Jennifer Schaupp

Oscar Wilde wrote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” So it is to be an artist. Jennifer Schaupp is tickled pink about educational, experimental, multidisciplinary, multicultural, and multi-hilarious art. As a storyteller and performer of improvised, scripted, and devised works, she channels the following: Eastern and Western cultural traditions, ancient theatre characteristics, observations of human quirks, alternative strategies for audience engagement, inspiration from other arts disciplines, and the legacy of artists pushing the bounds of form and social expectations, including Maria Irene Fornes. As a current PhD candidate in Creativity, she has expanded her focus to include immigrant and refugee communities, language learning, multilingual perspectives, healing-informed practices, and the use of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed for empowering communities. 

For the past 15+ years, Jennifer has created theatrical pieces and workshops for local festivals and events, including Pittsburgh Fringe Festival and No Name Players’ Support Women Artists Now Day. For ten of those years, she has performed with the Amish Monkeys troupe to create and perform short-form improvisation. She has also continued her artistic work beyond Pittsburgh with a theatre manifesto, or “Whatifesto,” for Theatre Communications Group’s National Conference in Los Angeles; a collaboration with Washington, D.C.’s Spilling Ink to develop a Bharatanatyam dance, poetry, and theatre production in Chennai, India; and “Gestural & Spoken Language as an Act of Personal Freedom” workshop for the International Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference. Currently, Jennifer works as an adjunct professor, standardized patient, and freelance author.

Photo by Meghan Daily