Draft:MJ Kaufman

MJ Kaufman is an American playwright from Portland, Oregon, currently living in New York City. Their plays have been produced across the U.S., as well as in Russia and Australia. An alum of Wesleyan University and Yale School of Drama, they have taught playwriting at numerous American universities and are currently Assistant Professor of Dramatic Writing at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. While at Yale, they were a student of the playwright Sarah Ruhl, whom they cite as a major influence on their work. They have held residencies at the New Museum, New Dramatists and the Public Theater. Their plays include eat and you belong to us, How to Live on Earth, and Sagittarius Ponderosa. Along with Kit Yan and Cece Suazo, Kaufman founded Trans Lab Fellowship, a program to support emerging transgender theatre artists which existed from 2018-2019. Along with choreographer and performance artist Amy Smith, they are the author of a manifesto on trans representation in theatre and dance work.

Kaufman is the co-book-writer, with Joey Soloway, of A Transparent Musical, a 2023 musical based on Soloway's television program Transparent. They are no stranger to television writing, having been a staff writer on the TV show The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. They were interviewed about being a playwright who also writes for TV in the scholarly volume Playwrights on Television: Conversations with Dramatists.