Jeni is a playwright, director, dramaturg, teacher, new play development geek and Founder of Seven Devils New Play Foundry where she served as Artistic Director for 23 years before stepping down in 2023. She has been instrumental in the development of over 260 new American plays since 2001.
Jeni's plays including Mercy Falls, Fata Morgana, Kandahar, The Feast of the Flying Cow… and Other Stories of War, Come Rain or Come Shine, Running in Circles Screaming, The Martyrdom of Washington Booth, American Eyes, Scatter and Light have been presented at the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center, InterAct Theater, Greenwich Playhouse (London), L.A. Theater Center, the Lark, Rattlestick, Circus Theatricals, Key City Public Theater, Boston Theater Marathon and Boise Contemporary Theater, among others. Her work is published by Applause, Playscripts and Smith & Kraus. 
Inducted into the IndieTheatre Hall of Fame in 2014, Jeni's plays The Feast of the Flying Cow... and Other Stories of War and Fata Morgana were named honorable mentions on the Kilroy List, and the world premiere of Fata Morgana, was awarded an Artworks Grant by the National Endowment of the Arts.
Directing and dramaturgy credits include Durango PlayFest, The National Winter Playwrights Retreat, Sit-In NYC and Key City Public Theater's PT PlayFest, for which she also serves as Associate Director. As a unabashed new play development geek, Jeni has served a panelist or/and guest artist for the Dramatists Guild, The Stratera Conference, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs Association, the Seabury Quinn Jr., Playwriting Festival and Bermuda's Famous for Fifteen Minutes New Play Competition. She has written about new play development for Howlround and The Dramatists and has been featured in numerous interviews and podcasts including David Dower's Friday Phone Call. Jeni served for a decade as the Head of the BFA Playwriting Program for Playwrights Horizons Theatre School at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Other teaching assignments have include Franklin Pierce University, Primary Stages Einhorn Performing Arts School and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Jeni teaches Scripting at Stonecoast, the University of Southern Maine's low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. She is member of the Dramatists Guild of America and the National Theatre Conference, where she served on the Board of Trustees for six years. In addition to her work in the theater, Jeni serves on the Board of Directors for Fleischer Studios, Inc., where she also serves Historian and Vice President of Digital Media. She is a freelance web designer who also creates and manages content and edits video.
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"Jeni is not afraid to take on our most serious concerns and challenge us to examine where we have failed to be a courageous people. Her command of political satire is something so rarely seen in our theater that it literally feels foreign to us."
Lee Blessing, playwright
"Jeni Mahoney's play, Fata Morgana, is a fantastic example of the challenging, intelligent, and emotionally powerful writing that BCT audiences have embraced here over the years... it has an innovative style. It feels like a new American magic realism."
Matthew Cameron Clark,
Artistic Director, Boise Contemporary Theater "Mahoney cushions the hospital walls of her careening comedy with wit, wisdom and a genuine empathy for both Marcy and Wanda and for the parade of hilariously drawn hospital stereotypes who attend them... it’s stocking-stuffed with fun ideas, ingenious plot switchbacks and comic performances."
Michael C. Moore,
Kipsap Theatre Artists "...surprising, challenging, often troubling and sometimes hilarious, she asks audiences to bear witness to the truth of the messy, complicated human condition and to the idea that our beliefs will ultimately bind us together or tear us to pieces."
Mara Lathrop, Key City Public Theater |