{"id":67391,"date":"2023-04-04T07:03:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-04T13:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=67391"},"modified":"2023-04-07T07:54:28","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T13:54:28","slug":"playwright-jenifer-niis-safe-space-for-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/playwright-jenifer-niis-safe-space-for-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Playwright Jenifer Nii’s Safe Space for Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Salt Lake City playwright Jenifer Nii with one of her “pack,” Cora. Image credit: Kylan Brown<\/p><\/div>\n

My friend Jen loves dogs. And dogs love her.<\/h4>\n

Over the years in which I\u2019ve been lucky to know Jen and call her a friend, she has fostered many, many dogs\u2014lovingly called her pack. One day I ran into her on the street near Liberty Park while she was in the midst of walking five or six. The way she spoke to them, and the way they clearly adored her, was a moment that has stayed with me.<\/h4>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel like I have much of a relationship with humanity,\u201d she told me recently. \u201cBut I feel like I\u2019ve been able to be of service to dogs. I could put my heart in it, and they would accept it.\u201d<\/h4>\n

I\u2019m here to tell you, friends, that Jen has been of service to me. You see, Jen is a playwright, and a very good one. Several times over I have sat in Rose Wagner’s Studio Theatre, immersed in the story and characters of a Jenifer Nii play. By the end of Suffrage<\/i>, a taut exploration of Utah polygamy, I thought \u2014 Damn, I wish I had written that.<\/i><\/h4>\n
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April Fossen (left( and Sarah Young in Plan-B Theatre’s 2013 production of Nii’s play “Suffrage”<\/p><\/div>\n

Jen is one of the humblest people I know. \u201cI didn\u2019t really aspire,\u201d she says, \u201cI tried to catch up and felt lucky.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>She turns away from attention, instead focusing on her work: writing stories that need to be written, and in a style that is both poetic and approachable. Her observations of humanity \u2014 of us \u2014 are clear, concise and compassionate. Her plays ask thoughtful questions about what it means to be human.<\/h4>\n

FIRE!, <\/i>soon to be revived at Plan-B Theatre, exemplifies this idea. It\u2019s the story of Wallace Thurman, a man who has been forgotten by Utah history. A novelist and playwright, Thurman was a queer Black man who grew up in Salt Lake City but whose literary work took him to California and New York.<\/h4>\n

Jen sees Thurman as someone who asked questions \u2014 and kept asking because he couldn\u2019t find the answers. \u201cHis fiction was not of the quality he wanted,\u201d she explains. \u201cI wonder if he had felt safer in his skin, in his sexuality, in his relationships \u2026 Maybe that would have freed up space for him to be creative.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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In Plan-B’s revival of their 2010 world premiere of Fire! Carleton Bluford reprises the role of Wallace Thurman. Image credit: Sharah Meservy<\/p><\/div>\n

Thurman was surrounded by vibrant and wildly artistic people, many of whom were much more lauded than he was. Jen perceives that he had to have been both inspired and frustrated by his friends\u2019 successes. \u201cHe was not seen in the same way. There\u2019s a certain pain there.\u201d Reflecting on her own short-lived career as a competitive pianist, \u201cI got my butt kicked over and over again. You can\u2019t survive that without fraying.\u201d<\/h4>\n

The first production of FIRE!<\/i> in 2010 sparked Jen\u2019s prolific residency at Plan-B, a place where Jen has felt that safety she wishes for Thurman. \u201cWith each project, I was asked to open my heart to different points of view. It\u2019s one of the greatest blessings artists have \u2014 to open your heart and look at all of these perspectives and see that it\u2019s messy.\u201d<\/h4>\n

The messiness of life \u2014 \u201cmistakes and miscommunication and expressions of love.\u201d That\u2019s what you will find contained within the deliberate structure of a Jenifer Nii play, and it\u2019s a beautiful thing to behold.<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

Fire!<\/em>, Plan-B Theatre<\/a>, Salt Lake Lake City, Apr. 13 – 23<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Jen loves dogs. And dogs love her. Over the years in which I\u2019ve been lucky to know Jen and call her a friend, she has fostered many, many dogs\u2014lovingly called her pack. One day I ran into her on the street near Liberty Park while she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1722,"featured_media":67399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[4266,278],"class_list":["post-67391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theatre","tag-jenifer-nii","tag-plan-b-theatre"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/jennifernii-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-13 19:46:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1722"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67391"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67406,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67391\/revisions\/67406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}