Jean Egdorf grew up in a small and isolated county in the high-desert mountains of northern New Mexico. It is a space that feels simultaneously isolated and claustrophobic. Geographical isolation necessitates close-knit community, where everybody knows everybody and all their personal business. At 18, she thought she couldn’t get out fast enough; yet, only a few years later, she left the city for another small mountain town where she chose to once more plant her artistic roots. Much like she will not live long in a big city, she does not write “big city” plays. She writes small-town, southwestern romanticism; her plays are about isolated women whose voices are stymied by their small-town settings and in society at large; through them I explore the suffocation, isolation, and survival inherent to life in a small-town.

Jean holds her MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University. She is a member of the Actors’ Equity Association and has worked for the past decade as a stage manager and dramaturg. Jean's short plays have been produced in Colorado and Ohio, and her short dramaturgical essays have been published for the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Jean worked multiple seasons with the Creede Repertory Theatre (CRT) where she co-developed the CRT Company Generated Ten-Minute Play Festival; she presently serves as a member of CRT’s Headwaters New Play Festival reading committee.