Flying Leap Productions is thrilled to announce the addition of Jess Kaufman to our Board. As a playwright, dramaturg, producer, and all-around theater artist specializing in thoughtful, playful, ambitious theater for families, Jess brings over a decade of creative expertise that will help guide our organization into its next chapter.
We asked Jess a few questions to get to know her better:
What made you interested in joining Flying Leap’s Board?
As the founder of Flying Leap, I'm excited to serve as a board member so I can learn how to best steer the company, and set us up for longevity beyond my time as Flying Leap’s leader. It’s thrilling to have such experienced board members in Carla, Eve, and Amanda, and I know I have a lot to learn from them! I think together we’ll be able to chart a course to make a lot of good art, bring it to a lot of kids, and create something that will last beyond us.
What is a skill or experience you are excited to bring to Flying Leap
I've had a lot of education in producing and management, both in grad school and through fellowships. I think a lot of artists don’t get to learn this stuff in school, and it’s really powerful to walk into a room and say, oh I know how to build this budget, or I have the confidence to talk to that funder. I worked hard to learn those skills, but I’m also aware of just how lucky I am to have had the chance and the mentors. One of my goals for Flying Leap is to help our artists develop those skills so they can produce their own work, too, if that’s something they want.
What is a difficult subject you think it’s important that we talk about right now?
It’s so hard for people to talk to each other right now. I think the thing we aren’t talking enough about, or at least not in a productive way, is just how hard it is to talk to someone with different values or beliefs. We’re set up to be divided, and I see it in my artistic work, my political work, and my personal life, and it’s heartbreaking and terrifying. Division is a tool of oppression, and I hope that our work encourages families to raise kids who are curious and open minded and ready to talk about the tough stuff, even when it’s difficult or uncomfortable.
Jess’s bio: Jess Kaufman (she/her) is a playwright, dramaturg, producer and all-around theater artist making thoughtful, playful, ambitious theater for families. Her work invites young people and families to cross boundaries, in theaters and site-specific performance spaces. As a queer, Jewish artist, she is particularly interested in the intersection of social justice and identity. Jess was a 2019-2020 New Victory Theater LabWorks Artist, a 2020 NYFA "Emerging Arts Leader", and a 2021 New York City Artist Corps grant recipient.
Recent work: The Garden, inviting babies and their caregivers into nature in NYC public parks; Beyond the Wall || Más Allá del Muro (US/Mexico), building 15 foot tall puppets with kids living at the US/Mexico border wall (artbeyondthewall.com); ASSEMBLE, a guerrilla audio performance piece secretly staged in a Brooklyn store (projectassemble.com); Mathilda and the Orange Balloon (UK/US), a Deaf and hearing accessible play about identity adapted from the popular picture book.
A frequent guest lecturer and conference presenter, her credits include: Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, Creative Interruptions London, NYU Forum on Educational Theatre, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, Theater and Dance for the Very Young Conference, TYA/USA Festival, and guest lectures at universities across the US, UK, and Europe. Her writing about theater has been published in ArtsPraxis and Theatre and Performance Design, and she co-edited Embodied Cognition, Acting and Performance (Routledge, 2017). She is on the theater faculty at Lucy Moses School.
MA Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London); BFA University of Miami; Certificate, Moscow Art Theatre (Russia).
We can’t wait to see Jess’s continued impact on our board, organization, and beyond!