AMERICAN THEATRE | The Subtext: Rachel Jendrzejewski on Presence, Poland, and Padua

Each month on The Subtext, Brian speaks with a playwright about life, writing, and whatever itches we are scratching.

This time, Brian talks to Rachel Jendrzejewski, a Minneapolis-based interdisciplinary artist and writer he met many years ago in Poland. Jendrzejewski is currently working with WaxFactory in New York City to co-create TRACES, a site-specific piece inspired by the life and work of Sophie Calle which will premiere at Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center. They discuss her happenstance stumbling upon Padua Playwrights, the impact of Cornerstone Theater Company on her life, an online conversation with Joanna Klass that led to a year-long collaboration in Poland, and the ways cancer altered her relationship with future thinking and the present.

Jendrzejewski is a Playwrights’ Center core writer and co-artistic director of Minneapolis’s Red Eye. She often collaborates with choreographers, musicians, visual artists, and ensembles to explore wide-ranging performative vocabularies. Her works have been developed and/or presented by Red Eye Theater, Hair+Nails, Padua Playwrights, Tricklock Company, Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, The Wild Projec, and ICA/Boston among others. Publications include MERONYMY (53rd State Press), In Which _______ and Others Discover the End (a collaboration with SuperGroup and Plays Inverse), and encyclopedia (Spout Press). Honors include a Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowship, two McKnight Fellowships, and various residencies.