Jacob Juntunen

Jacob Juntunen

Before Jacob Juntunen was a father heading the playwriting MFA at SIU and living in St. Louis, he was a 1970s kid in California watching PBS puppets. In the 1990s, Jacob was a high school dropout making sandwiches at a deli in Portland. The teachers at Clackamas Community College and Edward Albee saved him, and he got degrees from Reed College and Northwestern. In 1998 he saw a VHS tape of Tadeusz Kantor’s...
Before Jacob Juntunen was a father heading the playwriting MFA at SIU and living in St. Louis, he was a 1970s kid in California watching PBS puppets. In the 1990s, Jacob was a high school dropout making sandwiches at a deli in Portland. The teachers at Clackamas Community College and Edward Albee saved him, and he got degrees from Reed College and Northwestern. In 1998 he saw a VHS tape of Tadeusz Kantor’s theatre with mannequins and he’s lived in Poland repeatedly to understand it. Now he collaborates with his students a bunch, and he founded Contraband Theatre in 2016. His plays include See You in a Minute (a comedic pandemic play set in 2041), 18 Months After November, Hath Taken Away (the Book of Job in the modern Midwest), In the Shadow of His Language (his vexed feelings about academia), Joan’s Laughter (a kick-ass play about Joan of Arc!), and his most-produced shorts, No Winter No Worries (funny), and Saddam’s Lions (not funny). Jacob’s work has been supported by Alliance Theatre, Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center (for puppets!!), Great Plains Theatre Conference, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a Fulbright, the NEH, Krakow’s International Cultural Center, the Illinois Arts Council, and more. Jacob loves dramaturgs and has worked with Martine Kei Green-Rogers, Heather Helinsky, and Dan Smith. His plays and scholarship have been published by Routledge and Vintage. You can read his plays on New Play Exchange. His website has too many words, but, what can you do? He’s a writer. www.jacobjuntunen.com

Plays

  • See You in a Minute by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 1 more
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    Keyword: pandemic, speculative fiction + 7 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, science fiction
    Keyword: pandemic, speculative fiction, family, puppets, memory, grief, Our Town, science fiction, sci-fi
    Okay, so, Kathryn has left New York City and returned to her childhood home in St. Louis to take care of her parents during the pandemic. Not the pandemic you’re thinking of. This is 2041. But her dad just wants to eat sandwiches and play puppets with Kathryn like she’s a kid. Her mom is pissed that the smart city won’t let them out of the house. And Kathryn’s boss wants her back in New York to sell high school...
    Okay, so, Kathryn has left New York City and returned to her childhood home in St. Louis to take care of her parents during the pandemic. Not the pandemic you’re thinking of. This is 2041. But her dad just wants to eat sandwiches and play puppets with Kathryn like she’s a kid. Her mom is pissed that the smart city won’t let them out of the house. And Kathryn’s boss wants her back in New York to sell high school group tickets to a century-old snoozefest of a play. And Kathryn? What does she want? Well, she doesn’t want to explode her carefully built theatre career as Education Director at the longest-running off-Broadway theatre, that’s for sure. But her parents took care of her in 2020 during that first pandemic, so she’s got to do right by them, doesn’t she? Besides, Kathryn’s doing fine at home, right? This whole mess isn’t bringing up any unresolved feelings, is it? Nothing worth mourning, anyway. Right?
  • 18 Months After November, a Zoom Play by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: drama, mystery/thriller + 3 more
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    Keyword: post apocalypse, political + 6 more
    Genre: drama, mystery/thriller, political, science fiction, zoom
    Keyword: post apocalypse, political, road trip, zoom, contested election, January 6, proud boys, Capitol Insurrection
    After the president's contested re-election, Emma has to leave her home in St. Louis in a desperate bid to escape the USA.
  • Joan's Laughter by Jacob Juntunen
    Cast: 
    5
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    Genre: biography, docudrama/historic + 3 more
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    Keyword: Joan of Arc, History + 4 more
    Genre: biography, docudrama/historic, drama, faith-based, period
    Keyword: Joan of Arc, History, French history, religion, Catholic, christianity
    Her trial is over; her fate is sealed. Joan of Arc will be burned as a relapsed heretic at dawn. But should she listen to the priest who says she can save her soul by repudiating her Voices? To the nun who wants her to accept her fate as a final trial from God? To the guards who blame her for their suffering on the battlefield? Or should she continue to assert her Voices were from God despite their silence?...
    Her trial is over; her fate is sealed. Joan of Arc will be burned as a relapsed heretic at dawn. But should she listen to the priest who says she can save her soul by repudiating her Voices? To the nun who wants her to accept her fate as a final trial from God? To the guards who blame her for their suffering on the battlefield? Or should she continue to assert her Voices were from God despite their silence? From its historical inspiration, Joan’s Laughter explores the abandonment we all feel in our darkest moments.
  • Hath Taken Away by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 11
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    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: drama, experimental + 3 more
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    Keyword: midwest, abortion + 2 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, faith-based, movement/physical, political
    Keyword: midwest, abortion, cancer, evangelical
    Dorothea is a young Evangelical whose faith and steadfast love for her best friend and new husband is put to the test by her child-to-be. This feminist retelling of the biblical Book of Job set in the modern-day Midwest is hauntingly spare and richly poetic.
  • Saddam's Lions by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama + 1 more
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    Keyword: veterans, Iraq war
    Genre: docudrama/historic, drama, political
    Keyword: veterans, Iraq war
    After her return from Iraq, Rashida skips out on her own homecoming party. Her brother, Jon, wants to help her reintegrate into society, but she is convinced that no one will understand after her time with Saddam’s lions.
  • No Winter, No Worries by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 1 more
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    Keyword: climate change, post apocalypse + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, science fiction
    Keyword: climate change, post apocalypse, Ten-Minute Play
    It turns out life after the apocalypse isn’t so bad, not with mosquito margaritas at hand! If only
    the robot butler didn’t have that humor chip installed. A ten-minute climate change comedy.
  • The First Yes by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 2
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    Cast: 
    2
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    Genre: drama, experimental + 1 more
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    Keyword: poetry, cancer + 1 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, movement/physical
    Keyword: poetry, cancer, death
    A couple looks back on their lives and the first yes that sent them on their journey. A ten-minute play.
  • In the Theatre by Jacob Juntunen
    Cast: 
    3
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    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 5 more
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    Keyword: Ukraine, Mariupol + 1 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, immersive, political, tragedy
    Keyword: Ukraine, Mariupol, refugee
    Two sarcastic old people and an idealistic young actress are sheltering in a theatre during a war. The Statler and Waldorf style banter is keeping the young woman, and perhaps the rest of us, from being able to rest.
  • Frozen by Jacob Juntunen
    Cast: 
    1
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    Genre: dark comedy, drama + 4 more
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    Keyword: Ukraine, puppet + 1 more
    Genre: dark comedy, drama, experimental, immersive, political, tragedy
    Keyword: Ukraine, puppet, war
    A parent has a puppet onstage, which is their child, and which is going to sing. But a puppet can't sing, can it? Definitely not. But can it?
  • In the Shadow of his Language by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    7
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    Genre: drama, political
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    Keyword: Upstate New York, Boston + 5 more
    Genre: drama, political
    Keyword: Upstate New York, Boston, college, First generation college student, James Joyce, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
    Didi O’Connor must escape South Boston where her Dad scoffs, “How did you get so fat on your Ma’s shitty cooking?” She seizes her chance when she gets “a free ride” to a prestigious college in Upstate New York. But when her advisor forces Didi to change her name, accent, clothes—even her religion—will success destroy her more than her dead-end home-life ever would? In the Shadow of His Language explores the...
    Didi O’Connor must escape South Boston where her Dad scoffs, “How did you get so fat on your Ma’s shitty cooking?” She seizes her chance when she gets “a free ride” to a prestigious college in Upstate New York. But when her advisor forces Didi to change her name, accent, clothes—even her religion—will success destroy her more than her dead-end home-life ever would? In the Shadow of His Language explores the costs of class-jumping and the imperialism we call “education.”
  • Our First Times by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: date rape, rape culture
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: date rape, rape culture
    Three women remember their first times with the same man.
  • Dying Alone by Jacob Juntunen
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    6
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    Genre: drama, experimental + 1 more
    Genre: drama, experimental, movement/physical
    A woman haunted by her parents and her future learns that there's more than one way not to die alone.