and workshop coordinator and has conducted master classes for the winning playwrights at the American College Theatre Festival at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

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