Peggy Stafford is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays include Everything is Here, 16 Words or Less, Motel Cherry, Jewel Casket, and Three Miracles and a Giant. Her work has been produced and developed at theatres including Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Page 73, HERE, Soho Rep, Women’s Project, Playwrights Horizon, Two River, Bottom’s Dream, Circle X, On The Boards, Seattle Children’s Theatre, The Tank, and The Playhouse in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Her short film, adapted from her play 16 Words or Less, won Best First Short Film award at the Boden International Film Festival in Sweden, First Time Filmmaker award at LA Indies, and Best Short Film award at the Durgapur International Film Festival in West Bengal.
She is chair of the playwriting program at SUNY Purchase where she recently launched a new study abroad program in Belfast, Northern Ireland exploring the role of the artist in peacebuilding.
While at MacDowell in 2007, Stafford completed a draft of Wapato, a play to be read at Women’s Project in 2007. In 2010, she completed the first draft of a new play, Jewel Casket, inspired by a Joseph Cornell box. During her 2016 residency, she completed a stage adaptation of Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy to be developed with director Meghan Finn at 3-Legged Dog in New York. She also completed work on her full-length play, Everything Is Here, which was commissioned through Clubbed Thumb/PHTS Director Fellowship Program.
At MacDowell in 2024, Stafford wrote the first 50 pages of her screenplay, 3T Road, inspired by the unsolved triple homicide of three teenagers on Bainbridge Island in 1989. She also worked on her television pilot, Animal Family, a workplace comedy set in a zoo. Stafford made substantial progress on a revision of her new play, Ambulette: a non-emergency vehicle which will be workshopped at The Tank Theatre in New York City in June, 2024.
