MJ Kaufman

A support group for things inside of things. A class for women writers. A raucous frat party. Strangers from different worlds meet on a train and unravel who they think they are. An absurd exploration of language and gender.

Clubbed Thumb Winterworks 2018, Williamstown Theater 2019.

A trans love story set against the backdrop of a climate crisis. Loosely based on John Lyly’s 1585 play, Galatea tells the story of two young women from a village threatened with flooding who escape to the nearby woods disguised as boys and fall in love.

Max has just transitioned into being a man, and to celebrate, the men of his family decide to throw him a big Super Bowl party, complete with drinking games and push-up challenges. But what if the guys in his family aren’t the kind of men he wants to be? An irreverent comedy that follows Max as he stumbles through dating, navigates trouble with roommates, and boosts his career at the bike cooperative, all while struggling with the gender traps he once fought against.

Will is a freshman at Watson college. Jordan is a senior film major. Tyler is writing a novel for his thesis. They are all members of the Men’s Peer Education group. At meetings they spend hours unpacking questions like: “what is male privilege? And what can we do about it?” They love each other and the group. Until some accusatory posters start appearing around campus suggesting that a member of the group committed sexual assault. Could it be that even sensitive guys, guys working on their privilege sometimes turn violent or aggressive? In this play women and gender non-conforming people play men trying to understand the intricacies of masculinity and violence.

Grands is a trans grandparent. Jaime is their genderqueer grandchild. They are both obsessed with Joan of Arc. Grands wakes up from gender affirmative surgery speaking French and claiming they survived a fire. The same day, Jaime, who has been pretending to be Joan of Arc for weeks, goes missing.

Four individuals will be chosen for the mission of a lifetime. The only catch: they can’t come back. As applicants compete, they wrestle with what this means for their families, partners, and finally, themselves. What does it mean to leave Earth forever and what happens if you don’t get to go after you’ve already said goodbye?

How to Live on Earth is a haunting new play about our unrelenting obsession with the next frontier and the desire to give your life for something greater than yourself. Inspired in part by the Mars One project to colonize Mars by 2025, this piece is a funny, wry, and deeply truthful portrait of the fears and hopes that drive us towards exploration and expansion.

Alex has just finished a summer of dissertation research in the Minnesota woods and is eager to get back on the road to his boyfriend at school back east when he finds himself trapped in the surreal world of Elk Kingdom. The Elk need him to complete a strange and specific task before he can leave: tame the wolf that is threatening their herd. Alex wrestles with what the Elk ask of him and the implications for both the ecosystem and his journey home.

An American family is determined to have a fun vacation reconnecting with their roots in a small German village, but it's hard to have fun when nothing goes as expected. Grandfather's house is gone and the family graves aren't in the cemetary. Why are all the tour guides so weird? Is this even the right town?

Archer (still Angela to his family) doesn’t want to move back to his childhood home in eastern Oregon when his father falls ill. But at night under the oldest Ponderosa Pine, he meets a stranger who knows the history of the forests and the sadness of losing endangered things. As Archer accepts big changes in his family he discovers the power of names and the histories they make and mask.