about
writer | composer | performer
Jay Eddy is a generalist with a hybrid and transdisciplinary practice integrating theater and performance art, music, film and video art, installation, testimony and memoir, poetry and essay, translation, and ritual. Their solo show DRIVING IN CIRCLES won the Richard Rodgers Award (American Academy of Arts and Letters), as well as the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award and Musical Theatre Award, (Kennedy Center). THE GULL, their musical adaptation of Chekov’s ЧАЙКА, also won the Kennedy Center’s Musical Theatre Award. They are a recent Richard Rodgers Award and Elliot Norton Award winner, Folger Artistic Research and New Jewish Culture fellow, New Harmony and Yaddo resident, Jonathan Larson Grant and National Music Theatre Conference finalist, New York Foundation for the Arts and Connecticut Office of the Arts Fellow.
Their work as a generative artist is rooted in a trauma-informed and deeply neuroqueer Weird Futurity (meaning: predestined sense of what-is-to-come as a repeating pattern of what- has-been). They believe in art-making that is process-oriented, anti-urgency, inquiry-driven; that resists nostalgia, plays in the liminal spaces of simultaneous remembering and forgetting, asks not what we remember but how; that repeats and reinterprets, refuses endings, returns to the beginning with new eyes and begins again. Their work for the stage has been called, “Bracingly original, astonishingly resourceful, and daringly theatrical,” and, “a joy to listen to...a beautiful tapestry of sound.” As a performer, they’ve been called, “Kate McKinnon on a cocaine bender.”
Published work includes poems and essays with North American Review (Runner Up, Terry Tempest Williams Prize in Creative Nonfiction), Tikkun, Pidgeonholes, Poets Reading the News, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and TulipTree. MFA in Playwriting at Boston University; MA in Music Theatre from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama; BA in Stage & Screen studies at Bowdoin College; alum of Moscow Art Theatre School’s summer intensive.
NEWS & EVENTS
Driving in Circles is running at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in summer 2025! Previews July 30-August 1, then running August 2-24 (not 5, 12, 19) at 13:30 at Gilded Balloon’s new Appleton Tower venue! Jay is also releasing the show’s concept album on August 2!
A Bottom’s Dream premiered with Shakespeare in Clark Park in July 2025, directed by Shamus. Read some glowing reviews here and here!
Driving in Circles workshop production ran in 2024 at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, directed by Sam Plattus. The Boston Globe named it 1 the 10 best shows of the year!
Alligator-a-Phobia in 3D! workshop production ran in 2023 at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, directed by Shamus.
The Gull was awarded the Kennedy Center’s KCACTF Musical Theatre Award in 2023!
Jay had two installations with The Jewish Museum of Maryland’s Material/Inheritance exhibition (March 26 - June 11, 2023): The Other Death of Arthur, an audio installation featuring direction by Sam Plattus and performances from Sam Plattus and Zach Fontanez, and Threshold (Shvel), a collaboration with poet Mariya Zilberman, to which Jay contributed a sculptural imagetext element.
Driving in Circles was one of two new musicals this year to win the Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Press release here, recording of the live-streamed awards ceremony here.
Driving in Circles was also honored by the Kennedy Center as a recipient of the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, co-recipient of the KCACTF Musical Theatre Award, and distinguished achievement for the Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting.
Jay’s essay “Pear, or: My Body Feels Like Drag” was named the runner up for the Terry Tempest Williams Prize in Creative Nonfiction and was published in the Fall 2022 issue of North American Review.
SELECTED PRESS
“There are times…when words burst out of Jay Eddy in such a headlong torrent that they seem to be racing one another to the end of the sentence. And there are times when the words emerge very slowly and deliberately, as if Eddy wants to underscore the effort it’s taken to translate this raw and wrenching story into theatrical terms. At either tempo, Eddy is a fiercely compelling performer. And Driving in Circles is a remarkable achievement.” (Don Aucoin for The Boston Globe)
“Eddy is an assured performer, alternately enraged, playful, and reflective, and their songwriting, orchestrations, and emotive voice make for as enjoyable a night of musical theater as you’re likely to experience this or any other year.” (Mike Hoban for Theater Mirror)
“Now here is something refreshingly different. Directed with energizing flair by Sam Plattus…Driving in Circles is essentially an emotionally-charged concert road trip through…events that have shaped Eddy’s life. It is powerful, sad, and disturbing at times, but is also hopeful, charming and lighthearted on this unpredictable road to healing…Eddy’s enthusiasm and interactive style is relatable, warm, sincere, and funny.” (The Sleepless Critic)
“Eddy’s adaptation [of A Midsummer Night’s Dream] is funny and smart, keeping a great deal of Shakespeare’s material even while turning it on its head and shaking it until even more jokes fall out.” (Jennifer Kramer for Play Shakespeare)
“Magnetic, feral, and heartbreaking…Eddy’s performance feels fresh and unique, all wide eyes and exposed nerve…[They’re] a revelation.” (Noah Golden for OnStage)
“A rasping hoot…coarse, abrasive and a little bit brilliant.” (Christopher Arnott for Hartford Courant)
“Eddy plays Little Lady almost as a vampire, and the old-school kind: seductive, frightening, and probably crazy…Eddy has undeniable stage presence and a startlingly elastic voice, able to coo and screech, howl and sing.” (Brian Slattery for The New Haven Independent)
“Somewhat startlingly talented…Eddy takes over the sonic volume of the space with [their] huge voice….When the other performers join [them]…it’s a powerful reminder of the dynamic range possible with an ensemble of voices utterly unlike the vast majority of pre-packaged pop.” (Jeff Smith for Medium)