#StopTheShock

In no particular order, Jessica Durdock Moreno (she/any) is a Neuroqueering writer, producer, consultant, actress, director, dramaturg, and teacher. In the summer of 2023, Jessica was appointed to the position of Artistic Director of the Sherman Players; a community theater in Connecticut.

Jessica formed Pale Horse Craft, a Neurodiversity and Learning Disability centered practice, production, and performance container in 2019. Through PHC, she premiered her first full length play "To Richard!" at the Hollywood Fringe Festival that same year, where she won the Encore Producers Award, and was nominated for the Inkwell Theater Playwright’s Promise Award.

As a Neurodiversity Consultant, Jessica worked with director Chay Yew and actress Anna Zavelson on New York City Center's Encores! production of "The Light in the Piazza" in June of 2023. She is a member of Liz Lerman and John Borstel’s 2022-2023 Critical Response Process Certification cohort, where she is focusing her research on creating feedback and dramaturgical processes that center Neurodivergent and Learning Disabled theatermakers.

As a writer, Jessica's second full length play “Georgie D.” was developed in the Chain Theatre Playwriting Lab, where it received a full workshop production in New York in the summer of 2021. She was a finalist for the Theater Masters Take Ten 2020 Festival, and a semifinalist for the Athena Project’s 2020 Plays in Progress Series. She has developed plays with the Workshop Theater, who presented a reading of her play “New Canaan” starring Debra Jo Rupp in the fall of 2021. Her work has been presented by TEDx Asbury Park, the Full Circle Theatre Collaborative’s New Works Festival, the Boston Theater Marathon, the NYU Tisch Bespoke Play Zoom Festival, and the NYU Tisch Critical Response Process Workshop. She has published plays with Smith and Kraus, some scripts literary magazine, and Fleas on the Dog. She began her writing training at Los Angeles City College, where she won the 2019 Cinema and Television Department’s Best Screenplay Award for her television pilot “Filly.” She received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from New York University Tisch School of the Arts in 2021 where she was the recipient of the John Golden Playwriting Prize, awarded by the MFA faculty. She has developed work through the Echo Theater Company’s Los Angeles Young Playwrights program, and also with the Road Theatre’s Under Construction 3 Playwrights Group. In 2023, Jessica was named a Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellowship semifinalist.

As a producer, Jessica has developed original plays and managed productions off-Broadway in New York, in Los Angeles, and multiple turns at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her award-winning productions have been featured in or reviewed by The New York Times, Variety, W Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Post, Newsweek, Time-Out NY, The Village Voice, USA Today, Backstage Magazine, The Scotsman, The Edinburgh Evening News, The Stage UK, The LA-ist, and numerous other national and international publications.

As an actress, Jessica has performed lead roles off-Broadway in New York, in Los Angeles, the National Black Theater Festival, and multiple turns at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She has also appeared in several award-winning independent films, and as a bunch of different nurses on a bunch of different daytime dramas. She won the Most Unleashed Performance Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, the Outstanding Theatre Performance Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and was nominated for a Stage Scene LA Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Lead Actress in a Comedy. She studied Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, Suzuki and Viewpoints with SITI Company, and classical ballet and Swedish in Stockholm.​

Jessica is on staff at Long Wharf Theatre, where she works between the Executive Office, Artistic Staff, and Accessibility Team. She graduated magna cum laude with departmental honors from Columbia University, where she received a B.A. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology (focus on North American Settler Colonialism). She received her MFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts - Department of Dramatic Writing. Jessica grew up in New Milford, Connecticut, where she danced professionally as a teen with BLUDance Theatre and as a guest artist with Pilobolus.

Expect typos.

IG: @PaleHorseCraft
www.JessicaDurdockMoreno.com
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